David Duffy

Edgar Award finalist for best first mystery and it is deserved. This is a hard edged and gritty book about the Russian mob and ex KGB agents working a complex organized crime wave based in New York but with international ties. There is lots of violence but this book is way more than this. There are well developed characters. and twists and turns till the very end. Any fan of Phillip Marlowe would probably enjoy the book My only minor problems were that some of the intended humor was funny show more and some not so much. Not sure about Turbo Vlost's talking parrot at times. Don't let all the Russian names at the beginning throw you. They will become clear to you as Duffy develops the characters. Turbo Vlost will be back in a second novel for fans I think this series is going to take off.. show less

Former KGB operative, Turbo Vlost, landed in New York City running a one-man investigative company, or as he so eloquently states, “No company, just me. I get paid to find things.”
He has spent his entire post-KGB career staying away from the two sons of his mentor, the man who rescued him as a teenager from the brutal life of the Soviet Gulag, his surrogate father. The two men he avoided run the Russian mob, one still in Russia and the other in Brighton Beach, NY. Their paths have not show more crossed in the past twenty years until he discovers that his current client, a man whose daughter appears to have been kidnapped, is also married to Turbo’s ex-wife.
As the layers of deceit are peeled back Turbo once again finds himself on the wrong side of his former rival who in turn had also been married to Turbo’s ex-wife. When his own son, a young man who Turbo has not seen since early childhood, is threatened to keep him in line Turbo finds himself working with the United States Attorney’s office to help bring down his current and once former enemy, while managing to help his current client happy too.
Joining the long line in the popular anti-hero movement Duffy brings us a relentlessly violent look at life, showing the influence wielded in this country by America’s former enemies since the cessation of the Cold War and the decline of the Berlin Wall. From guns, drugs and espionage we get the full gambit in the fast and furious look within the Russian mob. show less

A great book, well researched, well written, and a good read. Uncovers political bungling and bureaucracy and doesn't credit Charles Todd enough...