Review of "Murder Takes Time" [64]

Murder Takes Time: Friendship & Honor Series, Book One 
by Giacomo Giammatteo
Inferno Publishing, ISBN 978-0985030209
April 12, 2012, 438 pages

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"There was only one rule in our neighborhood--never break an oath. But oaths are easy to take and damn hard to keep."

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"A string of brutal murders has bodies piling up in Brooklyn, and Detective Frankie Donovan knows what is going on. Clues left at the crime scenes point to someone from the old neighborhood, and that isn’t good.

Frankie has taken two oaths in his life—the one he took to uphold the law when he became a cop, and the one he took with his two best friends when they were eight years old and inseparable.

Those relationships have forced Frankie into many tough decisions, but now he faces the toughest one of his life; he has five murders to solve and one of those two friends is responsible. If Frankie lets him go, he breaks the oath he took as a cop and risks losing his job. But if he tries to bring him in, he breaks the oath he kept for twenty-five years—and risks losing his life.

In the neighborhood where Frankie Donovan grew up, you never broke an oath."

Frankie “Bugs” Donovan, Nicky “the Rat” Fusco and Tony “the Brain” Sannullo were best of friends as kids, playing together, stealing cigarettes together and fighting together..until the fight one day that left someone dead and Nicky in prison for a decade. When he finally gets out of prison, having never broken the code of loyalty they swore to as kids, everything is different, the old life gone. The love of his life is married to someone else, and has a child that is not his. Frankie has taken a different path and become a cop and Tony, the smart one, has moved to NYC and is involved with the Mob. And Nicky is a very different man from the one he once was, willing to do things he would have once thought beyond him. But will he break the oath that once tied them together?

I must say at first I did not know where this book was going at the beginning and the first part, where we first meet the boys, learn about each of their lives and how their friendship first developed, was a bit too long, a bit too detailed for my taste. But once things got rolling, when Nicky get sent to prison and we start to see the different threads start to come together, things really start to pick up! And I must admit that I love a story that has a great nun character, as his book does, something you do not see much of these days.

I will admit, I was a bit conflicted with this plot. Who to pull for, a cop who is trying to catch a murderer or a seemingly ruthless killer who is not quite what he seems? And can this possibly all work out in some fair and just way? Well, I will let the reader decide if that happens. I have my own opinion...which I will not share because it would spoil it for you. 

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My thanks to the author and Pump Up The Book Tour for providing a copy of this book for review.

Head over to the tour site to check out some other links to more reviews, author interviews and to enter giveaways for an iPad2 , a Kindle Fire and a $50 gift card!

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