William Landay Books In Order

Mission Flats

Former D.A. William Landay explodes onto the suspense scene with an electrifying novel about the true price of crime and the hidden corners of the criminal justice system. Only an insider could so vividly capture Boston’s gritty underworld of cops and criminals. And only a natural storyteller could weave this mesmerizing tale of murder and memory, a story about the hold of time past over time present and the story of one unforgettable young policeman who ventures into the most dangerous place of all.

By a gleaming lake in the forests of western Maine, outside a sleepy town called Versailles, the body of a man lies sprawled in a deserted cabin. The dead man was an elite D.A. from Boston, and his beat was that city s toughest neighborhood: Mission Flats.

Now, for small town police chief Ben Truman, investigating the murder will mean leaving his quiet, haunted home and journeying to an alien world of hard streets and hard bargains, where the fierce struggle between police and criminals is fought for the ultimate stakes.

Ben joins a manhunt through Mission Flats, where cops are scrambling to find their number one suspect: Harold Braxton, a ruthless predator targeted for prosecution by the murdered D.A. To the Boston police, Braxton is a marked man. But as Ben watches the shadow dance of cops and suspects, he begins to voice doubts about Braxton s guilt especially when he uncovers a secret history of murder and retribution stretching back twenty years back to a brutal killing now nearly forgotten. As past and present collide and a bloody mystery unfolds, only one thing remains certain: the most powerful
revelations are yet to come.

Mission Flats is at once a relentless page turning mystery and a vivid portrait of a cop s life. Here are the street corners, courtrooms, and stationhouses; the deal makers, thugs, and quiet heroes. An unforgettable world and the luminous, boundary breaking debut of a new voice in suspense fiction Mission Flats will haunt you long after the final pages.

From the Hardcover edition.

The Strangler

Boston, 1963. A city on edge. On street corners, newsboys hawk the shocking headline: KENNEDY IS DEAD. In the city’s underworld, a mob war rages. But what terrifies Bostonians most is the mysterious killer who has already claimed a dozen victims, a murderer whose name is indelibly linked to their city: the Boston Strangler. This is the electrifying backdrop of William Landay s magnificent new novel, a story of one Irish American family, a city under siege, and the long shadow cast by the most infamous killer of his day…

For the three Daley brothers, sons of a Boston cop, crime is the family business. They are simply on different sides of it. Joe is the eldest, a tough talking cop whose gambling habits fast women, slow horses drag him down into the city s gangland. Michael is the middle son; a Harvard educated lawyer working for an ambitious attorney general, he finds himself assigned to the embattled Strangler task force. And Ricky, the devil may care youngest son, floats above the fray as an expert burglar until The Strangler strikes too close to home.

As Joe s mob debts close in around him…
and Michael becomes snarled in a murder investigation gone very wrong…
and Ricky is hunted by both sides of the law, the three brothers and the women who love them are forced to take sides. Now each must look deeper into a killer s murderous rage, into their family s own lethal secrets, and into the one death that has changed them forever. As William Landay s complex, compassionate, and terrifying novel builds to a climax, two mysteries will collide and a shattering truth will be revealed.

From the Hardcover edition.

Defending Jacob

Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney in his suburban Massachusetts county for more than twenty years. He is respected in his community, tenacious in the courtroom, and happy at home with his wife, Laurie, and son, Jacob. But when a shocking crime shatters their New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens next: His fourteen year old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student. Every parental instinct Andy has rallies to protect his boy. Jacob insists that he is innocent, and Andy believes him. Andy must. He’s his father. But as damning facts and shocking revelations surface, as a marriage threatens to crumble and the trial intensifies, as the crisis reveals how little a father knows about his son, Andy will face a trial of his own between loyalty and justice, between truth and allegation, between a past he s tried to bury and a future he cannot conceive. Award winning author William Landay has written the consummate novel of an embattled family in crisis a suspenseful, character driven mystery that is also a spellbinding tale of guilt, betrayal, and the terrifying speed at which our lives can spin out of control.