Dead I Well May Be: A Novel - Softcover

Anthony Swofford Author of "Jarhead" McKinty's Michael Forsythe is a crook, a deviant, a lover, a fighter, and a thinker. His Irish-tough language of isolation and longing makes us love and trust him despite his oh-so-great and violent flaws. When you finish this book you just might wish you'd lived the life in its pages, and thought its thoughts, both horrible and sublime.

Peter Blauner Author of "The Last Good Day" and "The Intruder" If Frank McCourt had gone into the leg-breaking business instead of school teaching, he might've written a book like "Dead I Well May Be." Adrian McKinty's novel is a rollicking, raw, and unsavory delight -- down and dirty but full of love for words. This is hard-boiled crime fiction with a poet's touch.

Thomas Kelly Author of "The Rackets" and "Payback""Dead I Well May Be" is a startling, dark poem of a thriller that takes you to the heart of New York City's most bloody era. McKinty writes with elan, and his dialogue is as hard and true as the streets. His hero's quest for vengeance and redemption kept me reading into the loneliest hours of the night. McKinty is the real deal.

Barbara Seranella Author of "Unpaid Dues" Adrian McKinty has written a literary thriller full of surprising humor of the best kind -- dark and intelligent.

This Irish bad-boy thriller -- set in the hardest streets of New York City -- brims with violence, greed, and sexual betrayal. "I didn't want to go to America, I didn't want to work for Darkey White. I had my reasons. But I went" So admits Michael Forsythe, an illegal immigrant escaping the Troubles in Belfast. But young Michael is strong and fearless and clever -- just the fellow to be tapped by Darkey, a crime boss, to join a gang of Irish thugs struggling against the rising Dominican powers in Harlem and the Bronx. The time is pre-Giuliani New York, when crack rules the city, squatters live furtively in ruined buildings, and hundreds are murdered each month. Michael and his lads tumble through the streets, shaking down victims, drinking hard, and fighting for turf, block by bloody block. Dodgy and observant, not to mention handy with a pistol, Michael is soon anointed by Darkey as his rising star. Meanwhile Michael has very inadvisably seduced Darkey's girl, Bridget -- saucy, fickle, and irresistible. Michael worries that he's being followed, that his affair with Bridget will be revealed. He's right to be anxious; when Darkey discovers the affair, he plans a very hard fall for young Michael, a gambit devilish in its guile, murderous in its intent. But Darkey fails to account for Michael's toughness and ingenuity or the possibility that he might wreak terrible vengeance upon those who would betray him. A natural storyteller with a gift for dialogue, McKinty introduces to readers a stunning new noir voice, dark and stylish, mythic and violent -- complete with an Irish lilt.