Heavy Sugar - by William Boyle (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The latest from the "poet laureate of Brooklyn" is a zany, foul-mouthed, and tender-hearted screwball noir about a stolen baseball and the lengths people will go to find it. And themselves.

Thanksgiving Eve, 1991: Most things that lovable scoundrel Georgie Quinlan has tried to do in his life have gone horribly wrong: Marriage. Fatherhood. Most recently, an armed robbery. It's the latter thing that has Georgie on the lam and back in Gravesend, Brooklyn, the sleepy Italian American enclave where he hasn't shown his face in a decade. He's stolen a Joe DiMaggio-signed baseball from the old Irish pub, hoping it's worth a penny, and hoping that southern Brooklyn is the last place anyone will look for him. This, Georgie is wrong about too.

Awaiting Georgie in Gravesend are his wife, Loretta, whom he hasn't seen in twelve years, and his teenage kid, Roz, who knows nothing about her father--he's been MIA for most of her life. But Roz is about to get a crash course in Georgie Quinlan. So is everyone, whether they want one or not.

Unfolding over one frenzied day, William Boyle's latest Brooklyn-set noir is a humorous, no-holds-barred exploration of buried desires and long-simmering resentments, a pulse-pounding, unpredictable bash from a singular voice in crime fiction.

Review Quotes

Praise for Heavy Sugar

"Thomas Wolfe wrote 'only the dead know Brooklyn' and far be it from me to disrespect him, but William Boyle goes a long way toward putting the lie to that list because he's got the borough by the balls and he ain't out of the count yet. If the nigh ineffably named Gravesend isn't the end of the line where everyone gets off, what is? Heavy Sugar is the payoff for noir enthusiasts who still have a sense of humor and heart to go with it."
--Barry Gifford, author of Wild at Heart

"Donald Westlake and Hubert Selby Jr. had a baby and it's a novel called Heavy Sugar, William Boyle's latest (and maybe best) Brooklyn crime epic. Clear your schedule 'cause once you pick it up you won't want (or be able) to put it down."
--Larry Charles, of Borat, Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm fame; author of Comedy Samurai: A Memoir

Praise for William Boyle

"Boyle's characters evoke the working-class romantics of Bruce Springsteen, small-time and scrambling for money, love, or answers."
--Oprah Daily

"Boyle is able to do what today's best crime fiction writers do so well--tell a captivating, page-turning thriller, but one defined by its characters and the choices they make, rather than the circumstances into which they have been thrust."
--The Washington Post

"No one can make the everyday vagaries of life feel like Greek tragedies the way William Boyle can. He effortlessly maps the path of desire that moves through the human heart like burning chrome."
--S. A. Cosby

About the Author

William Boyle is the author of nine critically acclaimed books set in the southern Brooklyn neighborhood where he was born and raised. His previous novel, Saint of the Narrows Street, was featured on NPR's Books We Love and was named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly. He currently lives in Oxford, Mississippi.