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WORK TITLE: We Were Kings
WORK NOTES: with Thomas O’Malley
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://douglasgpurdy.com/
CITY: Brooklyn
STATE: NY
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.bookreporter.com/authors/douglas-graham-purdy * https://mysterypeople.wordpress.com/2016/07/14/mysterypeople-qa-with-douglas-graham-purdy/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL EDUCATION:
Graduated from University of Massachusetts, Boston.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author. Formerly worked in film & media studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. DJ, 8tracks.com.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Douglas Graham Purdy is the coauthor with Thomas O’Malley of two hardboiled crime novels set in Boston during the 1950s: Serpents in the Cold and We Were Kings. The two stories revolve around two friends, Dante Cooper and Cal O’Brien. World War II veteran Cal is an ex-cop haunted by memories of the war; Dante is a drug addict who, at the time the first novel begins, has just lost his wife to an overdose. Both of characters, noted Kay Tuttle in the Boston Globe, “were born in Boston–specifically, in creative-writing workshops taught by the writer Lee Grove that Purdy and O’Malley took together at the University of Massachusetts Boston.” Purdy told Tuttle that after class he and O’Malley would get together for beers in Cambridge and just sit in a corner of the bar developing the characters for their planned books.
In Serpents in the Cold, stated a Publishers Weekly reviewer, Purdy and O’Malley “have delivered a love-letter to a Boston that’s long gone.” For its inspiration, the novel draws on one of the great crimes in the old Massachusetts city: the 1950 robbery of the Brinks Building, in which the thieves escaped with over two million dollars in cash and securities. The story “reimagines” the famous heist, explained Booklist reviewer Stacy Alesi, “adding in the additional intrigue of a serial killer working the same neighborhood.” “Serpents in the Cold is a magnificent work,” declared Joe Hartlaub in Bookreporter. “The seamless collaboration between authors Thomas O’Malley and Douglas Graham Purdy results in a cinematic narrative that unreels in a riveting manner, leaving an imprint on the reader’s memory that is unlikely to fade any time soon.” Similarly, a Kirkus Reviews correspondent called the book “a bone-crunching, gut-wrenching novel that captures the atmosphere of a city in decay” and “delivers noir fiction like we always want it to be.” Giving the book a strong thumbs-up, Hartlaub concluded, “Place this one at the top of your must-read list.”
In We Were Kings, Cal and Dante examine a series of murders that bear the hallmark of the Irish Republican Army and their opponents. “The investigation crawls through the neighborhoods and nightclubs of South Boston,” observed Benjamin Boulden in Mystery Scene, “where a gangland-style war between the IRA and Irish Loyalists threatens to erupt.” Even though Cal and Dante “have each recently suffered a personal loss,” as a Publishers Weekly reviewer pointed out, they persevere in their efforts to end the violence and bring justice to the killers. “True noir never has a happy ending,” remarked Jane Murphy in Booklist. “The ending you get here is more ominous than everything that came before.”
In both novels, reviewers have noted, the city of Boston itself plays almost as important a role as the two protagonists. “As a city, Boston is not known for being overly kind,” Purdy told Scott Montgomery in an interview appearing in Mystery People. “It has a hard-knuckled introspective manner to it, uniquely Northeastern, at times terse and moody, at times overly proud, over-protective and provincial. While not as big and crowded as New York City and Chicago, it forms a perfect labyrinthine grid consisting of specific neighborhoods with their own unique cultural identities, their own codes, and … distinct immigrant histories.” “Boston has such a rich history of immigration, and with our characters Dante Cooper and Cal O’Brien both the children of immigrants, it came easy to us,” Purdy continued. “However many people assume Dante comes from Irish parents, when in fact his father was Polish and his mother Italian. While Serpents in the Cold focused on Boston as a sheltered city during a horrible winter storm, We Were Kings offers a wider template as we crossed the Atlantic and showed some of the IRA men deciding on when and how they should take care of a burgeoning problem stateside in Boston.” Purdy then elaborated: “I think there’s something incredibly interesting about the ways in which Boston itself was transformed by various immigrant cultures and how the immigrants, in turn, were transformed and indelibly changed by the city. There’s also the complication of seeing and experiencing America via a particular romanticism or mythologization so that it exists in the consciousness as something more than just a place; it becomes the embodiment of ideals, values, and sensibilities that the immigrant desires, projects, and aspires to.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, November 1, 2014, Stacy Alesi, review of Serpents in the Cold, p. 29; April 1, 2016, Jane Murphy, review of We Were Kings, p. 26.
