The Wolves of Fairmount Park

Welcome to the mean streets of Philadelphia -- the City of Brotherly Love hardly seems to live up to its name as the book opens with the killing of two teens -- "good boys" -- in a drive-by shooting in front of a drug house. The aura of gritty violence only intensifies in the aftermath of the shooting.

Why were the boys there? Why were they shot? We see the search for answers by the fathers of the boys -- Brendan Donovan, a Philadelphia cop, and George Parkman, Sr., a successful businessman; Brendan's estranged brother Orlando, a hard-core junkie; and Daniel Martinez, the detective assinged to the case. We also meet a memorable cast of hard-core criminals. This is a "hard-boiled," violent story not for the faint of heart.

Author Dennis show more Tafoya does for Philadelphia what Dennis Lehane does for Boston in his Kenzie/Gennaro novels as he shows us the seamy underside of the city through the worst and even the best parts of the city. The atmosphere is gritty, intense. Where Tafoya falls short is in the story itself. It didn't pull me along like a Lehane novel. But it was a good effort. This writer has real talent for creating atmosphere, bringing a reader into the scene, and drawing interesting, complex characters. As I understand it, this is only his second novel. I won't hesitate to read future efforts.

Guardedly recommended -- especially for folks who know or are interested in Philadelphia, or for those who enjoy more character-focused (rather than plot-driven) fiction. show less

This is an awesomely good book. It is a noir mystery. A lot of people die, some well & some badly.

In Philadelphia, two boys are shot outside a drug house. One is the son of a businessman; one is the son of a cop. One dies; one doesn’t. What were they doing there? Who shot them and why?

One of the people investigating this shooting is Danny Martinez, from Violent Crimes, who we see near the beginning of the book in gun fights. We also see him hanging around in bars to get information from a criminal named Asa Carmody who he’s known a long time.

Another one of the people investigating is Orlando Donovan, a Dostoyevskian character who is possibly suffering a mental illness and is also a junkie. Orlando is the uncle of one of the show more victims.

We learn about Orlando’s background. “He remembered his mother telling him when he heard the dogs at night it was wolves, the wolves in the park that had never been caught and never would.”

Watch for all the different wolves in the book.

Many of the characters are probably not like people you meet often. Many are people who didn’t have a lot of advantages. Many are bad people. We learn their histories.

One of the more interesting is Angel Riordan, who is somehow a sympathetic character even though he is in his late thirties “and he’d been killing people since he was a teenager.” He didn’t have many role models for career options, but found a career at which he excels nonetheless. When he gets high he sees the bodies he’s thrown in the river. He puts holes in them with his knife first, so they won’t float. He has a tattoo of a wolf biting a sword.

And also, Dennis Tafoya the author has the voice of an adult man, not a sniggering teenager. There is not a single wish-fulfillment fantasy woman in the book. The female characters are people, with the usual human desires, fears, and volitions. (A transsexual character is also a person with the usual human desires, fears, and volitions.)

Orlando’s girlfriend Zoe is a society girl who became a junkie. That is sort of a cliché, but when you read it you don’t think that. You think how courageous and enterprising she is.

There are so many characters I haven’t even mentioned. A person who reads Bukowski: he didn’t know anything about poetry, “and then to find out there were actual poems about drinking and fucking?”

A person who has tattoos, among them “the inevitable leprechaun with his fists up, ready to fight… Danny had locked up his older brother, Shannon, twice before he was found… with a dark hole in the back of his head.”

This book is really good with the characters. That’s not to say there isn’t plenty of action, with guns and cars; it’s just we know why the action is happening and what human stories lie behind it.

In general, the characters are like people are. Good and bad, men and women. The worst people have redeeming qualities. The best people do awful things.

If you like noir, like Nic Pizzolatto or Dennis Lehane or George Pelecanos, you have to read this.

It is a completely excellent example of its kind. So if you think that is a good kind, as I do, read this book. I enjoyed it more than I can say. I was sorry when it ended. I have not read Tafoya’s first book, but I will. show less

I don't know who this fellow is or where he came from, but his two novels have been exceptional. Set on the streets of Philadelphia, this one tells the story of the ramifications of the shooting of two young men outside a dope house. It'll grab you up and carry you along right from the start. The air of authenticity rings through the whole story. Charlie Huston and Don Winslow fans will definitely want to check out Tafoya.

Fairmount Park is a large urban park in Philadelphia. This crime novel is set in the seedy parts of town that border parts of the park. A policeman's son is badly wounded and the son's friend killed in a drive-by shooting at a know crack house. At first it looks like a random shooting but was actually the opening shots of a gang war. This is Tadoya's first novel. He is a Philadelphia native and I hope to see more of his work.