Exit Wounds
It’s hard to tell if
Orin Boyd is a good cop or a bad cop in John Westermann’s mystery novel Exit
Wounds. But that’s part of the fun and suspense in this raw and edgy
police drama that brims with black comedy.
Police Officer Orin is unceremoniously dumped at Camp Cope, the New York
City’s rehab clinic for its police officers. Many of Orin’s police buddies
have been there at one time or another. However, Orin has actually gone
undercover for the New York City Commissioner. While it’s never really clear
if Orin's drinking problem is part of his undercover façade or a hard cold
fact, Westermann does a remarkable job of keeping the reader guessing until the
very last page.
Orin has been assigned to help cleanup the 13th Precinct in the unincorporated
Village of Belmont, a place that makes the Bronx look like a vacation resort,
from Westermann’s vivid descriptions. There’s really nothing new in the plot
line - highly ranked officers covering up a crime they committed, corruption
among the lower ranks, drug lords, junkies and prostitutes swarming the streets
until we wonder who’s really in charge. Orin teams up with George Clarke, a
man who can’t seem to stay married and would rather nap in his squad car
behind some abandoned factory than try to curb crime. George spends most of his
shift in the back room of one of the local bars or at the apartment of his
mistress, Gloria.
Orin’s assignment is to bring down Inspector Jimmy Donnelly, Sergeant Dominic
Ril, and Detective Bobby Shaw for the murder of Ossie King. Orin gets a lot of
his information from a homeless man, Abraham "Batman" Wilson. When
Batman turns up dead, all hell breaks loose. Orin cleans up the Lucky Thirteenth
in a way that is simple and complex at the same time. As he makes his way
through the streets of Belmont in a stolen bus, you’ll find yourself cheering
for this good cop/bad cop guy.
Exit Wounds is a gritty police drama about men on the edge, and about the
edge itself. One of the things I really liked about this work was that Orin’s
assignment is not cut and dry. The reader has to guess right along with George
and the rest of the cast exactly who Officer Orin Boyd is, and what he is up to.
Westermann’s crackling and often humorous dialogue is as real as it can get
outside the precinct building. The movie rights to Exit Wounds have
already been snapped up to hard-edged tragi-comedy, and according to Soho's
website, Steven Segal has signed on to play tough Orin Boyd.
Ladies of the Night
Amazon.com
As he has proved in such previous dark and detail-rich police thrillers
as Exit
Wounds, High
Crimes, The
Honor Farm, and Sweet
Deal, John Westermann didn't waste a minute stopping for donuts during
the 20 years he spent as a cop in Freeport, Long Island: he was too busy taking
notes. His latest book is dedicated "to the men and women of the Freeport
Police Department below the rank of captain"--even though his hero is
Nassau County Police Commissioner Frank Murphy, one of the few good guys in an
administration rank with corruption and self-interest. Murphy keeps himself
honest by pouring out his doubts and anger to his severely brain-damaged younger
brother, Wally, on their nightly outings in search of fast food and childhood
memories. One of the other good people in the administration--Elizabeth Lucido,
the sharp and attractive deputy to the odious County Executive Martin
Daly--disappears from her home at the book's outset, the second (but not the
last) top Republican woman to vanish under suspicious circumstances. When it
comes to light that Lucido was secretly sleeping with--and giving inside
information to--Daly's straight-shooting Democrat-opponent, all kinds of things
hit Murphy's fan. Trying to help him solve the cases and keep his job are ace
detective Maude Fleming and her partner Rocky Blair, a muscular type not
anywhere near as dumb as his fellow officers like to think. --Dick Adler
From Booklist
July 19, 1998
It's hard to believe that anyone other than perhaps the corrosively
cynical Terry Southern could have invented the menagerie of crooks, thugs,
stoners, idiots, geeks, and creeps masquerading as public officials in this