Boston Globe, January 24, 2015, Kate Tuttle, review of Serpents in the Cold.
Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2014, review of Serpents in the Cold; April 1, 2016, review of We Were Kings.
Library Journal, May 1, 2016, Russell Michalak, review of We Were Kings, p. 64.
Publishers Weekly, November 3, 2014, review of Serpents in the Cold, p. 86; April 4, 2016, review of We Were Kings, p. 56.
ONLINE
Bookreporter, http://www.bookreporter.com/ (January 30, 2015), Joe Hartlaub, review of Serpents in the Cold; author profile.
Mystery People, https://mysterypeople.wordpress.com/ (July 14, 2016), Scott Montgomery, “MysteryPeople Q&A with Douglas Graham Purdy.”
Mystery Scene, https://mysteryscenemag.com/ (June 1, 2016), Benjamin Boulden, review of We Were Kings.
MysteryPeople Q&A with Douglas Graham Purdy
July 14, 2016 mysterypeopleblogLeave a comment
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9780316323536
Interview by Scott Montgomery
Thomas O’Malley and Douglas Graham Purdy’s second novel featuring Boston immigrants Cal and Dante, We Were Kings, takes place in the Fifties, covering such topics as gun running, the IRA, loyalty, and the weight of one’s past. Douglas Graham Purdy was kind enough to talk to us about his and O’Malley’s characters and their choice of setting.
“I think local provincialism definitely plays a large part in shaping Boston’s identity and it allows for a rich exploration of crime fiction. And with that particular type of provincialism there’s a guardedness, a suspicion of the other or outsider—when you talk to people from other cities who are familiar with Boston you hear about Boston’s coldness, its reputation as a tough city, a place where you don’t mess with the people.”
MysteryPeople Scott: This book delves deep into the Irish immigrant experience. What did you want to explore in it?
Douglas Graham Purdy: While not as emblematic as New York City, Boston has such a rich history of immigration, and with our characters Dante Cooper and Cal O’Brien both the children of immigrants, it came easy to us. However many people assume Dante comes from Irish parents, when in fact his father was Polish and his mother Italian. While Serpents in the Cold focused on Boston as a sheltered city during a horrible winter storm, We Were Kings offers a wider template as we crossed the Atlantic and showed some of the IRA men deciding on when and how they should take care of a burgeoning problem stateside in Boston. Their story, who they are and how they envision themselves as Americans, pairs well with Dante, Cal, detective Owen Mackey, who are already defined by America as citizens. It was interesting to have the IRA soldiers imagine the country as a land rich in opportunity and wealth, but once they arrive stateside, they find the dream is corrupt, that a great big land for the taking is a mirage. Immigration is founded on dreams and aspirations and imagination, and sometimes those dreams crumble under the reality that America wasn’t what they imagined from afar, yet somehow, someway, they must still become a part of.
Ask Tom, who actually is an immigrant, and he has a unique tale to tell related to Ted Cruz and Bill O’Reilly.
Of course when you’re talking about Boston you’re also talking about one of the largest populations of Irish immigrants in the U.S., the first port of entry for so many Irish who arrived over the centuries, but specifically aboard coffin ships fleeing An Gorta Mór, the Great Hunger.
“While Serpents in the Cold focused on Boston as a sheltered city during a horrible winter storm, We Were Kings offers a wider template as we crossed the Atlantic and showed some of the IRA men deciding on when and how they should take care of a burgeoning problem stateside in Boston.”
And it’s not by accident that we show the gunrunning boat, The Midir, at the book’s introduction, which was, to my mind, an imitation of the passage that the coffin ships of a hundred years before would have taken and what the passengers would have experienced and seen once they entered Boston’s outer harbor. The Great Hunger and this manner of migration is referenced again at the end of the book when the IRA gunmen pass through Galway, where so many coffin ships originally set sail from.
I think there’s something incredibly interesting about the ways in which Boston itself was transformed by various immigrant cultures and how the immigrants, in turn, were transformed and indelibly changed by the city. There’s also the complication of seeing and experiencing America via a particular romanticism or mythologization so that it exists in the consciousness as something more than just a place; it becomes the embodiment of ideals, values, and sensibilities that the immigrant desires, projects, and aspires to.
While Cal and Dante are children of immigrants they are also outside of the immigrant experience and the shocking, sometimes traumatic, duality that immigrants experience when their ideas of America are shattered by the reality that is America. And I think we explore a lot of that via the characters of Bobby Myles and Martin Butler, and how they believe Boston and the larger America beyond Boston will allow them opportunities and a distinct type of freedom and anonymity that they could never achieve in Ireland.
