‘HARD-BOILED AND CRACKLING WITH INTENSITY. JOHN STEELE GETS UNDER THE SKIN OF THE NYPD AS WELL AS ANYONE WRITING TODAY’ T. J. English

‘DARK, HARD-HITTING AND FAST MOVING’ Thomas Mullen

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HIS BIGGEST CASE YET. BUT IT COULD BE HIS LAST…

NYPD officer Callum Burke is on a routine drugs raid when he bursts in on a scene of unimaginable horror – and two killers about to get away.

The men are caught but they won’t talk. All the cops know is that they’re Russian and extremely dangerous which means this could be the start of a savage new gang war.

Callum Burke is tasked with finding out what is going on. It’s Manhattan in 1997 and the city is being cleaned up. The pressure is on.

But when Callum discovers there might be more to the Russian involvement than just criminal gangs, he finds himself in deeper trouble than he’s ever known…

‘Hard and intriguing. Callum Burke is a cop on the edge’ David Albertyn

‘The Sky Turned Black will make your head spin’ T. J. English

‘The Sky Turned Black is a crime saga that combines gritty detail with a global scope’ Thomas Mullen

Purchase Links

UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Turned-Black-Callum-Burke-NYPD-ebook/dp/B09T6VFQM1/

US - https://www.amazon.com/Turned-Black-Callum-Burke-NYPD-ebook/dp/B09T6VFQM1/

Excerpt
This extract is taken from near the beginning of the book. Callum and his fellow cops are about to launch a raid. Nothing is really happening other than tension building – the cops know they’re about to go into a situation where their lives will be at risk…

 Callum checked his watch. It was almost 1400.

The van was warmer than the cool day outside: come June, it would be a sweatbox.

Georgie stopped fussing with her vest and smoothed her hair, scraped back from her forehead and tied in a tight bun. Martin scratched at a patch of dry skin between his eyebrows and bounced his left foot on the floor of the van. Callum gripped the shotgun and played a song over in his head. He tried not to think about the pack of Camels in his pocket.

They were all wired, all waiting for the word to hook up with the rest of the team spread across three cars in addition to the van. One vehicle would double as the hospital car if anyone were hurt on the bust, although the 60^th Precinct was less than 10 minutes’ drive away.

A crackle like gunfire filled the van and Georgie leaned in to her radio, straining to hear through the static. After a couple of moments she nodded and gunned the engine. They hit Mermaid Avenue, drove three blocks west then turned south on West 22^nd and pulled up twenty yards from the huge concrete facade of the rear of the east housing block in the project. A massive annex jutted from the center of the rear of the block, a stairwell and apartments stacked seventeen floors high.

Georgie, Martin and Callum clambered out of the van onto the empty sidewalk. They strode toward a break in the railings surrounding the project, on the northeast corner, and a narrow path laid in the lawn snaking around the building.

A blue Ford pulled up and more narcotics cops joined them.

Callum felt his guts hollow out a little, his arms beginning to buzz as they walked. Martin scratched the back of his head and Callum wondered if the asshole ever washed his greasy-ass hair.

Some cops peeled off the path and ran at a crouch to the stairwell entrance at the foot of the block’s annex, hunkering down by a row of trash cans to act as rear security.

Callum and the rest rounded the end of the block and Callum saw Sarge, Angel Patrosi and Trish Alexander stride across the lawn of the courtyard that stretched from West 23^rd. The sarge and Patrosi were breathing hard with the shared weight of the battering ram; their car was parked up on the curb. The matching apartment block sat, huge and brooding, on the other side of the street. A pack of teenagers by the Jungle Gym on the lawn ahead started whistling to warn low-level street dealers the cops were here.

People stooped their heads; youths glared hatred. A guy in a filthy hooded sweatshirt spat and muttered. A couple of women with kids hurried them away toward West 23^rd.

A rangy kid took off like he was in the first race at the dog track. They ignored him. No one was falling for a decoy today. Patrosi fell into step beside Callum. Two young white boys jogged off to north and south, customers who didn’t want mom and pop out in Riverdale or Mount Pleasant to know they’d been busted buying dope in Coney. Callum could’ve sworn one of them with choirboy looks gave him a wink as he passed. He could have sworn the kid was wearing eyeshadow.

Trish Alexander saw him watching the youth and said, ‘Hey, you wanna’ ask him for a date, wait ’til we’re done here.’

Author Bio –

John Steele was born and raised in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In 1995, at the age of twenty-two he travelled to the United States and has since lived and worked on three continents, including a thirteen-year spell in Japan. Among past jobs he has been a drummer in a rock band, an illustrator, a truck driver and a teacher of English. He now lives in England with his wife and daughter. He began writing short stories, selling them to North American magazines and fiction digests. He has published four previous novels: Ravenhill, Seven Skins, Dry River and Rat Island, the first of which was longlisted for a CWA Debut Dagger award. John’s books have been described as ‘remarkable’ by the Sunday Times,  ‘dark and thrilling’ by Claire McGowan, and ‘spectacular’ by Tony Parsons. The Irish Independent called John ‘a writer of huge promise’ and Gary Donnelly appointed him ‘the undisputed champion of the modern metropolitan thriller’.

Social Media Links –

Twitter: @JohnSte_author

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