City of Margins

In City of Margins, the lives of several lost souls intersect in Southern Brooklyn in the early 1990s. There's Donnie Parascandolo, a disgraced ex-cop with blood on his hands; Ava Bifulco, a widow whose daily work grind is her whole life; Nick, Ava's son, a grubby high school teacher who dreams of a shortcut to success; Mikey Baldini, a college dropout who's returned to the old neighborhood, purposeless and drifting; Donna Rotante, Donnie's ex-wife, still reeling from the suicide of their teenage son; Mikey's mother, Rosemarie, also a widow, who hopes Mikey won't fall into the trap of strong arm work; and Antonina Divino, a high school girl with designs on breaking free from Brooklyn. Uniting them are the dead: Mikey's old man, killed over a gambling debt, and Donnie and Donna's poor son, Gabe. These characters cross paths in unexpected ways, guided by coincidence and the pull of blood. There are new things to be found in the rubble of their lives, too. The promise of something different beyond the barriers that have been set out for them. This is a story of revenge and retribution, of facing down the ghosts of the past, of untold desires, of yearning and forgiveness and synchronicity, of the great distance of lives lived in dangerous proximity to each other. City of Margins is a technicolor noir melodrama pieced together in broken glass.

A cleverly constructed crime novel ... Boyle creates a lively and gripping atmosphere, The characters are all very different and so well-written they felt real. The book is quite dark and intense at times but there are some very funny moments, Moving, gritty and incredibly real, it's sure to stay with you long after you turn the final page, Boyle's characters are vividly drawn and painfully real. Fans of literary crime novelists such as George Pelecanos and Richard Price will be highly rewarded, Boyle has quietly proven he can take on any number of kinds of crime fiction, from a screwball farce to a hardboiled noir to a heartfelt examination of lonely people whose lives cross.

William Boyle is from Brooklyn, New York. His debut novel, Gravesend, was published as #1,000 in the Rivages/Noir collection in France, shortlisted for the Prix Polar SNCF, nominated for the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière and shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger. Boyle is also the author of the Hammett Prize-nominated The Lonely Witness (No Exit Press), a book of short stories, Death Don't Have No Mercy and another novel, Tout est Brisè, released in France by Gallmeister. A Friend is a Gift You Give Yourself was published to enormous praise, it was an Amazon Best Book in 2019. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi.