FalconClaw - Fraternal

FalconClaw - Fraternal is book four in the FalconClaw Detective Series but can also be read as a standalone novel.

This continuing saga finds Detective Frank Collazo dealing with loss and the search for the maniacal killers laying waste to the mean streets of North Philly in the fall and winter of 2021.

In the words of retired FBI Criminal Profiler Douglas Cantrell, A good friend once told me that every relationship has an expiration date. And he was right. That friend was Frank Collazo.

With the loss of his father, Salvatore, at the age of only fourteen, Frank learned far too young that sometimes death ended relationships with a finality that slowly drained one's soul of any desire or willingness to carry on. He used to say that the notion of 'til death do us part' was a tragedy because someone always dies first. The living half of the relationship has to go on surviving. To go on drifting and wandering through life, its maze of uncertainty, and its caldron of loneliness and despair.

Frank would learn at a young age that the survivor who lost a loved one would sometimes wallow in hopelessness and misery, almost wishing for death. Frank knew he wouldn't live forever, and that thought was the only thing that kept him going, marching through his agonizing pain and unbearable sadness.

Editorial Review: Criminal Activity Blog: Elias J. McClellan - Crime Writer

Michael Cook's FalconClaw Fraternal takes us back to Philadelphia, the 39th District, and to our old friend, Detective Frank Colazzo. Unfortunately, it is no longer Frank's Philadelphia.

Talon and Genesis, abandoned kids working from abandoned buildings, have taken ownership of the shadows and the streets.

Like Frank and Jon "Bones" Sullivan, Frank's new partner, the cops, and Talon and Genesis, the killers, are all bound by the past. All wounded by family horror, loss, and pain. While the previous books gave us bits and pieces of familiar comfort in steamed heat and joint-aching cold on snowy mornings, winter desolation of dread permeates Fraternity, even in mid-May, where we begin. The specter of death dogs Frank's heels as he hunts the killers hunting him and other police through the dark-night Philly streets.

Every killing, every dead cop, takes a toll on Frank. Even as his friends Doug Cantrell and Captain Beatrice Jackson attempt to save him, Frank dives deeper into his investigation. Truly, he has nothing else. Exiled from his family home, alienated from new cops stumping for political advancement and old cops who see Frank as bad luck, all he has is the hunt for the killers before they kill any more of his family-in-blue.

That is both Fraternal's greatest strength and heart-aching weakness-isolation. No one is safe, and Cook deftly reminds us of this with every twist and turn. We miss Penny (Frank's wife and one-time police partner) as much as Frank does. His pain is our pain as well.

But between sleeping in cars and dodging intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, and fears, Frank hunts the hunters. The job, the only handle on life and his mental health keeps Frank moving even as it takes years off his life. Therein lies Cook's other balancing act: character development and writing development.

Frank Collazo is steadfast and dedicated, just as we remember him. But Frank's world has shifted. Cook's writing reflects the shift, the pain, and the trauma. We feel it right along with Frank.

Where his previous books were target-locked on the hunters, Frank and Penny, here we never lose touch with the predators. Cook steps out on the tightrope of his story and trusts his balance as a storyteller. It's a risk that pays off in a taut, visceral story.

Philadelphia natives will delight at recognizing factual events and factual people who fill out this fiction work. FalconClaw Fraternal is a thrilling read for a dark and stormy night.