It’s also interesting to see how certain cultures reinvent themselves in America, forming many different subcultures within the whole that mainstream American is very often unaware of. To my mind, both the Irish dance hall culture of Dudley Square and IRA gunrunning in New York and Boston of the mid to late 1950s, in preparation for their unsuccessful Border Campaign in Northern Ireland were parts of those cultural subcultures that exist outside the mainstream and are rich for exploration in crime fiction.
MPS: What do Cal and Dante provide for each other as friends?
Their friendship goes back to their childhood growing up on the hard streets of Dorchester, Boston. Even at a young age, they endured a brutal existence, living through the Great Depression and, later, through violence; they’ve helped carry each other into adulthood. Even decades later, after much tragedy, they maintain a close presence in each other’s lives, a bond that may not shine with gold, but is a tarnished union, like two brothers cast out to endure the suffering and pain of a fallen city, in this case Boston during urban renewal and corruption.
Both men have lost their wives. They don’t have much family to cushion the grind of living day to day. Holding down a job becomes tougher and tougher. They’ve become lone wolves carrying their wounds silently, fueled by their own existential grit and a hunger for redemption.
“Even decades later, after much tragedy, they maintain a close presence in each other’s lives, a bond that may not shine with gold, but is a tarnished union, like two brothers cast out to endure the suffering and pain of a fallen city, in this case Boston during urban renewal and corruption.”
Their relationship is one based on trust and loyalty, even if, at times, that trust has been broken and the loyalty severely tested. But like all friendships there is a power dynamic between them and here we see that Cal is, most often, the one putting himself at risk and bailing Dante out of dangerous situations, but Cal is also driven by violent and dark impulses. He has, after the death of his wife, Lynne, something of a death wish and very little to lose. It is Dante who manages to pull him back from the abyss and we know, from Serpents in the Cold, that, if necessary, Dante would risk his life for Cal.
Dante looks up at the Heavens while in the gutter, while Cal looks down at the gutter from the Heavens. They balance each other out, allows them to co-exist in this grim setting, this limbo realm of Boston that is equal parts the gutter and the Heavens. (Yeah, as you can see, these are books are on the bleak side.)
MPS: There are several colorful characters in the book. Did you have any that were particularly fun to write?
I think every character offers something different. While Cal and Dante come across as humorless, scarred poster boys for Noir literature, it was good to offset them with eccentric characters such as the lowly henchman, Shaw, and Shea Mack, the sleazy kingpin. Shaw is great because he’s kind of the idiot who never shuts up, but when it matters, he rises to the occasion. Shea Mack is the self-appointed king of the underground, and every time he makes an appearance, it is usually as ribald as it is sadistic. He pushes the boundaries of taste, and it’s always refreshing to write scenes that push the boundaries into dark, and sometimes comedic, territories. While we always wanted to have unique original characters as our main players, we allowed ourselves to pay respects to the pulp as well. For example, there’s a scene at Fenway Park where Dante and Cal encounter the saddest-looking henchmen, rejects from the Dick Tracy universe, sad f**king bastards.
MPS: What makes Boston such a rich backdrop for crime fiction?
As a city, Boston is not known for being overly kind. It has a hard-knuckled introspective manner to it, uniquely Northeastern, at times terse and moody, at times overly proud, over-protective and provincial. While not as big and crowded as New York City and Chicago, it forms a perfect labyrinthine grid consisting of specific neighborhoods with their own unique cultural identities, their own codes, and their own, distinct immigrant histories.
I think local provincialism definitely plays a large part in shaping Boston’s identity and it allows for a rich exploration of crime fiction. And with that particular type of provincialism there’s a guardedness, a suspicion of the other or outsider—when you talk to people from other cities who are familiar with Boston you hear about Boston’s coldness, its reputation as a tough city, a place where you don’t mess with the people. There’s also the local trait of never forgetting or forgiving a wrong. That type of historical memory is a complex and distinctly Boston thing. It lends itself to a culture of codes and secrets and to very clannish structures that pit different clans against other clans.
“As a city, Boston is not known for being overly kind. It has a hard-knuckled introspective manner to it, uniquely Northeastern, at times terse and moody, at times overly proud, over-protective and provincial.”
Boston also possesses a historical landscape that reveals both its heights as a city and its decline, and the conflict of its Brahmin and working class sensibilities. There’s something quite powerful, shocking even, about suddenly discovering the richness of that landscape with its elaborate history, somewhat subsumed and hidden by the infrastructure of a city trying to be modern, trying to be something it has never been. This allows us to explore, both visually and thematically, the juxtaposition between the grand and the decrepit, the splendor and the vice. Until very recently, change in Boston has been glacial, and that informs the moods and perspectives of its citizens, neighbors and criminals alike.
