Alphaville

Alphabet City in 1988 was burned with heroin, radicalism, and anti-police sentiment. Working as a plainclothes narcotics cop in the most high-voltage neighbourhood in Manhattan, Detective Sergeant Mike Codella made it his personal mission to put away Davie Blue Eyes - a stone-cold murderer and the head of Alphabet City's heroin supply chain. In this gritty memoir, Codella resurrects the vicious streets that Davie Blue Eyes owned, and tells the story of how he and his partner Gio bagged the forty thieves that surrounded Davie, slowly working their way to the head of the snake one scale at a time. Shining a cool light into the parallel forces, struggles, and stories that transformed the neighbourhood, Codella makes it clear that through all the beatings and gunshots, the foot chases and close calls, he and Gio both saw Alphabet City the same way: worth saving. With the narrative spirit of "The French Connection", the straight-up voice of Ed Conlon's "Blue Blood", and the insights of "Ladies and Gentlemen, "The Bronx Is Burning", "Alphaville" is at once the story of an NYPD detective, and of New York City itself.