remarkable novel. One can only conclude that Westermann's two decades as a Long
Island cop supplied the material for his withering portrait of the vulgarity,
venality, viciousness, and consummate corruption of Nassau County politics. It's
a week before Election Day, and the long-entrenched Republican machine is in
danger of losing. The county executive's top advisor, Elizabeth Lucido,
disappears. Police Commissioner Frank Murphy has no shortage of suspects;
unfortunately, they are all movers and shakers, and the job he likes very much
is theirs to take away. Murphy must shield his detectives' independence, recover
Elizabeth, arrest the perp, and attempt to keep his job. Read as a roman aclef,
this novel is utterly frightening. Let's assume that Westermann is exaggerating
experience for effect; then we're free to simply enjoy a good, gritty cop
walking a different kind of mean street. Thomas Gaughan
From Kirkus Reviews ,
June 15, 1998
Ex-police officer Westermann (The Honor Farm, 1996, etc.) returns to his
suburban haunts for a tour of corrupt politics as Nassau County homicide
detectives Maude Fleming, whos gay, and body-builder Rocky Blair gather evidence
about the kidnapping of Deputy Nassau County Executive Elizabeth Lucido, who
knows where all the bodies are buried on Long Island. She and her lover, Jackson
Hind, a Democrat successfully challenging the arrogant Republican incumbent
County Executive Martin Daly, hope to orchestrate the collapse of the last great
political machine in America. But now Elizabeth, who is Daly's deputy and the
brains of his campaign, has disappeared. Does Daly, who can speak only with a
forked tongue, know that Elizabeth is selling him out to Jackson Hind?
Meanwhile, Fleming is haunted by a similar case, the only unsolved homicide on
her resume, that of Barbara Babs Whitcomb III. In this gruff procedural, all
ties are suspect; even top police officers harbor motives for bad acts.
Westermann scores with Fleming and Blair, whose sidekick status (as with Holmes
and Watson) consistently deepens our interest amid cop tough-talk and the
pompous vulgarities of the politicians. And do we find out who waxed Babs? We
do. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Sweet Deal
From Kirkus Reviews ,
December 15, 1991
Suburban Long Island, scene of Westermann's Exit Wounds (1990), is the
menacing background in the search for a cop killer. Westermann, one of the few
crime writers to realize that America is now the suburbs and that criminals live
in ranch houses too, uses the sprawl outside New York to great effect as
Detective Jack Mills seeks to become a real cop after years in the police
department's p.r. division. Mills, a handsome former athlete now in his 30s,
skated through his youth, supported by men and women who would do anything for a
jock. Now divorced and living alone after the departure of his latest popsy, the
homicide detective stands his first real police duty when he's charged with
finding out who murdered Arthur Backman, a policeman disliked by everyone he
knew, including his wife and yuppie son. Teamed with sexy Claire Williamson, a
more experienced and competent detective, Mills begins to turn up evidence of
Backman's corruption and his sordid liaison with a pathetic cop groupie, and
rather quickly Mills finds that he is poking into the affairs of the local
syndicate, the local Republican machine, and his own superiors at the police
station. He may be in over his head. Even more awkward, he has become more than
a little smitten with Detective Williamson, a very difficult woman to impress.
Things get uglier as another rotten policeman dies and a nice little old Irish
lady is menaced by a villain on a ten-speed. Good stuff. Westermann paints
people rather than types and puts them into a palpable world of strip malls,
frontage roads, and postwar subdivisions. Gangsters in the townships are as
creepy as their brothers in the boroughs. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus
Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the hardcover
edition of this title.
The Honor Farm
From Booklist
, October 1, 1996
Westermann's protagonist, Long Island cop Orin Boyd, is a likable maniac.
