Bruce DeSilva's "The Dread Line," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Dread Line: A Mulligan Novel by Bruce DeSilva.

The entry begins:

Since getting fired in spectacular fashion from his Rhode Island newspaper job last year (A Scourge of Vipers, 2015), Liam Mulligan is trying to piece together a new life—one that straddles both sides of the law. He’s getting some part-time work with his friend McCracken’s detective agency. He’s picking up beer money by freelancing for a local news website. And he’s looking after his semi-retired mobster-friend’s bookmaking business. But he’s still an anti-authoritarian with a strong but shifting sense of justice, and he remains prone to ill-timed wisecracks. And of course, he still can’t seem to stay out of trouble.

In The Dread Line, he’s feuding with a feral cat that keeps leaving its kills on his porch. He’s obsessed with a baffling jewelry heist. And he’s enraged that someone in town is torturing animals. All of this keeps distracting him from a big case that needs his attention. The New England Patriots, still shaken by murder charges against their superstar tight end, have hired Mulligan and McCracken to investigate the background of a college athlete they are thinking of drafting. At first, the job seems routine, but as soon as they start asking questions, they get push-back. The player, it seems, has something to hide – and someone is willing to kill to make sure it remains secret.

The new novel has a colorful and quirky cast of characters, some new and others who were introduced in the first four novels in the series. Movie thrillers tend to be full of gunfights, car chases and explosions, but there’s not much of that in my novels; so I think my books may be better suited to be turned into a character-driven television crime drama such as The Sopranos, Justified, or Ray Donovan.

I’ve always thought that Boston-raised actor Denis Leary (Rescue Me) embodies the smart mouth and bad attitude toward authority that is Mulligan; but my character is a youthful 45, and Leary may be getting a bit old for the role. Lately, I’ve been picturing...[read on]

Visit Bruce DeSilva's website and blog.

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--Marshal Zeringue