Heavy Sugar

The latest from the master of Brooklyn-set crime fiction is a zany, foul-mouthed, and tender-hearted screwball noir that unfolds over one madcap day, centered around a stolen Joe DiMaggio–signed baseball and the lengths people will go to find it.

“William Boyle’s Brooklyn is a place where bad decisions become destiny and screwups get one last shot at grace . . . Gloriously unhinged, this is a wild, funny, deeply tender ride—a love letter to losers, lovers, and all the things we steal because we can’t figure out how to ask for what we really want.” —Ivy Pochoda, author of These Women

Thanksgiving Eve, 1991: Most things that lovable scoundrel Georgie Quinlan has tried to do in his life have gone horribly wrong. Marriage. Fatherhood. Most recently, an armed robbery. It’s the last thing that has Georgie on the lam and back in Gravesend, Brooklyn, the sleepy Italian American enclave where he hasn’t shown his face in a decade. He’s stolen a Joe DiMaggio–signed baseball from an old Irish pub, thinking it’s worth a pretty penny and that southern Brooklyn is the last place anyone will look for him. This, Georgie is wrong about.

Awaiting Georgie in Gravesend are his wife, Loretta, whom he hasn’t seen in twelve years, and his teenage kid, Roz, who knows nothing about her father—he’s been MIA for most of her life. But Roz is about to get a crash course in Georgie Quinlan. So is everyone else, whether they want one or not.

Unfolding over one frenzied day, William Boyle’s latest Brooklyn-set noir is a screwball, no-holds-barred exploration of buried desires and long-simmering resentments, a pulse-pounding, unpredictable bash from a singular voice in crime fiction.