Tommy Red and Charlie Stella

New Jersey's own Charlie Stella holds unsound views about bagels, but he writes good books.

His latest, Tommy Red, is a bit more somber than his previous eight novels, but that only adds to the impression that Stella's low- to mid-level gangsters and cops are people, too, worried about their families, about the future, about the jobs they have to do.

Charlie Stella. Photo by
Peter Rozovsky for
Detectives Beyond Borders.
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By no means, though, is Stella any kind of a believer in moral equivalence. His anger against law enforcement use of informants is an undertone throughout his books, sometimes boiling over into righteous explosions.

But the situational jokes outnumber the explosions. I've written about all his novels; read my blog posts here. Then read the books and enjoy the jokes. And pity their author, who has yet to taste a Montreal bagel.

© Peter Rozovsky 2016