Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Literary essays

ALCOHOL, TOBACCO, AND FIREARMS

Tim McLoughlin

Stories and Essays

An enthralling collection of short fiction and nonfiction that draw upon McLoughlin's three-decade career in the criminal justice system.

In Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, Tim McLoughlin draws upon his three-decade career in the criminal justice system with his characteristic wit and his fascination with misfits and malfeasance. A lifetime immersed in New York City feeds short stories that evoke a landscape of characters rife with personal arrogance and misjudgment; and nonfiction essays about toeing the line when the line keeps disappearing.

An opioid-addicted catsitter electronically eavesdrops on his neighbors only to hear devastating truths. A degenerate gambler stakes his life on a long shot because he sees three lucky numbers on the license plate of a passing car.

In the nonfiction essays, we learn that the system plays a role in supporting vice, as long as it gets a cut. Altar boys compete to work weddings and funerals for tips in the shadow of predatory priests. Cops become robbers, and a mob boss just might be a civil rights icon.

McLoughlin shines a light on worlds that few have access to. Always urban, often New Yorkcentric, in his work a recurring theme is chronic displacement, people standing still in a city that is always changing. These are McLoughlin's ghosts, these casualties of progress, and he holds them dear and celebrates them.

TIM McLOUGHLIN is the editor of the multiple awardwinning anthologies Brooklyn Noir and Brooklyn Noir 2, and coeditor of Brooklyn Noir 3. His debut novel, Heart of the Old Country, was a selection of the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers program, won Italy's Premio Penne award, and was the basis for the motion picture The Narrows, starring Vincent D'Onofrio and Sophia Bush. His books have been published in seven languages and his writing has appeared in the New York Times and Huffington Post, and has been included in The Best American Mystery Stories. McLoughlin retired after working for thirty years as a peace officer in
the New York City criminal justice system, and divides his time between Brooklyn and Eastern Pennsylvania.

Available products
Book Published 2022-03-01 by Akashic Books - Brooklyn (USA)

Comments

Whether writing fact or fiction, McLoughlin does so with an ear to the street. His Irish cops are as good as anything by Richard Price, and his essays about New York City life are incomparable. Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms is to be devoured in bite-sized bits but savored like a four course meal. Get this book!

With a wry, knowing voice of ruthless authenticity, McLoughlin delivers the goods.

Whether in fiction or nonfiction, Tim McLoughlin is an armed and dangerous judge of his own crimes and misdemeanors within the New York underworld. His stories are both tactile and ethereal, offering the square world a scuba dive into the depths of what we do.

Reading Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms is like being a fly on the bathroom wall of my favorite shitty cop bar in south Brooklyn where the horrible and the hilarious are beating the crap out of each other over a game of eight ball. I loved it.

In Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, Tim McLoughlin's slice-of-life observations about the gritty despair and raw humanity of New York City capture the pain and promise of our beloved concrete jungle.

Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms couldn't be more New York. Tim McLoughlin drops a ton of big-city knowledge and wisdom, rich in lived-in detail, with humor that's hard as the sidewalk.