Drink in the Glory

I realize that while we mentioned last fall that Court TV (now rebranded as TruTV) and Gather were teaming up to sponsor the second annual “Next Great Crime Writer” contest, we neglected to report on who had actually won that competition. That announcement came earlier this month, and the winner is Terrence McCauley, a lifelong New Yorker. Explains Gather: “For his book, Prohibition, Terrence wins a publishing and distribution contract with Borders, including a $5,000 cash advance.”

So what’s Prohibition about? Here’s the synopsis:

Prohibition is set in 1930 New York City. The country has already begun its long, downhill slide into the Great Depression. People are losing their jobs. Breadlines are growing longer by the day. People are getting desperate and not even the underworld is immune. Archie Doyle has controlled the most powerful mob on the East Coast for almost a decade, but his organization is starting to lose power fast. As desperate times call for desperate measures, Doyle draws up a bold scheme that, if successful, will make his criminal empire more powerful than he ever dared to dream.

But Doyle’s plan comes to a grinding halt when someone tries to kill one of the top men in his organization. Doyle must turn to his loyal body guard--the ex-boxer Terry Quinn--to find out who is behind the shooting, and why. Quinn stays hot on the assassin’s bloody trail in his search for a man who might know all the answers. Through the rain-soaked cobblestones of the Lower East Side to the swankiest nightclubs in the city to the hallowed halls of City Hall itself, Quinn is in a race against time to discover who is trying to destroy Doyle before all hell breaks loose. Danger lurks in the shadows behind every corner as he searches for the one man who may hold the key to saving Doyle’s empire ... and his life.

You’ll find Chapter 1 here and Chapter 2 here.

The only advice somebody might want to offer McCauley before he moves forward with publishing this debut novel, is that he ought to change character Quinn’s moniker. After all, one of the private eyes in George Pelecanos’ most recent series (and featured in Hell to Pay, Soul Circus, and Hard Revolution) is a hot-tempered white ex-cop named--yeah, you guessed it--Terry Quinn.