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“Serpents in the Cold is a great addition to the canon of gritty
Boston street fiction, a no-punches-pulled look at a bygone era. Noir
is how we like our crime.”
— Chuck Hogan, New York Times bestselling author of The Night Eternal
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“Serpents in the Cold lovingly
revisits the hardboiled noir. From the dives of Dorchester to the
Locke-Ober Café, John Garfield and Richard Widmark would feel right at
home in O’Malley and Purdy’s bygone, fallen Boston.”
— Stewart O’Nan, New York Times bestselling author of Faithful
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“Brutally realistic…The authors give us one last, lingering look at the good-bad old days.”
— New York Times Book Review
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"[O’Malley and Purdy] excel at the language of their characters…Nothing is innocent, and nobody is what he or she seems.”
— Boston Globe
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“In the best noir tradition, these co-authors shine a smoky light on lives often lived in the shadows, in this case, the inhabitants who lived in Scollay Square and the West End of Boston, before it all disappeared under the developers’ wrecking ball.”
— WBUR (Boston)
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“O’Malley and Purdy bring postwar Boston to life, making neighborhoods
feel as distinct as separate countries. They have delivered a
love letter to Boston that’s long gone.”
— Publishers Weekly
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“O’Malley and Purdy write cinematically, building the bleakness of the city and its denizens around Scollay Square into the fabric of the fiction, with the city itself becoming a primary character…This is a bone-crunching, gut-wrenching novel that captures the atmosphere of a city in decay and its inhabitants. It delivers noir fiction like we always want it to be.”
— Kirkus Reviews
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“Melancholy as a lonesome train whistle, beautifully written, as well as thrilling, Serpents In The Cold is a tight little gem of characterization and suspense. You need this.”
— Joe Lansdale, author of The Thicket
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Like Sara Gran's Dope, Serpents in the Cold lovingly revisits the hardboiled noir. From the dives of Dorchester to the Locke-Ober Café, John Garfield and Richard Widmark would feel right at home in O'Malley and Purdy's bygone, fallen Boston.
— Stewart O'Nan, author of West of Sunset
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Serpents in the Cold is a great addition to the canon of gritty Boston street fiction, a no-punches-pulled look at a bygone era. Noir is how we like our crime, and "no-'R'" is how we pronounce it.
— Chuck Hogan, author of The Town
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Melancholy as a lonesome train whistle, beautifully written, as well as thrilling, Serpents In The Cold is a tight little gem of characterization and suspense. You need this.
— Joe Lansdale, author of The Thicket
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SerpentsintheCold is a startling work of art, a beautifully rendered, atmospheric tale of crime and punishment set in mid-twentieth century Boston. The crimes perpetrated are as much of the heart and soul as of the system and the worst punishments, as always, self-inflicted.
— Reed Farrel Coleman, award-winning of Robert B. Parker's Blind Spot
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The murder of an innocent young woman turns into murder of an entirely different sort in this hair-raising tale of two wounded men squeezed by changing times. Purdy and O'Malley resurrect the neighborhoods of 1950s Boston in faithful, brutal detail -- and in language so lush and gorgeous that you'll fall in love with reading it all over again.
— Elisabeth Elo, author of North of Boston