It's 1975 and New York City is on the verge of bankruptcy.  The city is a mess, its politicians useless, its crime skyrocketing.  Reporter Coleridge Taylor is on obit duty, having fudged some of his sources when he worked the homicide beat.  Sniffing around for anything that will get him back in the good graces of his superiors he stumbles across the body of a homeless teenage recently delivered to Bellevue.  But something is off.  Soon Taylor realizes that the victim is really a spoiled society kid and that an innocent bet has been charged with his murder.  Last Words is an excellent debut novel crafted by longtime journalist Rich Zahradnik and the first in what will hopefully be a very long series. 

• Tweet