Ambiguity and deception can thrive in these places where corruption and retribution can take effect at the drop of a dime. Whether along the fading blue-collar bars along Dorchester Avenue, or at the state house exemplifying the ‘city on a hill’, or the college campuses of international renown, MIT or Harvard, and even the tourist traps selling overpriced lobster rolls. There are so many landscapes where a crime can happen, a mystery unfolding. And more and more it’s becoming a city for the rich, the professionals. More people are flocking in and buying up properties at ridiculous prices. One has to wonder when the bottom drops. What criminals will arise from this to pick up the scraps?
Boston is a beautiful city, but by the winter, a gray pallor seems to suck the life out of the streets. The waters turn to slate, the skies turn raw and bleak, and the collective mood of the population sour and at times become downright miserable. For Serpents in the Cold and We Were Kings we highlighted the oppressive weather to augment a claustrophobic tension that we hope enhanced the damaged portrayal of our characters. In Serpents it is the coldest winter on record. In Kings, it’s a long, brutal summer with no relief in sight.
Also interesting is its duality, working class town and the hub of academia. It has a transient vibe that clashes with its tried-and-true lifers and townies. You can easily have a murder mystery on a college campus as well as a gritty, raw tale of the desperate low lives, which George V. Higgins (Friends of Eddie Coyle) captured so well.
“For Serpents in the Cold and We Were Kings we highlighted the oppressive weather to augment a claustrophobic tension that we hope enhanced the damaged portrayal of our characters. In Serpents it is the coldest winter on record. In Kings, it’s a long, brutal summer with no relief in sight.”
MPS: What part of the city’s history are you going to delve into next?
That’s a great question because many of Cal and Dante’s old haunts are now gone or soon will be as we move into the 1960s. It’s also a matter of how the two recover emotionally and physically from the events that occur in We Were Kings. Often, Doug and I learn about that damage and what it means to the story as we begin writing again. We’ve toyed around with the idea of having the book set in the late 1960s with the Vietnam War at its peak, and the city still disillusioned and heartbroken by the Kennedy assassinations. It would be interesting to see Cal and Dante in the seedy nether world of Boston’s Combat zone, the place of vice and prostitution that thrived after Scollay Square was demolished. Of course, Shea Mack would also have a place there. Such a world was made for the likes of him. We picture Cal and Dante as older men and potentially at odds with each another—can their friendship survive the various traumas and events they’ve experienced, the crimes they’ve committed? There’s guilt and shame in that knowledge and a shared culpability that neither can ever escape.
We’ve also explored Dante Cooper and Cal O’Brien standalone novels that continue the Boston Saga yet allow them to move more freely in their own narratives. But for now, Doug is working on a dark crime comedy, Scumbag, and I’m working on an apocalyptic thriller, At the End the Sea. Both of them are set in Boston.
“While misanthropes, both men believe in the public house, the place to gather and raise a few for the living and the dead. That’s where I’ll always see Cal and Dante, at a bar along the Avenue, the sun laying amber light through the windows as they gesture to the barman to pull another pint and pour another whiskey.”
MPS: Is there anything about your partnership that is reflected in Cal and Dante’s?
I think Cal (Thomas) is an optimistic at heart. He strives to think that there is something better out there. He goes to church. He prays. Dante (Doug) however is anxious at heart. He believes in the day-to-day. He’s the moody existentialist who feels more at home at a smoke-drenched jazz club than the church. But both characters do meet in the middle, the pub. While misanthropes, both men believe in the public house, the place to gather and raise a few for the living and the dead. That’s where I’ll always see Cal and Dante, at a bar along the Avenue, the sun laying amber light through the windows as they gesture to the barman to pull another pint and pour another whiskey. And Thomas and I will be there alongside them.
Douglas Graham Purdy grew up in Boston and now splits his time between Brooklyn and Boston. He has worked in Film and Media Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of Serpents in the Cold and We Were Kings (Mulholland, Little, Brown & Co.), co-authored with Thomas O'Malley. He is currently working on a collection of horror and a dark crime comedy.
Douglas Graham Purdy grew up in Boston and currently lives in Brooklyn. His first novel Serpents in the Cold, co-authored with Thomas O’Malley, was published by Mulholland Books, Little Brown, US & Mulholland Books UK. The second novel in the Boston Saga Series, We Were Kings, was released in 2016. He is currently working on a collection of horror short stories, and a dark crime comedy, Scumbag.
