The current featured contributor at
Writers Read: Lou Manfredo, author of
Rizzo's Fire and
Rizzo's War.
His entry begins:
For the last few years, I have avoided reading fiction for fear of external influences impacting my own works. The most recent book I’ve read was Mary Tudor by Anna Whitelock, preceded by a variety of historical works and biographies.
Currently, after a conversation with Otto Penzler at his Mysterious Bookshop, I am reading...[read on]
Among the early praise for
Rizzo's Fire:
"In Manhattan, the murder of an acclaimed playwright will make some NYPD detective a media darling. But in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, Detective Joe Rizzo has the usual fare: a mugger who preys on the elderly, a serial flasher, and the 
loser in a fistfight, who drunkenly seeks revenge with a hunting rifle. But then Bensonhurst has its own murder, the 62nd Precinct's first in two years. The victim is an unemployed shoe salesman, and Rizzo and his new partner get the case. Their investigation soon produces a link between the two murders, and Rizzo gets caught up in the possibility of beating Manhattan to an arrest. Rizzo's life and work are so compelling that readers will be surprised that the book's linchpin, the shoe salesman's murder, occurs almost halfway through it. Authenticity is the cornerstone of Manfredo's work (Rizzo's War, 2009), whether in his portrait of Brooklyn or his depiction of the murky and morally ambivalent world of the NYPD, which Rizzo desperately wants to keep his youngest daughter from joining. Fans of gritty procedurals will love this one."
--Thomas Gaughan, Booklist
Read more about
Rizzo's Fire and
Rizzo's War.
The Page 69 Test: Rizzo's War.
Writers Read: Lou Manfredo.
--Marshal Zeringue
His entry begins:
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