Gin Palace 02 - The Bone Orchard

Shamus and Barry Award nominee, 2002
    The Poisoned Rose was a stunning and wondrous debut, and The Bone Orchard only confirmed Daniel Judson’s artistry and unique style, but those two dark gems do not prepare the reader for the huge leap forward that is The Gin Palace . The final outing of Declan “Mac” MacManus, one of our most compelling PIs, shows an author at the very height of his dizzying power. Fresh, vibrant, startling, and beautifully rendered, Judson’s The Gin Palace Trilogy breathes a whole new energy into the genre. -- Ken Bruen, author of Headstone
    A vivid cast of characters and a frightening plot packed with dead bodies combine to make Judson’s atmospheric debut thriller one of the year’s more memorable reads. The narrator, part-time PI Declan “Mac” MacManus, is a dirt-poor, disheveled young man living in a Spartan apartment above a bar in Southampton. After witnessing a vehicle plunge into a sinkhole pond in a bizarre single-car accident, Mac is thrown into the center of a smalltown murder conspiracy that will affect him more than he could ever imagine. With the help of his two best friends, a former DEA and a Jamaican taxi driver, Mac struggles to bring down a corrupt PI who has the police chief and a number of other town officials in his pocket. Judson’s plot is packed with intrigue, and his telling of the story--most of which takes place during the hours between dusk and dawn--is brilliant. Using sparse language to create lush, cinematic images, Judson transforms his colorful yet generally unlikable characters into empathetic creatures. What’s more, the story unfolds slowly and beautifully, revealing critical character details only when the plot demands them. A dark tapestry of life gone mad in a trendy Hamptons summer town, this promising debut is ripe for a big-screen adaptation.
    --Publisher’s Weekly.
    Daniel Judson is so much more than a crime-fiction novelist. He’s a tattooed poet, a mad philosopher of the Apocalypse fascinated with exploring the darkest places in people’s souls.
    --Chicago Tribune
    Daniel Judson is a thoroughly accomplished writer. --Kirkus Reviews

for my mother and father

Chapter One

    It was dark when I left my apartment above the Hansom House and went down the two flights of stairs to the street below to wait for Frank Gannon. The stretch of gray clouds hanging low overhead had cores the color of lead, and the few spaces of night between them were starless and empty. I would have been warmer had I remained up in my rooms and watched for Frank from my living room window, but it seemed to me that the early night air was the place to be right then. Frank had called me in the morning and told me that he would come by around five, after I had gotten home from work. It was just five now and I was ready for him, wrapped against the cold in a second-hand overcoat with torn seams, waiting at the curb and wondering a little just what it was he wanted from me now.
    I tried to stay clear of Frank as a rule, but Southampton is a small town, particularly in the winter. He had done me a favor when I was in a jam with the Chief of Police not too far back, but I had paid that off three months ago and was not expecting to hear from him again. He had a phobia about talking on the telephone, so he had hung up this morning before I had the chance to tell him to go to hell. He had simply said, “It’s Frank, we need to talk. I’ll find you after work.” And then he hung up. My first instinct was to pretend I hadn’t heard him, but by breakfast I knew there really was no point in that.
    The wind was out of the south, an ocean wind, and it stung my face and ears and pried through the weak seams in my coat like long fingers. Just two nights ago it had been Indian summer, days in the seventies, nights in the fifties. In my rooms above, and in the dark bar below, windows remained opened to the mild night air.
    The clientele of the Hansom House, mainly local laborers and artists, had sat in their summer clothes at the crowded bar and on the half dozen overstuffed antique sofas in the main room, listening to live music. One night it was three white boys play reggae, and another it was a jazz quintet made up of kids under twenty.
    The Hansom House was an old three-story wreck that had been turned a quarter of a century ago by a local artist into a funky bar and restaurant with apartments above. It was something of a holdout for us year-rounders, not favored by the