Absent friends

✍ Scribed by S. J. Rozan

• Publisher: Delacorte Press
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 237 KB
• Category: Fiction
• City: New York, Staten Island (New York, N.Y.), New York (State)--New York., New York (State)--New York--S
• ISBN: 0440335094

✦ Synopsis

Jimmy McCaffery, a decorated 46-year-old captain with the New York City Fire Department, was "notoriously publicity-shy but famous for daredevil heroic deeds". His death in the collapsing World Trade Center quickly came to symbolize the abundant sacrifices made on 9/11, as well as the ability of New Yorkers to mine courage from catastrophe. But when a newspaper alleges that McCaffery had long been funneling money from "a Staten Island developer and reputed organized crime figure" to the widow of Mark Keegan, a mechanic who'd been convicted for the 1979 self-defense shooting of a wannabe mobster (only to later perish during a prison fight), more than just McCaffery's reputation is put at risk. So are the late firefighter's closest childhood friends, who have maintained his secrets for much too long; Keegan's son, who has grown to accept his father's early demise and to hero-worship McCaffery; and Phil Constantine, the lawyer who defended Keegan and has since tried to engineer a relationship with his widow. When Harry Randall, the once-renowned newspaperman responsible for unearthing the McCaffery scandal, is killed in a fall from the Verrazano Narrows Bridge--is it suicide, or something more nefarious? His much younger girlfriend, reporter Laura Stone, determines to continue that investigation. No matter where it leads, or who it might hurt.

✦ Subjects

New York (State) -- New York -- Staten Island