Advanced
Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.
Title details for Alphaville by Michael Codella - Available

Alphaville

1988, Crime, Punishment, and the Battle for New York City's Lower East Side

by Michael Codella
Bruce Bennett
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
1 of 1 copy available

A raw, gritty memoir—part true-life cop thriller, part unputdownable history of a storied time and place—that will grip you by the throat until the explosive end

In 1988, Alphabet City burned with heroin, radicalism, and antipolice sentiment. Working as a plainclothes narcotics cop in the most high-voltage neighborhood in Manhattan, Detective Sergeant Mike Codella earned the nickname "Rambo" from the local dealers, as well as a $50,000 bounty on his head. The son of a cop who grew up in a mob neighborhood in Brooklyn, Codella understood the unwritten laws of the shadowy businesses that ruled the streets. He knew that the further east you got from the relative safety of Fifth Avenue, Washington Square Park, and NYU, the deeper you entered the sea of human misery, greed, addiction, violence, and all the things that come with an illegal retail drug trade run wild. With his partner, Gio, Codella made it his personal mission to put away Davey Blue Eyes—a stone-cold murderer and the head of Alphabet City's heroin supply chain. Despite the hell they endured—all the beatings and gunshots, the footchases, and close calls—Codella and Gio always saw Alphabet City the same way: worth saving.

Alphaville, Codella's riveting, no-holds-barred memoir, resurrects the vicious streets that Davey Blue Eyes owned and tells the story of how Codella bagged the so-called Forty Thieves that surrounded Davey, slowly working his way to the head of the snake one scale at a time. With the blistering narrative spirit of The French Connection, the insights of a seasoned insider, and a relentless voice that reads like the city's own, Alphaville is at once the story of a dedicated New York cop and of New York City itself.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    November 24, 2010

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781481588379
      • File size: 274805 KB
      • Duration: 09:32:30

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      As a cop, Codella worked the toughest beat in New York City, a part of lower Manhattan called Alphabet City. He had grown up close by in Brooklyn, where cops and Mafia heads lived on the same block, and knew the streets like a native. He soon found that speaking the language of prostitutes and dope-dealers gave him an advantage in fighting against the drug wars taking place in a crime-infested city. Narrator Keith Szarabajka provides Codella's story with streetwise New York accents and Puerto Rican-accented English. In delivering the story's noir style, he excels at depicting the gang members, drug dealers, and other low-lifes the author specialized in putting out of business. Without Szarabajka's narration, one imagines that the trip into the danger and occasional comedy of such a terrible place would be far less entertaining. Codella doesn't paints himself as an angel--nor does he talk like one--but he seems like he wears a badge you'd want in your neighborhood. J.A.H. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine
    • AudioFile Magazine
      The preface states that while some court transcripts and affidavits were used as source material, most of this book represents the recollections of the author, Manhattan Detective Sergeant Mike Codella, who tells of his battle to rid New York's Lower East Side of some very bad characters. With accurate accents and superb timing, Keith Szarabajka narrates this disturbing, bloody account of the way things were in the early '80s in "Alphabet City," an area filled with boarded-up, burned-out tenements, which was a haven for heroin dealers and addicts and the fiefdom of "Davie Blue Eyes," a murderous drug kingpin. Some characters are composites, and some of the names have been changed, but all sound uncomfortably real, thanks to Szarabajka's spot-on performance. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 28, 2011
      Codella and Bennett provide a rich and compelling criminal history interlaced with the stories of Codella's years as a police officer, rising through the ranks in the 1980s and 1990s. Mixing information about organized crime, technology, and urban histories, the narrative shifts among different experiences of Codella's time as a housing officer and a plainclothes officer and the different historical forces that influence his hunt for the mobster Davey Blue Eyes. Keith Szarabajka's performance is admirable: he balances the straight first-person narrative with rich vocal characterization while easily shifting into the more straightforward historical aspects of the book such as the history of heroin or city planning. He takes some effective liberties with the dialogue, ratcheting up the intensity and sometimes even the strength of an accent, which provides added authenticity and drama. A St. Martin's/Dunne hardcover.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      September 13, 2010
      Setting his story against one of the grittiest New York City neighborhoods of the late 1980s, Codella, a retired detective sergeant in the NYPD, with ghostwriter Bennett, relates how a tradition-rich district still populated by aging Polish and Ukrainian immigrants was threatened with destruction by the heroin trade. Codella describes his own origins in Brooklyn's Canarsie neighborhood, where old-time mob capos and cops lived side-by-side, as a prelude to his joining the police crusade against a ruthless drug kingpin, Davey Blue Eyes, and his loyal gang of smack dealers, "The Forty Thieves." They dominated the part of lower Manhattan known as Alphabet City. Written in a hyper-noir style reminiscent of Richard Price and George Pelecanos, this memoir features all the stuff of an excellent police procedural complete with drug gang rivalries, beatings, killings, and endless dealer collars and convictions. Raw, bloody, and very real, Codella's book is a historical snapshot of what was one of Gotham's most dangerous neighborhoods and the men who brought order to its frightening mayhem.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Loading