The Old Turk's Load

by Gregory Gibson

Overview

A Deadly Pleasures Best First Novel of the Year and a Booklist Best Crime Fiction Debut of the Year

Angelo DiNoto is a powerful crime lord in 1967, his empire bolstered by importing pure heroin from an old Turkish farmer. But when a five-million-dollar shipment goes missing during the Newark riots, DiNoto isn’t the only one willing to turn over every rock—and bust some heads, arms, and legs—to find it.

A shady developer sees the heroin as the key to rejuvinating his fading business. His daughter Gloria, literally in bed with a band of wannabe revolutionaries, thinks the stash could be her ticket out of her father’s purview. “Mailman,” a longtime postal clerk disfigured by cancer, thinks finding the drugs is the perfect cap to a failed life. With this wild cast of characters running rampant through Newark and Manhattan, Gibson’s debut is a twisting crime novel whose disparate threads lead directly to an unforgettable showdown over the so-called ‘old Turk’s load.’

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802121141
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	05/13/2014
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Gregory Gibson has been an antiquarian book dealer since 1976. He has published three non-fiction books and writes an influential weekly blog on the book trade called “Bookman's Log.” He lives between Gloucester, Massachusetts, but in his imagination he inhabits an undiscovered Raymond Chandler novel somehow set in Manhattan in the 1960s.

Editorial Reviews

“I like Gibson’s writing, the effortless way he tells his story.”—Elmore Leonard

“The Old Turk's Load is a hoot, a neo-noir that just zips along."—Stewart O'Nan

“An instantly memorable debut, a complex, occasionally darkly comic novel that exceeds its own promise on all levels. . . . . The Old Turk’s Load is an unexpected joy.”—Bookreporter

"If you miss the caper novels of the late, great Donald E. Westlake, take heart: Gregory Gibson's debut novel will appeal alike to neo-noir fans and fans of Garrison Keillor's Guy Noir character."—Huntington News

"First novels aren't supposed to be as much fun as The Old Turk's Load. . . . With these ingredients, and these characters, all Gibson really has to do is mix well and stir, and that he does. He writes with an air of what-fools-these-mortals be, and he's not too hard on anybody except the unnecessarily cruel."—Palm Beach Post

"The Old Turk's Load is a marvel of Chandleresque plotting, with a deeply felt and utterly real '60s setting and a heart as big as all outdoors."—Luc Sante, author of Low Life and Kill All Your Darlings

“An elegant engine drives the combustible plot of The Old Turk’s Load. Gregory Gibson is a deft and deadpan master mechanic trained in Donald Westlake and Elmore Leonard’s shop. He leads a droll cast of rogues and thugs with confidence through every surprising twist in this highly entertaining modern pulp mischief.”—Michael Malone, author of the Justine Savile & Cuddy Mangum novels

“With its sparse dialogue and nonchalant treatment of sex and violence, The Old Turk’s Load is probably the fastest neo-noir read on crime novel shelves. Exquisitely hard boiled, this crime novel is the perfect beach read for those nurtured on Tarantino and Spillane.”—New York Journal of Books (starred review)

"Gibson’s elliptical, ever-evolving plot seems a marriage of Raymond Chandler complexity and Donald E. Westlake comic haplessness, but he imbues his characters with a kind of desperate humanity that is brilliantly played out when Manhattan goes dark in the famous 1967 blackout. The sense of time and place is wonderfully evocative, and The Old Turk’s Load will be a signal pleasure for crime-fiction aficionados."—Booklist (starred review)

“Nostalgia, noir and narcotics are blended together in a runaway train journey that careens down the track at breakneck speed . . . Breaking new ground in crime fiction with his unusual protagonist, Gibson gets a gold star for deftness, great writing, lethal encounters, mayhem, murder, and bleak black humor.”—Library Journal

“This well-handled caper novel recalls the late great Donald Westlake.”—Publishers Weekly

