Black and White

Detective Brian McKenna #5

by Dan Mahoney

In a secluded New York City park, a double homicide draws two detectives named McKenna. One is a legend; the other is a brilliant young investigator. Together, they are entering a case that will grow more bizarre and more horrifying with each new piece of shocking evidence...

One of the victims was tied to a tree and slowly tortured to death. Veteran detective Tommy McKenna realizes that he has seen this killer's work before--eighteen years earlier...

Tommy will get a second crack at his killer. Brian McKenna gets to work with a legend. And both men are setting in motion an investigation that will take them to California, Arizona, a Costa Rican mountaintop, and all the way to the Far East. The two McKennas are on the trail of two human monsters who have been killing for two decades--and murder isn't even the worst of their crimes...

368 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

I was born in Manhattan on September 21, 1947, five minutes after Stephen King was born someplace in Maine. (I don't know what that means, but I'm hoping it means something.) I grew up in Manhattan and Queens and soon found myself to be the eldest of five children. I graduated from high school at age 16, a bad thing because I was too young to get a driver's license in New York and too stupid to realize that I had to go to college to get my ticket punched. Instead, I worked as a machinist and auto mechanic for a year before enlisting in the Marine Corps at age 17. A while later I found myself in Vietnam as a machine gunner with the 9th Marines, an outfit known as The Walking Dead. It was a very bad job, to say the least.

After getting discharged in one piece in 1968, I did as my father and grandfather had done before me and joined the NYPD. During the next twenty years I managed to get promoted regularly and served in various patrol and detective commands, mostly good jobs in mostly rotten places. I also took advantage of the VA Bill and finally went to college, attending John Jay College of Criminal Justice part time and graduating in 1977 as the class valedictorian with a BA in Romance Languages.

Also part time, I got a job as Yoko Ono's security chief after John Lennon was murdered. It turned out to be interesting work since, at the time, crazies were coming out of the woodwork to annoy and harass her. Yoko liked to travel and so did I, so one of the great benefits of the job was that I got to go to some very nice places in a very nice way.

Meanwhile, my brothers and sisters were also busy. My brother Eddie decided to call himself Eddie Money and he's been singing, doing shows, and selling records ever since. My sister Peggy became a psychologist and my two other sisters, Pat and Kathy, are both nurses.

By 1989 I had twenty years with the NYPD and it was time to retire since the chiefs had never been too happy about my high-profile, off-duty job, and I had learned by tough experience that unhappy chiefs make for miserable captains. My wife at the time had also had enough of me since, between police work, school, and working for Yoko, I hadn't been home much during our marriage, so she gave me my walking papers and a heavy-duty alimony and child-support bill.

After retiring, I began working as the director of investigations for the Holmes Detective Bureau, an old and well-regarded New York PI agency. I also got a literary agent and began working on my first book, Detective First Grade. My agent sold it to St. Martin's Press a week after I finished it and it was published in May, `93. The book got good reviews and sold well, so I had myself another good part-time career. I wrote another seven books in the next twelve years, a rate of one book every year and a half. All of them feature Detective Brian McKenna or Detective Cisco Sanchez as my protagonist, and although not New York Times best-sellers, they have all received good reviews and I have sold well enough that I now regularly make the USA Today Best Seller List. Detective First Grade, Edge of the City, Hyde, Once In, Never Out, Black and White, and The Two Chinatowns, and The Protectors are all still in print.

I now have a government job working for the Department of Homeland Security, but that will have to end soon because I must get to work on my next book. My hobbies are skiing, traveling, and hanging out with my pals in pubs in town where we spend most of our time lying about our old cases. Our motto is: "The older we get, the better we were."

Reviews

[Eric_W · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author makes a huge mistake right off the bat. I was listening to this book, and the two major protagonists are both named McKenna: Brian and Tommy. He then proceeds to compound the error by talking about each not by given name, but rather by patronymic. You really have to keep your head wrapped around this in order not to get confused. A quick look at Amazon reveals that the names are even spelled the same, although, in the author’s defense, Tommy McKenna is a real NYPD detective of some note. Whatever.

A man and woman are discovered dead near the cloisters, she the daughter of a wealthy, politically connected man, Brian is assigned as lead detective on the case even as they discover another similar set of murders that had haunted the other McKenna, Tommy. As the investigation proceeds, it becomes apparent the detectives are looking for two serial killers who are engaged in the production of snuff films. The chase leads all over the country in addition to Costa Rica, Thailand, Burma, and Barcelona.

It’s a well-done police procedural with lots of interesting investigatory detail and I do really hope (although I sincerely doubt) that the different police agencies here and abroad really do cooperate and get along and are all such nice guys as described in the book..

[Kelley Herrington · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a smart, well thought out book. It was easy to follow (which is why I don't understand some of the previous reviews). It was detailed and complicated, but that's what made it interesting. The violence is disturbing, but the main characters are likable and you are rooting for them to solve the crime. I thoroughly enjoyed the read!

[Jerry King · Rating 3 out of 5]

1999

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

#5 in the Brian McKenna series.

Brian McKenna, NYPD, in put in charge of an investigation to find the sadistic killer of a couple in the Cloisters. As the investigation expands, he teams with homicide investigators from NY, CA, AZ and Costa Rica to find a pair of whip wielding killers

[Toesnorth's mom]

too involved and too much intrigue