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Joe Rizzo is a veteran cop in Brooklyn. He's been around for a long, long time. His new partner is Mike McQueen, and Mike's got a lot to learn. He got promoted mostly because he was in the right place at the right time, and he knows it. Still, Mike would like to end up over at the Plaza, off the streets and into management. Is Rizzo going to help him or hurt him as he tries to get there? Rizzo and McQueen do their jobs, day in and day out. Rizzo doesn't always play by the rule book, although he tries to as much as possible. He tells McQueen again and again, "There's no wrong. There's no right. There just is." He enforces the law as best he can, and tries to see that justice prevails, at least in the long term. As one might imagine, that doesn't mean that the rules don't get bent a little bit now and then. Rizzo and McQueen stumble across something that gets bigger and bigger the longer they poke at it. Rizzo, having been at the game a lot longer than McQueen, knows the angles and the levels of political muck they are dealing with. He teaches McQueen a lot about how to cover one's butt, how to use favors judiciously, how to play the angles to one's best advantage. McQueen isn't always comfortable with this, but the way Rizzo works always comes out better than what McQueen had in mind. Manfredo spent a long time in the Brooklyn criminal justice system, and it shows in the way he writes. Everything that happens is certainly possible, even probable. The characters are people any one of us might conceivably know. One suspects that some of the stories in RIZZO'S WAR are true, at least in their general nature. The story flows. RIZZO'S WAR is a war of small skirmishes and brief battles; at the end of the day, the reader isn't quite sure who is winning, but one hopes it's the good guys. Rizzo would say, "There is no good. There is no bad. There just is." Manfredo makes a good case.
Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, September 2009
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