The Force

by Don Winslow

if real estate developers could buy properties in the bottom levels of Dante’s Inferno they’d rename it “LoHel” and start throwing up boutiques and condos.

On his head, even in summer, is his trademark trilby, with its stingy brim and a red feather on the left side.

his Medal of Valor scars for being stupid enough to get himself shot. That’s the NYPD, though, he thinks. They give you a medal for being stupid, take your badge for being smart.

The cops feel for the vics and hate the perps, but they can’t feel too much or they can’t do their jobs and they can’t hate too much or they’ll become the perps. So they develop a shell, a “we hate everybody” attitude force field around themselves that everyone can feel from ten feet away.

The New York Times, gentlemen.” He pauses to let that sink in. It doesn’t. Most cops don’t read the Times. They read the Daily News and the Post,

Malone goes out the door thinking that Christmas was invented to torture divorced parents and their children.

like that poor cop Liang who panicked and killed an unarmed black guy

“Life is trying to kill us,” she says. Life, Malone thinks, is trying to kill everyone. And it always succeeds. Sometimes before you die.