Nearing retirement, he has managed to never get promoted in a police force where
virtually everyone is in charge of something. When Orin punches out a crooked
state senator he finds assaulting a woman, the police commissioner has the tool
he needs to investigate the Island's country-clubbish prison for bent cops. The
commish's son, it seems, has died there, officially a suicide, just days before
his scheduled release, and Orin becomes the Honor Farm's newest inmate. Orin, of
course, has lots of enemies both on the farm and off, and before his undercover
work is over, he is comparing his assignment to his Marine Corps stint at
besieged Khe Sanh. Westermann is a talented storyteller. Perhaps more important,
he's a real cop, and his mix of mordant humor, twisted cops, and Byzantine Long
Island politics sounds like it could have come from the pages of Newsday
as easily as from his imagination. The Honor Farm is a winner, and cop
novel fans need to put Westermann's books on their required reading list. Thomas
Gaughan
Copyright© 1996, American Library Association. All rights reserved
From Kirkus Reviews
, October 1, 1996
A whodunit with a twist--instead of going undercover on the mean streets
and leafy suburban lanes of New York's Nassau County (as he did in Exit Wounds,
1990), Patrol Officer Orin Boyd goes to jail to learn whether the prison-cell
death of Police Commissioner David Trimble's son was a suicide or murder. And
what a jail it is. Nicknamed the Honor Farm, the Nassau Country Correctional
Facility at Sands Point is a former Gold Coast mansion that provides cushy
containment for convicted police. With the exception of occasional shifts in the
prison's slaughterhouse and a rare round of janitorial chores, the Honor Farm
offers an almost comical regimen of nonstop rest and recreation for 20 crooked
cops, many of whom know (and hate) Orin Boyd. And now is their chance to do
something about it. As soon as the gates squeak shut on Boyd, who's agreed to be
arrested and sent there as a cover for his investigation, his family finances
are wiped out by a computer-hacking con who's chummy with some cops whom Boyd
once arrested. Tommy Cotton, a corrupt senator Boyd humiliated during a traffic
stop, tries to have Boyd beaten up. A creepy con named Harmless George goes
after Boyd's wife, June, and another group of cons secretly launches a scam to
buy the Farm. After one more apparent suicide, it's difficult to tell the
schemers from the scammed as Boyd, a proud Vietnam vet blessed with equal
helpings of brains and brawn, takes on all comers, uncovering a sad truth about
crooked cops and the people who bend them to their will. A wry, street-smart,
bare-knuckles, behind-bars brawl that bears up under a thick plot and a large
cast of dirty denizens. Fans of the police procedurals of early Wambaugh and
late McBain will delight in the gruff sensibilities of Westermann's heroes and
the unregenerate sleaziness of his villains. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus
Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
John Westermann brings a fresh twist to the police
procedural by setting his story among dirty cops who have already been busted
for their misdeeds. The Honor Farm is a minimum-security "country
club" prison on Long Island for the tarnished shields of New York; the
inmates play tennis, grow their own food, and worry only that their cushy
hoosegaw will be shut down, in which case they would be sent to a normal
(meaning much less comfortable) penitentiary. When local cop Orin Boyd assaults
a state senator, he is sent down for 6 months on the Honor Farm; but his
sentence is merely the cover for a secret assignment. The police commissioner's
son, also a cop, was recently found hanged in the prison one day before his
scheduled release, and Orin is supposed to find out whether the death is suicide
or murder. No sooner does Boyd arrive when another inmate is found drowned in
the swimming pool; soon, the Boyd family's house is burned down and their bank
accounts emptied by a hacker. Unfortunately, Orin has so many enemies he doesn't
know who to blame for his problems: the state senator who he assaulted, the
deputy warden he taunts at every opportunity, the dirty cops he put in jail,
someone who doesn't want him looking into the suspicious suicides, or a
mysterious stalker operating on the fringes of the action.
The author knows his turf, having been a Long Island cop for 20 years,
and he makes brilliant use of the Honor Farm setting to undergird his intricate
plot. Boyd himself, though appealingly tough and resourceful, is somewhat
overshadowed by the many secondary characters who represent every pathology of
police power -- especially the loss of the ability to do the right thing instead
of going along and getting along. There are maybe a few too many showy crimes,
but I took this as the author's attempt to make his story exciting rather than
purely gratuitous violence. I also appreciated the look inside a country-club
prison -- people talk about them all the time, but I'd never read a book set in
one before. Westermann offers everything a procedural fan is looking for:
realistic detail, imaginative plotting, lethal but energetic characters, and a
healthy dollop of cop attitude.