Keeplock

Name: Keeplock
Author: Stephen Solomita

A repeat offender freshly sprung from prison tries to do the impossible: Stay out trouble
Peter Frangello hasn’t spent three straight years out of jail since he was sixteen. Now past thirty, he’s nearing parole when his prison block neighbor is burned alive in his cell, a vicious attack that was intended for Frangello himself. He spends his last week in protective custody, and when he is released back into the world he makes a resolution to stay clean—not for morality’s sake, but because if he goes back inside, the next hit won’t miss. But for a man whose only skills are stealing and doing time, staying out of trouble is not easy. As old associates and an army of crooked cops put pressure on him, Frangello will find that, inside or out, he’s doomed to remain a prisoner for life.

Stephen Solomita

Stephen Solomita (b. 1943) is an American author of thrillers. Born in Bayside, Queens, he worked as a cab driver before becoming a novelist in the late 1980’s. His first novel, A Twist of the Knife (1988) won acclaim for its author’s intimate knowledge of New York’s rough patches, and for a hardboiled style that raised a gritty look at urban terrorism above the level of a typical thriller. Solomita wrote six more novels starring the disaffected NYPD cop Stanley Moodrow, concluding the series with Damaged Goods (1996). Solomita continued writing in the same hardboiled style, producing tough, standalone novels like Mercy Killing (2009) and Angel Face (2011). Under the pseudonym David Cray, he writes gentler thrillers such as Dead Is Forever (2004), a traditional mystery in the mode of Ellery Queen. His most recent novel is Dancer In The Flames (2012). He continues to live and write in New York City.