MARTIN QUINN is both a crime story and a psychological novel. In custody for the double homicide of his best friend, Felix, and an old enemy, Terry Hughes, Martin Quinn has to decide whether to turn state’s evidence and gain protection by delivering up the rest of the gangsters he knows, or keep his mouth shut and face the wrath of his dead best friend’s father, the head of the Russian Mafia in New York. The choice becomes clear when the old man tries to have him killed at the arraignment, but the more Martin thinks over the things that got them all to the breaking point, the clearer it becomes that he should do the old-fashioned “honorable” thing - keep dumb. Fair enough. In doing so, he’ d forever gain the respect of the passing generation of Italian gangsters who helped raise him. But what could he lose? Penelope. His best friend’s widow. His own first love. Plus the fortune in heroin stake money that he stashed in a storage unit downtown. Maybe he’ll go for it all - the girl, the bread, the honorable reputation. Much stands in his way, of course: former heroin partners, the Federal agents who have him in custody, his own unrelenting conscience. Still, though, he’s going to go for it.