Exchange Alley

In the depths of the Cold War a Soviet defector comes to the CIA with a story no one wants to hear. In a dreary apartment outside Moscow a secret videotape captures a man and woman making frantic love that climaxes in a murder. In the woods outside a New York City suburb an NYPD detective looks at the nude, mutilated body of a man whose violent death will lead the cop into an underground world of forbidden sexuality and international espionage.In this powerful debut novel Michael Walsh delivers an unparalleled jolt of dark, scintillating suspense that blends John Le Carre with James Ellroy. A murder mystery, a tangled espionage thriller, and a grown-up novel of desire and jealousy, Exchange Alley is a tale of truths conceived in sin and exposed in blood.Lt. Francis X. Byrne, a smart ambitious homicide detective on the rise, lives in a rundown Hell's Kitchen apartment and knows far less about his own life than he believes. Struggling with his temper, his drinking and his...