Hollowpoint

There was a time when Assistant District Attorney Andrew Giobberti pursued his job with vigour and a certain glee. He sent hundreds of perps upstate and commanded the respect of the tough Brooklyn cops whose investigations he steered. Now he mostly thinks about his next drink and the girl he can persuade to share it with him. A hand has reached into his chest and removed something that made the whole machine run - she was five years old, and her name was Opal.

Over the course of one impossibly hot August, Gio's life comes apart. It's been a year since his daughter died, but the loss carves away at him still. A case much like others crosses his desk: young girl, dead from a gunshot wound, crackhead mother, very guilty-looking boyfriend.

Something in this ordinary if tawdry case uncovers a vast well of grief and rage in him, and it's unclear who will be the target of his urge to avenge a pointless death. His steely associate, Stacey - with whom he shares his bed but nothing more - catches with alarm as he lurches towards an act that could prove to be destruction or redemption. He's badly in need of one of them.

With graphic intensity unequalled since James M Cain's antiheroes stalked the streets, 'Hollowpoint' captures the black heart and black humour of lives on the edge. This is the debut of a tremendously gifted writer and a work of psychological suspense whose echoes linger.