Bronx Champion

It’s the opening night of The Manor, the newest and hottest luxury resort, and no expense, small or large, has been spared. The infinity pool sparkles; the “Manor Mule” cocktail (grapefruit, ginger, vodka, and a dash of CBD oil) is being poured with a heavy hand. Everyone is wearing linen.

Miss Ailsa Brimley is in a quandary. She's received a peculiar letter from Mrs. Stella Rode, saying that she fears her husband - an assistant master at Carne School - is trying to kill her. Reluctant to go to the police, Miss Brimley calls upon her old wartime colleague, George Smiley. Unfortunately, it's too late. Mrs. Rode has just been murdered. As Smiley takes up the investigation, he realizes that in life - as in espionage - nothing is quite what it appears.

It’s 1971. Trash piles up on the streets, crime is at an all-time high, the city is careening towards bankruptcy, and a shooting war has broken out between the NYPD and the Black Liberation Army. Amidst this collective nervous breakdown furniture store owner and ex-fence Ray Carney tries to keep his head down and his business thriving. His days moving stolen goods around the city are over. It’s strictly the straight-and-narrow for him—until he needs Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter May and he decides to hit up his old police contact Munson, fixer extraordinaire.

It’s spring and Three Pines is reemerging after the harsh winter. But not everything buried should come alive again. Not everything lying dormant should reemerge. But something has. As the villagers prepare for a special celebration, Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir find themselves increasingly worried. A young man and woman have reappeared in the Sûreté du Québec investigators’ lives after many years. The two were young children when their troubled mother was murdered, leaving them damaged, shattered. Now they’ve arrived in the village of Three Pines. But to what end?

On the road in a “borrowed” '36 Ford, nineteen-year-old Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins and his companion, Raymond "Mouse" Alexander, are on a perilous odyssey that takes them from Houston to a mysterious bayou world of voodoo, sex, revenge, and death. Their destination is desolate Pariah, Texas—Mouse's home once, and still home to his hated stepfather.

In the beginning, Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins and Raymond "Mouse" Alexander were merely two young men hitting the road. In a "borrowed" 1936 Ford, they head for Pariah, Texas on a mission to retrieve money from Mouse's stepfather so he can marry his EttaMae. But on their steamy bayou excursion, Mouse chooses murder as a way out, while Easy's past liaison with EttaMae floats precariously in his memory. Easy and Mouse are coming of age - and everything they ever knew about friendship and about themselves is coming apart at the seams.