He is also a contributor and editorial board member to the crime/noir/thriller website, The Life Sentence. And he’s a DJ on 8tracks.com, where he creates jazz, electronic and ambient mixes under the moniker Spoonhead.
LC control no.: n 2015002007
Descriptive conventions:
rda
Personal name heading:
Purdy, Douglas Graham
Affiliation: University of Massachusetts at Boston
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Found in: Serpents in the cold, 2015: ECIP t.p. (by Thomas O'Malley
and Douglas Graham Purdy) data view (grew up in the
Boston area ; graduate of the University of
Massachusetts, Boston and currently works in Film &
Media Studies at MIT. This is his first novel.)
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O'Malley, Thomas & Douglas Graham Purdy. We Were Kings
Russell Michalak
Library Journal. 141.8 (May 1, 2016): p64.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
O'Malley, Thomas & Douglas Graham Purdy. We Were Kings. Mulholland: Little, Brown. Jun. 2016.384p. ISBN 9780316323536. $26; ebk. ISBN 9780316323512. F
In 1950s Boston, a body is discovered tarred and feathered at the Charlestown locks in a fashion typical of a local gang. However, police detective Owen Mackey recalls that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) meted out similar punishment to informants when they ruled the city's underworld before World War II. In addition, Mackey learns that a boat with ties to the IRA recently entered Boston Harbor transporting contraband firearms and ammunition. Mackey enlists O'Brien, his cousin and an ex-cop, and O'Brien's friend Dante Cooper to perform reconnaissance for him. When Mackey is slain, O'Brien and Cooper redouble their efforts to avenge their friend. VERDICT The authors' second installment (after Serpents in the Cold) is a solid addition to the noir genre. Their coarse depictions of Boston will appeal to fans of Dennis Lehane and Robert Parker's Jesse Stone series. New readers should begin with the first book. [See Prepub Alert, 12/14/16.]--Russell Michalak, Goldey-Beacom Coll. Lib., Wilmington, DE
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Michalak, Russell. "O'Malley, Thomas & Douglas Graham Purdy. We Were Kings." Library Journal, 1 May 2016, p. 64. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA450998866&it=r&asid=c9033a83aa9205822a761909f85b12f3. Accessed 25 Jan. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A450998866
We Were Kings
Publishers Weekly. 263.14 (Apr. 4, 2016): p56.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
We Were Kings
Thomas O'Malley and Douglas Graham Purdy.
LB/Mulholland, $26 (384p) ISBN 978-0-316-32353-6
It's June 1954, and an oppressive heat entombs Boston in O'Malley and Purdy's well-written if bleak sequel to 2015's Serpents in the Cold. Their broken antiheroes, Dante Cooper and Cal O'Brien, have each recently suffered a personal loss, and those losses are keenly felt throughout the novel. Heroin addict Dante has a fingertip hold on sobriety, while ex-cop Cal struggles to keep his security business afloat. Both answer the call, though, when Det. Owen Mackey, Cal's policeman cousin, asks for their help in his pursuit of IRA sympathizers who are running guns and murdering suspected informers. The Irish club scene of the time has a role in the story, as does Dante's skill at the piano, but the unforgiving temperatures, easy violence, and grim state of the South Boston neighborhoods overwhelm any joy that the bright lights and dance floors might impart. More than one bloody killing will catch readers by surprise. Agent: Richard Abate, 3 Arts Entertainment. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"We Were Kings." Publishers Weekly, 4 Apr. 2016, p. 56. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA448902673&it=r&asid=9e2cd9f1f92ca46ae8926341cf58859f. Accessed 25 Jan. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A448902673
Serpents in the Cold
Stacy Alesi
Booklist. 111.5 (Nov. 1, 2014): p29.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2014 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Serpents in the Cold.
By Thomas O'Malley and Douglas Graham Purdy.
Jan. 2015. 400p. Little, Brown/Mulholland, $26 (9780316323505): paper, $12.99 (9780316323499).
