A raw, gritty memoir – part true-life cop thriller, part unputdownable history of a storied time and place – that will grip you by the throat until the explosive end
"Codella describes [Alphabet City] so vividly, with such hardboiled language that you feel like you're in the squad car with him." —
New York Post
"[A] taut true-crime tale... genuinely exciting." —
Kirkus
"A blistering cop's-eye view of the Drug War during the heady years of the late-1980s…. You will feel as though you are pounding the pavement and dodging bullets.
Alphaville
is the real deal." – T.J. English,
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Savage City
Alphabet City in 1988 burned with heroin, radicalism, and anti-police sentiment. Working as a plainclothes narcotics cop, Mike Codella earned the nickname "Rambo" and a bounty on his head. The son of a cop who grew up in a mob neighborhood in Brooklyn, Codella understood the unwritten laws of the shadowy businesses that ruled the streets. He knew that the further east you got from the relative safety of 5th Avenue, the deeper you entered the sea of human misery, greed, addiction, violence and all the things that come with an illegal retail drug trade run wild. With his partner, Gio, Codella made it his personal mission to put away Davie Blue Eyes—the head of Alphabet City's heroin supply chain. Despite the hell they endured—all the beatings and gunshots, the footchases and close calls—Codella and Gio always saw Alphabet City the same way: worth saving.
With the blistering narrative spirit of
The French Connection
, the insights of a seasoned insider, and a relentless voice that reads like the city's own,
is at once the story of a dedicated New York cop, and of New York City itself.