Stanley Moodrow

A hard-nosed cop tears into the criminal shadow world of the Lower East Side. On the streets of downtown Manhattan, there is no better disguise than the vacant stare and limp slouch of the junkie. Masquerading as an addict, Johnny Katanos goes undetected as he slithers up the fire escape towards the biggest heroin operation in the city of New York. He disables the alarms, distracts the guards, kills the Dobermans, and is waiting with a grenade when Ronald Jefferson Chadwick, drug kingpin, returns with a suitcase full of cash. A few minutes later, the money is gone, Chadwick is dead, and the factory has been reduced to a fireball. Though the New York Police Department rarely investigates a dealer's death, a Russian-made grenade appearing downtown is cause for fear. The case falls to Stanley Moodrow, a beefy detective who knows that in an investigation like this, there's no time to go by the book.

A psychopath is loose in Brooklyn, and it will take a half-mad cop to catch him. A gang of small-time dealers camps out underneath the Manhattan side of the Williamsburg Bridge, slipping hits to passing addicts in exchange for ten bucks a pop. It's blistering hot, and they drink beer to stay cool, sharing a six-pack with a couple of local girls. As the night winds down, a massive black man appears in a coat that's too heavy for the weather, produces a shotgun, and starts to fire. Among the dead are two supposed customers - an undercover cop and a reporter whom the city will avenge by opening a new front in the war on drugs. The gunman, a full-time crack addict with a boxer's build and a bulldog's temper, disappears into the wilds of Brooklyn. To roust him, Stanley Moodrow will rain hell on the borough, breaking in a new partner as he attempts to smoke out the wild man with a shotgun.

Now a PI, Moodrow takes on a pair of crooked real estate developers in Queens. Jackson Heights is a quiet neighborhood made up of immigrants, families, and young professionals looking to escape sky-high Manhattan rents. For Marek Najowski, the neighborhood is an easy target. A slumlord with dreams of becoming a player, he teams up with Irish drug kingpin Marty Blanks to buy three sleepy apartment buildings and, using intimidation and violence, drive out the rent-controlled tenants. The potential profits are limitless. But they haven't counted on Stanley Moodrow. Once the toughest cop in the New York Police Department, Moodrow has not mellowed since he took his business private. When he gets a whiff of the Jackson Heights scheme, he sees an opportunity to showcase his particular talents. As Marek and Marty will learn, criminals aren't the only ones who know how to hurt people.

A mysterious cult is pushing a designer drug, and only Moodrow can shut the deadly organization down. Though they preach love and understanding, the people of Hanover House also know a thing or two about strong-arm tactics. When an errant member of the Canal Street cult plans to write a tell-all book exposing Davis Craddock's pseudo-religion as a sham, the Hanoverians react calmly. One of the cult's members, Flo Alamare, is dispatched to let the would-be author know that he's welcome to write whatever he likes - so long as he doesn't care whether his daughter lives or dies. Soon Flo is found dumped in an empty lot in the Bronx. She's barely alive, having apparently suffered a stroke or seizure - and the doctors don't realize that she overdosed on a powerful drug of Craddock's own design. She's returned to her parents, who had been desperately searching for her. The tough-minded Alamares want revenge, and hire bruising PI Stanley Moodrow to catch Craddock and break his cult wide open.

In 1957, a young cop boxes his way to a gold shield, and finds corruption everywhere he turns. Before he became one of the most feared detectives in the New York Police Department, Stanley Moodrow was a boxer. A big kid with sledgehammer fists and a body that didn't know when to quit, he won his first twenty bouts handily, and might have gone pro if he saw a future in it. But the men in Moodrow's family have always been cops, and he wanted to join their ranks. As a young recruit, Moodrow knows that the pain he has suffered in the ring puts him a step ahead of the fresh-faced youngsters around him. Using his boxing talent as a way to get the attention of the brass, he wins his detective's badge in record time. But when he starts life among the elite, he learns that there is nothing in the department that can't be bought. Even the blood of the innocents has a price tag.

A psychotic killer released from jail begins a spree that only Moodrow can stop. Even Jilly Sappone knows they should never have let him out. Ever since a bullet fragment embedded itself in his brain, he has been prone to uncontrollable rages. Opiates help dull his anger, but only blood can make it go away. When the parole board makes the mistake of freeing him, Jilly knows it's only a matter of time before he goes back behind bars. Until then, he plans on having some fun. He starts by visiting his ex-wife, and leaving with his four-year-old daughter. The police have no hope of getting the girl back alive, so the mother turns to Stanley Moodrow, an ex-cop turned private investigator whose bulky frame conceals a fury that can nearly match the kidnapper's. With the help of his new partner, Ginny Gadd, Moodrow will do what no prison ever could: break Jilly Sappone.

A broke PI attempts to prove the innocence of a wrongly convicted homeless man. Late at night by posh Gramercy Park, a woman peers into the backseat of a parked car. She's never seen a dead body before, but there's enough blood that she has no doubt what she's looking at. She remembers seeing a strange man nearby, and the police use her fuzzy identification and a few other bits of tenuous evidence to finger Billy Sowell, an alcoholic bum with limited intelligence and a patchy memory, as the killer. Who cares if he's guilty? Billy's an easy conviction, and his case is forgotten until years later, when it falls in the lap of PI Marty Blake. Blake will take anything as he tries to rebuild his practice after a year's suspension for illegal surveillance, and he attempts to clear Billy's name using his expertise at computerized investigation. But when it comes to proving the New York Police Department wrong, virtual sleuthing will not be enough. For this computer expert, it's time to play tough.