Two Thumbs Up for Cliff Walk!

      CLIFF WALK  (Liam Mulligan #2)       

Bruce DeSilva

Tor/Forge

May 2012

It is hard to believe that Bruce DeSilva has topped last year's Edgar Best First Novel and Macavity winner, Rogue Island, but Cliff Walk surpasses it. Set on the mean streets of Providence RI, Liam Mulligan is back writing stories at the dying Providence Dispatch. Staff has been cut back so far that Liam is reduced to covering the social beat and writing obits along with whatever investigative reporting he can work in. Two seemingly unrelated events set him off on a new investigation; the discovery of a child's severed arm in a pig sty and the presence of Sal Maniella at a charity ball in tony Newport. Sal is Rhode Island's most prominent pornographer and his conversation with the governor piques Liam's interest. As Liam is driving back to Providence the next day a radio report of a body on the rocks at the foot of Cliff Walk sends him back. The body appears to be Sal Maniella but no one is sure because of the damage. Sal's wife and daughter are missing in action and not available to identify the body for several days.

Prostitution is legal in RI due to a quirk in the law that makes street walking illegal, but does not outlaw brothels. Sal's daughter, Vanessa, has recently branched out in to the brothel business. Liam's long-time friend, Fiona McNerney AKA Attila the Nun, has been working for 10 years to outlaw prostitution but is getting nowhere. She has recently become the state's Attorney General, much to the displeasure of the Catholic Church. Fiona and Liam think there just might be some graft and chicanery going on with Maniella and the elected officials. As  children are snatched and bodies begin piling up, Liam is confronted by a world of corruption even worse than he suspected.

Cliff Walk is populated by a host of colorful characters, some of whom are returning from Rogue Island. From Attilla the Nun to Mason, "Thanks Dad", the Dispatch owner's son, they are unforgettable. Liam himself stands at a crossroads. Should he hang on at the Dispatch or leave the sinking ship? DeSilva is poetic in his descriptions of the glory days of the newsroom and the sad shadow it has become in the age of TV and internet news. Cliff Walk is a very dark and disturbing story, leavened by Liam's sometimes equally dark humor. By the end of the novel, Liam finds out that some of the people he counted as friends are not at all what he thought.

I highly recommend Cliff Walk, both as a crime novel and a novel that considers the meaning of faith and friendship.

Rating- 5 Stars