THE TARNISHED SHIELD
THIS NYPD ISN'T BLUE--IT'S RUST-BROWN
A detective sergeant in the New York Police Department becomes the target of false corruption charges when he refuses to play ball with a truly corrupt state prosecutor in The Tarnished Shield, the action-packed police-procedural novel by former NYPD detective John J. Delamer.
Sergeant Jack Harley has always played by the rules. Sure, he's bent one or two-you have to, as he learned on his first day on the job-but he's never knowingly broken one. Now, however, he finds himself called before Steven Racca, the State Special Prosecutor for Official Corruption, who offers him a "deal": wear a wire and dig some dirt on his fellow detectives, and Racca will "forget" what he knows about Harley's past.
Throughout the novel, Delamer deftly intersperses action in the present as Harley decides to fight the corrupt Special Prosecutor with the aid of a senior inspector, a sympathetic judge, and a new girlfriend with inside access, and flashbacks from Harley's career as he tries to figure out what Racca might have on him. Both are filled with fast-paced police action and behind-the-scenes looks at how the system works-how it really works.
Delamer's own career as an NYPD detective serves him well. The characters in The Tarnished Shield speak a gritty language that comes right off the street, and the crimes Harley busts-a petty burglary, a shootout in a Queens tenement, the ambush and arrest of Colombian drug-runners, and an attempt on the lives of a wealthy Middle Eastern family-are full of the same kind of authentic details that have made TV's "NYPD Blue" such a hit.
Central to this story, however, is Delamer's description of how petty graft is tolerated-demanded, even-by the system, and how easily it grows into cancerous corruption. Harley recalls, for example, how he had to bribe the roll-call officer to get time off at Christmas and, more serious, how cops on the beat hit up local shopkeepers for Christmas money "for the boys." He remembers how senior detectives smoothed his first arraignment with some well-timed handshakes in which $20 bills were hidden. Finally he remembers the drug bust, and that some of the money seized disappeared while his back was turned. Could this be the skeleton that Racca intends to find in Harley's closet?
About the Author: John J. Delamer spent twenty years with the NYPD, where he retired in 1981 as commanding officer of the 106 Detective Squad in Ozone Park, Queens. He currently serves as Director of Public Safety at the University of Dayton. He lives and writes in Bellbrook, Ohio. |
