Canaryville
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Product Details
Publisher: BlackType Press
Release Date: March 22, 2021
Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, Ebook
ISBN: HC: 978-1-7344368-5-3; PB: 978-1-7344368-4-6; EB: 978-1-7344368-3-9
Trim: 6 x 9
Page Count: 338
Charlie Newton
International Book Awards 2022 Winner for Thriller/Adventure
Readers’ Favorite 2022 Bronze Medalist for Thriller/Conspiracy
Chicago has always been a slaughterhouse.
Awash in partisan rhetoric, facing bankruptcy and a federal takeover of its police department, Chicago is thirty-six hours from imploding into a race war. Canaryville will be the flashpoint—violent, insular, bare-knuckle Irish, and fiercely defensive of what little neighborhood it has left.
As the Southside musters for its massive Irish-only but now-banned St. Patrick’s Day parade, extremist groups descend from all sides. A grisly double-homicide occurs at Canaryville’s eastern border. Within hours, a pub bomb explodes at the western border. Amid the rage and carnage, a third targeted homicide rocks the neighborhood.
Embattled homicide lieutenant Denny Banahan races to prove the killings are a purge within the Irish mob, not the graffiti-implied threats of another “Red Summer”—Chicago’s horrifying rampage of racial murder and arson in 1919. But the shocking secrets that Denny’s detectives begin to exhume may say otherwise.
Buried in those secrets are Denny’s deep and tragic childhood roots in Canaryville, and his major sins in the violent Black neighborhoods that surround it. The explosive combination will make Denny the one cop who might stop Chicago’s long-predicted descent into Red Summer, or the one who will finally ignite it.
About the Author
Charlie Newton is a Chicago native, a writer known for a global life on the road and extended MIA absences. When he does publish, Newton’s heart-pounding, gritty, and witty realism has been a starred-review favorite of the critics and a finalist for the Edgar, the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, the Macavity, and the International Thriller Writers awards. Newton is the author of Calumet City (Simon & Schuster, 2008), Start Shooting (Doubleday, 2012), Traitor’s Gate (Thomas & Mercer, 2015), and Privateers (BlackType Press, 2020).
Reviews
“Taut, gripping, and hauntingly dark. This is Charlie Newton at his best.” —Robert Dugoni, bestselling author of the Tracy Crosswhite series
“Charlie Newton is one of my favorite writers, and he keeps getting better, which is scary. Canaryville sizzles. It burns with the kind of passion that makes Chicago beautiful and brutal.” —Jonathan Eig, bestselling author of Ali: A Life
”Charlie Newton’s crime fiction thrillers are like ticking narrative time bombs, exploding with existential brutality and blood-soaked enlightenment when readers least expect it. Canaryville is Newton at his best—unapologetically audacious and always seconds away from a jaw-dropping, skull-crushing detonation.” —Paul Goat Allen, author
“Canaryville . . . rises above its kind through exceptionally crisp prose, nuanced character building, smart dialogue, and attention to the intellectual and emotional underpinnings that give meaning to the fast-paced surface story. Newton’s willingness to accept racism on its face rather than massage out some of the ugliness in otherwise sympathetic characters breathes fire into every aspect of this story and allows Chicago, or at least a part of it, to become an organism onto itself. It is more than just a decision to mirror the decidedly insensitive language of the streets; it is a commitment to understanding, if not condoning, the fierce hatred that exists between various groups of people. Newton, through his antihero, sees and acknowledges the base instincts to survive, stride, and protect one’s own. Canaryville is a story that manages at once to be sensational and realistic, page turner and thought provoker, satisfying and sad. You won’t find the obvious Good Triumphs Over Evil tropes here. Rather, you’ll find how people long divested of such nonsense confront challenges to their long-held ways and the difficulties inherent in progress.” —Donald G. Evans, Newcity Lit, founding executive director of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame
“No one pens a thriller as stylishly as this author, and Canaryville is his incendiary, unputdownable pinnacle (so far).” —Andres Kabel, ReadListenWatch.com
“Canaryville by Charlie Newton is a tale about a city about to destroy itself. Two dead bodies at the railroad track, an explosion at the Bayside Inn, and a Catholic priest hanged at the clocktower. Chicago is on the verge of a race war, and Canaryville is at the center of it all . . . Homicide lieutenant Denny Banahan . . . needs to prove that the killings are white-on-white and have nothing to do with a reenactment of the ‘Red Summer’ of 1919. As he tries to make his case, he discovers even more that puts his life, the lives of those close to him, and the existence of his beloved city on the verge of collapse . . . [A] fast-paced, and realistic story about racism and law enforcement abuse of power . . . it has all the ingredients for an action-packed crime thriller that will keep readers glued to each page until the story is over. Just like the discoveries in this story, the characters are far from what they appear to be . . . It also concisely explains the political and historic nature of the racial tension in Chicago.” —Frank Stephen for Readers’ Favorite