The Great Brinks Robbery in 1950 Boston was the biggest heist in U.S. history, and while that case was eventually solved, this novel reimagines it, adding in the additional intrigue of a serial killer working the same neighborhood. The action takes place in historic Scollay Square on the eve of its destruction, and Boston politics and the frigid winter also play major parts in the story. Cal is an ex-cop and a veteran, trying to make a living in private security, but business is slow. His best friend, Dante, is a heroin addict who lost his wife to the drug, and he still hasn't recovered. Then Dante's sister-in-law Sheila is murdered, adding another victim to the serial killer known as the Butcher. Cal and Dante decide to help the police catch her killer, but they really don't have the skill set for the task, so they turn to old-fashioned vigilante justice. Very short chapters ensure the pacing stays brisk, and history buffs will enjoy all the description and atmosphere of old Boston. Sure to appeal to Dennis Lehane fans.--Stacy Alesi
Alesi, Stacy
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Alesi, Stacy. "Serpents in the Cold." Booklist, 1 Nov. 2014, p. 29. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA391309077&it=r&asid=3c8fc9b8862cc42324db817e80e4420c. Accessed 25 Jan. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A391309077
Serpents in the Cold
Publishers Weekly. 261.44 (Nov. 3, 2014): p86.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2014 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Serpents in the Cold
Thomas O'Malley and Douglas Graham Purdy.
Little, Brown/Mulholland, $26 (400p) ISBN 978-0-316-32350-5
O'Malley (This Magnificent Desolation) teams with debut novelist Purdy on this gritty mystery set in early 1950s Boston. Dante Cooper, a recent widower battling a heroin addiction, suffers another emotional blow when he learns that his sister-in-law, Sheila Anderson, has been murdered. Her naked body was left overnight on Tenean Beach in Dorchester, where she lived. Sheila appears to be the latest victim of a serial killer known as the Butcher. With the help of his friend Cal O'Brien, a former cop who has recurring nightmares from his tour of duty in WWII, the single-minded Dante scours Boston, from the seedy Boston Common to the shady South End, in search of clues. O'Malley and Purdy bring postwar Boston to life, making neighborhoods feel as distinct as separate countries. While the authors don't offer much suspense, they have delivered a love-letter to a Boston that's long gone. Agent: Richard Abate, 3 Arts Entertainment. (Jan.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Serpents in the Cold." Publishers Weekly, 3 Nov. 2014, p. 86+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA389934660&it=r&asid=c9b4361ec8c4711f17c1b85c01afc103. Accessed 25 Jan. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A389934660
We Were Kings
Jane Murphy
Booklist. 112.15 (Apr. 1, 2016): p26.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
* We Were Kings. By Thomas O'Malley and Douglas Graham Purdy. June 2016. 384p. Little, Brown/Mulholland, $26 (9780316323536); e-book, $13.99 (9780316323512).
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Set in 1954 Boston, this brilliant second entry in the Boston Saga (after Serpents in the Cold, 2015) sizzles. The city is in the grip of a record heat wave, 102 degrees hot. Just too damn hot. You can smell it, taste it. You can see it, too, even when the lights go out as random circuits melt down. These are some seriously sweltering, determinedly noir mean streets. Cal O'Brien, the war-damaged former cop, is still mourning the death of his wife, and Dante Cooper is still battling a heroin addiction. Like his rattletrap of a car, Dante is a "wounded machine." Both are men who need to suffer to remind themselves that they are alive, "to be one of the living." An empty boat believed to have been carrying guns and ammo bound for Ireland turns up, along with the body of a man executed in the classic style of the Irish Republican Army. A string of brutal murders follows, and a desperate Boston PD detective enlists Cal and Dante to help in a harrowing investigation. True noir never has a happy ending. The ending you get here is more ominous than everything that came before, yet you are left with a sense that these guys will somehow survive what is coming their way--they will live to suffer on. This stunning narrative will enrapture fans of James Crumley and the astonishingly deep and dark Sara Gran.--Jane Murphy
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Murphy, Jane. "We Were Kings." Booklist, 1 Apr. 2016, p. 26. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA450036761&it=r&asid=fb073ea944c701eae2e7d51394c6cbb8. Accessed 25 Jan. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A450036761
Serpents in the Cold
by Thomas O'Malley and Douglas Graham Purdy
I almost skipped reading SERPENTS IN THE COLD. What a mistake that would have been. It is a dark and icy instant classic of crime fiction, chock full to the brim with rough characters who roil through violent and tragic situations of their own creation, and compelling from its opening words to its closing sentences.
The book is set in Boston in January 1951. The metropolitan area is reeling from a series of setbacks, ranging from another losing season for its hockey team and an unsolved Brinks car robbery to an economy that has put many of the city’s inhabitants on the edge of financial disaster. Then there is the winter, the worst in recent memory. It is the cold weather, almost more than the city itself, that serves as a backdrop for the novel. The ground is so frozen that bodies can’t be buried; cars slip and slide out of control; and everything seems stuck in a chilled stasis of doom, death and failure, none more so than the two principal protagonists of the tale.
