The Burden of Innocence by John Nardizzi
What's It About?
"A bold new poet of American noir ... This is the book Chandler would have written if he'd been a real-life private eye." —Ellen McGarrahan, Author of NYT Editor's Choice Two Truths and a Li“A soaring, stirring ride — real as the clang of iron doors closing on an innocent man.” —Patrick Moore, author
“An innocent man is in free-fall in the criminal justice system — felons and felonies, dished up with bull’s-eye imagery, insight and tone.” —Tom Davidson, author
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Any good thriller presents the characters (and the readers) with a big, intriguing puzzle that needs solving. In The Burden of Innocence, the puzzle is this: Can our heroes develop enough evidence to free a man who was set up in a terrible way and sent to prison for a murder he didn’t commit?
Author John Nardizzi’s well-drawn opening scene might fool you into thinking that you’re about to read a legal thriller where much of the drama unfolds in lawyers’ offices and courtrooms. Here’s how things get off to a roaring start:
Two burly guards from the sheriff’s department walked Sam Langford to the van. He noticed a newspaper wedged in the railing – his name jumped off the page in bold print: Jury to Decide Langford’s Fate in Waterfront Slaying. The presumption of innocence was a joke. You took the guilt shower no matter what the jury decided …
From there, we quickly move to Langford’s prison cell in the present, where he remains with diminished hope of ever going free, and then the meanest streets of metro Boston in a gritty tale of guilt and redemption. A guilt shower indeed.
WRONG PLACE AT THE WRONG TIME WITH THE WRONG PEOPLE
The story unwinds through the eyes of Ray Infantino, a battle-hardened private investigator — an occupation also held by Nardizzi, by the way. Once Langford gets a better lawyer, Infantino and his associate, Tania Kong, are drawn into the case. And Langford’s plight is just what our lonely hero needs to rev his weary engine.
Infantino learns that Langford couldn’t have been in a worse place to be seen at a worse time: the general area of a barroom murder. To protect a crime boss killer’s identity, Langford became the fall guy, convicted based upon a stew of lies.
Fifteen years later, times are changing and the ethnic identities of Boston are breaking down as Infantino and Kong unravel the names and locations of possible witnesses and participants in the killing. Infantino believes in the redemptive power of confession as both a core value and a strategy, but convincing witnesses to finally tell the truth is a tough sell as he realizes the corruption involves not only the criminals but high-ranking Boston cops who will do anything to protect themselves and their power.
Infantino focuses on two witnesses who could help free Langford. There’s Joe Butters, a low-level drifter and criminal who can’t stay out of trouble. And then his life intertwines with another witness, Augustina Calderon, a stripper and former drug abuser who identified Langford 15 years earlier and probably was coached. These two will soon face the hardest choices and biggest threats of their lives.
WRITING ABOUT WHAT HE KNOWS BEST
The author’s knowledge of Boston and his personal experiences as a private investigator, including with innocence cases, lend authenticity and honesty to the stories he has been writing about Infantino since 2007. He’s also spoken and written about investigations in settings such as the World Association of Detectives, Lawyers Weekly, Pursuit Magazine and PI Magazine, according to his online biography.
What makes The Burden of Innocence special is that quick twist into a gritty, dirty underworld in which “new evidence” isn’t just the dry stuff of too many police procedurals.
Here, the most important evidence is in people’s heads. It’s easy to sit in distant judgment of those who fail to do the right thing when given an opportunity to fix a wrong. Nardizzi won’t let you do that. He makes you ask yourself if you’d have the real-world courage to step up when doing so could destroy you.
Book Club Reader Kathy F, Daytona Beach Shores FL Book Club says…….I loved reading the back stories of each of the good and bad characters and how the author wove them into the story line. An excellent “couldn’t put it down” read. Once started, must finish.