Three Quarters - Tapa dura

Explosive, street-savvy, and authentic, acclaimed columnist Denis Hamill's novels are drawn in the gritty ink that can only flow from the pen of a native New Yorker...and a superbly talented writer.Now, blending sinuous prose with a hair-trigger delivery, Hamill etches a novel set in a mercenary New York—where friends become enemies, cops are corrupted, and some must die, all for the sake of Bobby Emmet was a desperate man, an honest New York City cop, framed for the murder of his fiancée, and given one last chance to save himself—by an unlikely benefactor. Bobby didn't murder his fiancee, Dorothea Dubrow, and then cremate the body—but he has an idea who is responsible. His murder trial interrupted his investigation of a police medical pension scam—and revealed how little he really knew about Dorothea. Now suddenly free, he is imprisoned in a web of corruption, lies, and the kind of secrets people kill for.Beginning his search for the truth at a shady security firm that employs able-bodied ex-cops, all of whom have mysteriously qualified for medical pensions—equal to a cool three-quarters of their salaries—he stumbles upon a startling discovery: the cremated remains that led to his conviction didn't really belong to Dorothea.Bobby has a few allies: his policeman brother, his hacker daughter, his flamboyantly unprincipled lawyer, a cop or two who stood by him through the trial. But the same forces that landed him in jail more than a year before are putting a smothering squeeze on him now—and all roads lead to a powerful politician who will let nothing get between himself and the governor's mansion.As the struggle to find the truth—and Dorothea—intensifies, Bobby begins to suspect that those around him are not as loyal as they appear. His liberty and very life depend on whether or not he can discover how high—and how near—the conspiracy goes before the trap closes on him.At once lyrical and riveting, Three Quarters crackles in its electric setting, reverberating with a "relentless energy" (Lawrence Block) fueled by Hamill's intimate knowledge of and intense passion for New York City.

Denis Hamill is the author of Stomping Ground and Machine, as well as House on Fire, which is available from Pocket Books. He has been a columnist for New York Magazine, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, and the Boston Herald American. A resident of New York City, Hamill currently writes a column for the New York Daily News.