"SERPENTS IN THE COLD is a magnificent work. The seamless collaboration between authors Thomas O’Malley and Douglas Graham Purdy results in a cinematic narrative that unreels in a riveting manner, leaving an imprint on the reader’s memory that is unlikely to fade any time soon."
The narrative bounces back and forth primarily between two lifetime friends, both losers for different reasons. Cal O’Brien is the better off of the two, though not by much. He returned from combat duty in World War II unbroken though badly bent, suffering from a permanent leg injury and an even more significant alcohol problem. But he is able to eke out a post-war existence by parlaying his experience as a Boston policeman into running a security agency. It is Dante Cooper who is even worse. Dante is a seemingly irredeemable heroin addict whose primary functions seem to focus upon scoring drugs and avoiding angry loan sharks who don’t take kindly to missed payments. He is still reeling from the death of his wife, Margo, when the body of his sister-in-law, Sheila, is discovered. It appears that Sheila is the latest victim of a serial killer who has been targeting prostitutes in the Boston area. Cal and Dante decide to track the culprit themselves, with the (almost) unspoken desire to gain a bit of revenge and justice on Sheila’s behalf.
Their investigation is a long and arduous process, hindered not only by the siren song of substance abuse and a lack of resources but also by discouragement, both official and unofficial, emanating from some of the highest levels of the city’s power structure. There are those with grandiose plans to restore Boston’s grandeur while making a fortune and consolidating power and influence along the way, and the investigation by the driven but hampered pair has the potential to derail those plans. Cal and Dante will not be denied, so that by book’s end, all is ultimately revealed, for better and worse, at great and deadly cost.
SERPENTS IN THE COLD is a magnificent work. The seamless collaboration between authors Thomas O’Malley and Douglas Graham Purdy results in a cinematic narrative that unreels in a riveting manner, leaving an imprint on the reader’s memory that is unlikely to fade any time soon. The darkness of the situations and the explosive violence presented here never eclipses the plot or the unfortunate characters who populate the book. Place this one at the top of your must-read list.
Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub on January 30, 2015
‘Serpents in the Cold’ by Thomas O’Malley and Douglas Graham Purdy
David Wilson for The Boston Globe
By Kate Tuttle Globe Correspondent January 24, 2015
As a literary setting, Boston has a rich, varied cast of characters — from the Revolutionary War heroes of Esther Forbes’s children’s classic “Johnny Tremain” to the immigrant families in Jhumpa Lahiri’s “The Namesake” — but it specializes in less wholesome types.
“We’re a gritty little city,” said author Douglas Purdy, whose debut novel, “Serpents in the Cold,” is set in Boston just after World War II, a bleak period for the city. “It was the perfect time and place where criminals could get away with certain things downtown.”
Much of the book’s action takes place in Scollay Square, a seedy yet vital area his coauthor, Thomas O’Malley, said epitomized the change and loss Boston went through in that era. “There were very rich cultural places that were vibrant and alive, and within 10, 15 years all that would be gone,” O’Malley said. “There’s a trauma there.”
Both of its main characters are damaged as well: one a shellshocked war veteran turned private eye, the other a grieving heroin junkie. Both were born in Boston — specifically, in creative-writing workshops taught by the writer Lee Grove that Purdy and O’Malley took together at the University of Massachusetts Boston some 20 years ago. After class, Purdy said, “we’d have pints at the Field over in Cambridge. We sat there in the corner and started talking.”
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“We both created these separate characters,” O’Malley added, “and realized that we were writing about the same era, and wouldn’t these two characters know each other? They came from similar backgrounds. They seemed to have a natural affinity for each other.”
A collaboration was born, one that now spreads beyond the bookshelf: O’Malley is engaged to marry Purdy’s sister. “I couldn’t get rid of him if I wanted to,” O’Malley said. “It’s like a force of nature now.”
The authors will read 7 p.m. Monday at Porter Square Books in Cambridge.
Books
We Were Kings
by Thomas O’Malley
Mulholland Books, June 2016, $26
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We Were Kings is a well-written, bleak, and violent noir. The year is 1954 and Boston is suffering through a brutal heat wave. A dead body, tarred and feathered, is found on the shore of Boston Harbor and the crime, along with a tip about an arriving boatload of stolen guns, gives Detective Owen Mackey an uneasy feeling. The murder is eerily similar to the Irish Republican Army’s method for dispatching snitches, and the gun shipment’s ultimate destination, if the tip is accurate, is Ireland.