“Utterly compelling, Gregory Gibson has given the reader one great ride.”—Robert Ferrigno, New York Times bestselling author of the Assassin Trilogy

“Owing to Gibson’s sharp eye for the antics of people chasing loot through mean streets where little is as it seems and nothing goes as planned, the big winners here are the readers.”—Thomas Powers, author of The Killing of Crazy Horse

From the Publisher

The 1967 Newark, N.J., riots form the backdrop for Gibson’s quirky, amusing first novel. Farmed on “a remote Anatolian plateau” by an old Turk, “ten plastic sacks of diacetyl morphine” arrive in New Jersey in the care of the notorious Street Brothers, who promptly lose the load during the chaos of the riots that summer. The mob wants it back, but the eccentric Mailman sees it as a shot at a better life. Meanwhile, a businessman hires Manhattan PI Walkaway Kelly to spy on his daughter, the heiress Gloria Mundi. Gloria is dabbling in subversion with “the well-known revolutionary” Kevin Gallagher, a mole for the feds. Kelly’s world-weary observations anchor the action: “If there was a genetic predisposition to the low life, this poor bastard had it.” This well-handled caper novel recalls the late great Donald Westlake. Readers will want to see more crime, and more comedy, from Gibson. Agent: Neeti Madan, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Gibson’s elliptical, ever-evolving plot seems a marriage of Raymond Chandler complexity and Donald E. Westlake comic haplessness, but he imbues his characters with a kind of desperate humanity that is brilliantly played out when Manhattan goes dark in the famous 1967 blackout. The sense of time and place is wonderfully evocative, and The Old Turk’s Load will be a signal pleasure for crime-fiction aficionados.”
—Booklist [HC starred review]

Booklist

A million-dollar load of Mafia heroin from an “Old Turk” gets waylaid during the 1967 Newark riots. A motley assortment of thieves, opportunists, slimeballs, and a few decent folk are out to find it. This Gregory Gibson novel is rife with characters, perhaps too many, who fight and kill in their attempts to get their hands on the drugs. There are so many people that it’s difficult to keep them straight in the audiobook version. Narrator R.C. Bray sounds like an old-time movie newscaster with his punchy Walter Winchell delivery. Kudos to him for imitating a man with a laryngectomy who emerges as a main character. M.S. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

MAY 2013 - AudioFile

Several pounds of uncut heroin, derailed from their intended recipient by the 1967 Newark riots, attract the lethal attentions of a motley crew in Gibson's debut thriller. Woody and Vince Street, partners but not brothers, unexpectedly lose control of the Porsche they're driving to a mob that has no idea what a fabulous cargo it contains. So, it's left to DiShaun Smoot to claim it for his boss, old-time enforcer Julius Roth, whose own boss, paper millionaire Richard Mundi, is running a development partnership that can really use a shot in the arm. But since Angelo DiNoto, Woody and Vince's employer, isn't about to take the loss of $250,000 to $5 million--after it's cut and distributed--lying down, he sends his own enforcers after Mundi. Mundi's daughter Gloria sees the H as fuel for the amateur terrorism of the self-styled revolutionaries she's been hanging around with. When Mundi hires private eye Walkaway Kelly to tail Gloria in order to separate her from Kevin Gallagher, the grandiose agitator she's been closest to, Kelly gets the zany idea that the key to the troubled relationship between father and daughter is the death seven years ago of Agnes Day Mundi, Gloria's actress mother. Nor are these the only wild cards in the deck. Harry Jarkey, the investigative journalist who doubles as an investigator for Kelly, soon develops his own interest. So does the Mailman, a messenger whose laryngeal cancer has left him talking through a blowhole in his neck. The Mailman doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but neither does the rest of this crowd. So it's anyone's guess who'll be the last man (or woman) standing. An overcaffeinated noir farce enlivened by many cartoon fatalities. Just the thing if you're really stoned and don't have to pass a quiz on the plot.

Kirkus Reviews