1978 and two 14-year-old white boys are creating dubious art by using a hacksaw to cut multiple
quarters into pieces. A child who's just bought ice cream from a Mr. Softee truck witnesses a
daylight sidewalk shooting in 1979. At another time a couple of blocks over a kid gets caught
trying to shoplift an adult magazine from a Puerto Rican hole-in-the-wall. A Black teenager and
his white friends square up to a rival Italian gang over the right to play hockey in the
street. In 1977 a white kid craters a baseball right in the centre of a Cuban guy's windscreen.
And so it goes. On the streets of Brooklyn the faces of the children change but the patterns
remain the same: sex boredom friendship violence a million daily crimes committed some
small some unimaginably big. But the real action is away from the streets played out behind
closed doors by parents cops renovators landlords gentrifiers those who write the
headlines the histories and the laws those who award this neighbourhood its name and control
its shifting demographics. Across the decades buildings are developed and homes are razed
communities come in and muscle other communities out the past haunts the present and
perspectives change so that perpetrators sometimes become victims and victims sometimes
become the worst criminals of all... Written with kaleidoscopic verve and delirious wit
Brooklyn Crime Novel is a breathtaking tour de force of a quarter of a city and the humanity it
contains and an epic interrogation of how we fashion stories to contain the uncontainable: our
remorse at the world we've made
