Broken Allegiance (A Tom Kagan Novel)

by Mark Young

Overview

Before Travis Mayes, before Gerrit O'Rourke-there was Tom Kagan.

Police gang detective Tom Kagan has been seeking justice for more than ten years, leaving him a broken man. His only reason for living-the woman he loves and the badge he swore to uphold. When a man is brutally killed in a vineyard on the outskirts of Santa Rosa, California, it sparks a series of events that test what's left of Kagan's resolve to protect and serve.

Secrets from the past thwart Kagan's efforts to unravel a series of killings sanctioned from within the walls of California's highest security prison. From the lush vineyards of Sonoma County to the shores of beautiful Lake Tahoe, the detective must outsmart a killer who is moving in for one epic killing spree.

Leaders of the notorious Nuestra Family prison gang are fighting for power, a struggle that spills out onto the streets of California. Kagan joins forces with Special Agent Hector Garcia, a feisty supervisor of the Special Services Unit for the California Department of Corrections; Diane Phillips, a beautiful and hard-charging prosecutor; and Mikio Sanchez, a former gang member marked for death. Through the eyes of cops and gangsters, readers are able to glimpse the seldom seen workings of the gangster underworld.

Broken Allegiance is about treacherous lies, broken promises, and shattered lives-about life, death and a man's honor.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780983266389
Publisher:	Mark Young
Publication date:	09/24/2012
Pages:	348
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.78(d)

About the Author

Mark Young is the bestselling author of three previous novels, Revenge (A Travis Mays Novel) and two Gerrit O'Rourke novels, Off the Grid and Fatal eMpulse. Prior to his full-time writing career, Young served as a police officer with the Santa Rosa Police Department in California for twenty-six years. Additionally, he was an award-winning journalist and a Vietnam combat veteran. He served with several law enforcement task force operations, including the presidential Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force targeting major drug traffickers, and the federal Organized Crime Task Force charged with identifying and prosecuting prison gang leaders. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his family. Visit www.MarkYoungBooks.com to find out more about Young and his writing.

Editorial Reviews

★ 2014-08-01
From Young (Off the Grid, 2013, etc.), an intense police procedural focusing on the murders of Sonoma County gang members orchestrated from within Pelican Bay State Prison, one of California's maximum security facilities. An execution-style murder goes down after dark at an abandoned winery. When police detective Tom Kagan arrives at the scene, he sees the gang-tatted dead body and thinks, "This death, like all the others, gives me a reason to live." Did someone within the victim's own organization—the Nuestra Familia—pull the trigger, or was the shooter a member of a rival Latino gang? Readers will know the answer (the book's title is a clue) before Kagan and his crew do, but no matter; the novel is riveting from the opening shot to the parting rounds of bullets. As the body count rises inside and outside of Pelican Bay, Kagan's reason to live expands to include protecting his wife against the vividly etched, evil man named Ghost. The chilling deadness of Ghost's eyes and his proclamations haunt Kagan. A lifer, the prisoner exerts tremendous gang control behind bars and beyond them; he has "arms and legs out on the street." Kagan, emotionally scarred from a past family tragedy, has a long-simmering personal stake in making sure Ghost gets his due instead of his dreams—"cloudless blue skies, long sandy beaches, and the best brews money could buy. And women. Plenty of women." The author, a 26-year veteran of the Santa Rosa Police Department, writes convincingly about how gang members in and out of prison think; how they communicate with one another; and how they manipulate underlings, wives and other family members. He makes a convincing case that sometimes the only way a gang member can stay alive is to take someone's "wind"—"to make sure he doesn't breathe anymore." Young is also fluent in police-speak—law enforcement procedures, dialogue and actions ring true—and character building: Female characters are smart, tough and capable, while relationships seem genuine, and clichéd male/female encounters are absent, in spite of the occasional whiff of perfume. A fast-paced, smartly written crime story that's only the first shot in what could be a high-octane series.

Kirkus Reviews