Detective Mackey enlists the help of his cousin Cal O’Brien—widower, former cop, and owner of an unprofitable security company—to keep his ears open for any talk in Boston’s Irish neighborhoods. Cal brings his friend, recovering heroin addict and nightclub piano-player Dante Cooper, along to help on the assignment. The investigation crawls through the neighborhoods and nightclubs of South Boston, where a gangland-style war between the IRA and Irish Loyalists threatens to erupt.
We Were Kings is Thomas O’Malley and Douglas Graham Purdy’s sequel to their first novel, Serpents in the Cold. The oppressive Boston heat, descriptions of the mid-20th-century Irish neighborhoods, and overt violence envelop the story in tragic hopelessness. The protagonists, Cal O’Brien and Dante Cooper, are as broken as the IRA’s ill-conceived scheme, with little hope of repair or redemption. The violence is written with verve, and the story is, if at times slowed by excessive dialogue, strikingly visual with a very readable style.
Benjamin Boulden
SERPENTS IN THE COLD
by Thomas O'Malley, Douglas Graham Purdy
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KIRKUS REVIEW
A dark thriller in which two misfits take on the corrupt Boston political system with revenge as their mantra.
Boston, 1951: a ready-built noir setting. It's gray and winter-cold, and men spend their time in grimy bars where drugs and violence rule. O’Malley and Purdy write cinematically, building the bleakness of the city and its denizens around Scollay Square into the fabric of the fiction, with the city itself becoming a primary character. “The radiators pinged and rattled, and the lower sections of the windows that looked out on the avenue were filmed with steam. From the windows they could see the vacant expanse that Scollay Square was becoming.” Cal O’Brien and Dante Cooper are childhood friends, each with his own poisonous issues. Cal has returned from World War II France with a limp and a drinking problem, killing the pain and the recurring dreams of death with booze. Dante is a junkie, spun out of control after he watched his wife overdose. Secrets and broken people populate these winter streets. Dante’s sister-in-law, Sheila, is found brutally murdered, assumed to be another victim of the Butcher who's been stalking women in Boston and torturing them in an abandoned trailer. But when Dante and Cal take on the task of hunting the killer as a family matter, the facts veer abruptly to big money and an old neighborhood pal now running for Senate. Congressman and candidate Michael Foley had an affair with Sheila, and his brother Blackie, a punk gangster in the old neighborhood, cleans up the messes Michael makes along the path to election. When Blackie goes too far and murders Cal’s wife because he's getting close to the truth, the hunt for a killer becomes all-out war.
This is a bone-crunching, gut-wrenching novel that captures the atmosphere of a city in decay and its inhabitants. It delivers noir fiction like we always want it to be.
Pub Date: Jan. 20th, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-32350-5
Page count: 400pp
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5th, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15th, 2014
WE WERE KINGS
by Thomas O'Malley, Douglas Graham Purdy
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KIRKUS REVIEW
Tough guys in a tough town as the Irish Republican Army wages war in 1950s Boston.
O’Malley and Purdy’s sequel to Serpents in the Cold (2015) picks up several years after Cal O’Brien lost his wife in a firebombing, and his mental scars are still deep and raw. He's a former cop, now a private investigator, and recruits his piano-playing, reformed junky pal, Dante Cooper, to help the police in Irish Boston. Owen Mackey, Cal’s cousin and a police detective, senses that his case is not just a bizarre murder and asks for their eyes and ears in the Irish neighborhoods of the city. Boston suffers in a heat wave and bodies start showing up. One, tarred and feathered, sends a signal that this is bigger than local gangs at play. In Galway, Sean “the General” Mullen is managing a gun and ammunition trade from Boston to the homeland for the IRA and sends his soldiers to fix the problem of a stalled shipment. The war of Republicans and Royalists is imported to Boston Harbor. It's hard not to compare this novel with its predecessor, especially with an overabundance of references to the back story. But this one drags. Although O’Malley and Purdy do violence extremely well, the suspense in this story is anemic—an endless watch of sitting in cars and drinking, sitting in bars and drinking, Cal and Dante each wallowing in flashbacks to life before trauma. The story starts well as the mystery builds on the body count, but once the reader knows who's on the killing end and who's trying to take control of the missing boatload of guns, it becomes predictable. One good outnumbered shootout to close the loop and the novel ends with a fizzle. This book feels like a place holder for the next.
The authors deliver noir done well in dark-city descriptions and a cast of damaged characters but fall short on delivering a thrill.
Pub Date: June 21st, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-316-32353-6
Page count: 384pp
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 17th, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1st, 2016