Excerpt from Saint of the Narrows Street by William Boyle, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

1.

Risa's in the kitchen, crying into a gravy-stained dish towel as she heats up the remaining chicken cutlets on the stove in her cast-iron pan. Her hands are clammy. Sweat beads her hairline. Her purple T-shirt has dusky little circles on it from the popping oil.

Her sister, Giulia, is sitting at the dining room table, holding eight-month-old Fab.

At twenty-eight, a new mother, Risa feels old and worn out already. Giulia's four years younger than her, and she still seems so full of life, like the world can break her and she'll bounce back no problem. She's lithe, tan, looks chic in the acid-wash jeans and blue Oxford shirt she's wearing. Fab's squirming around, playing with the buttons on her shirt, blowing raspberries against her sleeve. Giulia's come over with her own heartbreak—having split with her latest boyfriend, Richie, moved out of their apartment, and shown up here with a suitcase and nowhere else to go—but she hasn't noticed yet that it's Risa who's in tears. Of all nights.

Not that there'd be any good nights with Sav still around. He's out now, thankfully. Probably at that heavy metal club he goes to, L'Amour.

"He's getting big," Giulia says, her focus wholly on cooing Fab. "He's about the cutest baby I've ever seen. I could take a bite out of his little apple cheeks."

"It all happens so fast," Risa says. "I feel like I took him home from the hospital yesterday."

"You really don't have to heat those cutlets up. I'm not that hungry."

"You've got to eat."

"I can't remember the last time I had a home-cooked meal."

"I'm glad you're here. Fab's glad." A break in Risa's voice. The tears apparent in her words.

"What is it, sweetie?" Giulia says. She stands, Fab in her arms, and walks over to Risa at the stove, holding Fab to her chest with one arm, while reaching out with her other and touching Risa on the shoulder.

"You came here because you need help, not to help me," Risa says.

"I'm fine. It's nothing, really. It was just time to move on. What's happening?"

Risa uses a dish towel to dry her eyes and attempts to compose herself. "Sit down and eat," she says. "Please. I'm gonna make you a plate."

Giulia nods and takes Fab back to the table.

Risa met Sav in the summer of 1983 on the beach in Coney Island. Only three years ago, but it feels like another lifetime. She was twenty-five and mostly happy. Sav approached her and her friends Marta, Lily, and Grace on the sand not far from the boardwalk that day. What did she see in him? He was a year younger than her. Wiry. He seemed a little dangerous, the kind of guy her father had warned her about, and she liked that. She thought he looked like Ralph Macchio in The Outsiders, which she'd just seen at the movies—she'd read the book in high school, and Johnny was her favorite then. She liked Sav's voice, sticky with the syrup of the neighborhood, part concrete and part muscle car. She liked his laugh, the way it flattened everything in front of it. They'd gotten married fast and moved into this walk-in apartment on Saint of the Narrows Street between Bath Avenue and Benson Avenue in a three-family house that Sav's parents, Frank and Arlene Franzone, still own. The Franzones lived in the house until Sav was in high school, then they bought a new place on Eighty-Second Street and started renting this one out as three separate apartments. Sav's older brother, Roberto, occupied this unit for a while until he robbed Jimmy Tomasullo's trophy shop and split town for greener pastures with Jimmy's wife, Susie. Roberto was a neighborhood legend in his time—smarmy and charming in his way, a guitarist in a few bands that played at L'Amour, prone to breaking rules and laws—and Sav always seems like he's aching to be his brother.

Sav had revealed himself as a bad man soon after they were married, but it'd been worse since Fab was born and tonight had been the worst of all. The things he'd say and wouldn't say to her, the way he wouldn't meet her eyes, his quiet menace, the way he'd slap her and toss her around—all of it just a boiling prelude to what had happened a short time ago at the very table where Giulia's now sitting with Fab. Sav's friend Double Stevie was there and so was Chooch, Sav's oldest friend from across the street. Sav took out a gun he'd bought on the sly at the Crisscross Cocktail Lounge and was showing it to Double Stevie. Risa told him to get out. He pointed the gun at her and Fab, smiling, and pulled the trigger on an empty chamber. She'd nearly puked up her heart. Her body's still buzzing. Thank God Fab doesn't understand what his father's done.

Excerpted from Saint of the Narrows Street by William Boyle. Copyright © 2025 by William Boyle. Excerpted by permission of Soho Crime. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.