Soft Money

Officer Filomena Buscarela has traded in her uniform for the many joys and trials of being a single parent, but her passion for justice burns as hot as ever in this second installment of the critically acclaimed mystery series set in 1980s New York City. When the owner of Filomena’s neighborhood bodega is murdered and falls into the overcrowded category of just another “ethnic” crime that will probably go unsolved and unavenged, she doesn’t need much prodding from the dead man’s grieving sister to step in. Secretly partnered with a rookie cop, she hits the Washington Heights streets to smoke out the trigger-happy punks who callously ended an innocent life. In a town big enough to hold every kind of criminal, crackpot, liar, and thief, from ruthless gangsters to corporate executives drunk on greed and power, Filomena tracks a killer through the city’s danger zones. This is dark, humorous storytelling that also offers a recap of the social and economic horrors wrought by the Reagan era.