Kindle Edition Amazon In a Small Town In a Small Town Category:  Action/Thriller Publisher: Infinity Publishing ISBN-10:  0741478862 Type: Fiction Pages: 176 Copyright: Sep, 21, 2012 ISBN-13: 9780741478863 Detective Matthew Longo almost falls victim to an assassins bullet. Can he pick up the pieces and return to work or will his life spiral out of control if the secret he is protecting surfaces? The shotgun blast catches Detective Matthew Longo by surprise. His world unravels into a nightmare that seemingly won't end. Murder, rapes, pedophiles, the small town of Hutchville, N.Y. is changing. It is up to him to make a difference. While partner Donny Mello is in Italy attending a funeral for a family member who is connected, to say the least, a beautiful F.B.I. agent waits to question him about his family business. Can Matt keep from answering the Agent’s questions? More importantly, can he hide a potentially career-ending secret from his community, his brother, and most especially Agent Cynthia Shyler? Excerpt Chapter One Not In Our Town I can’t get it out of my mind. The lightning that exploded from the end of the barrel. The ripping orange flash off the black steel. The smell of gunpowder. The sound, like an M-80. And the pain—the fucking searing pain. It is permanently scorched into my memory. Everything but his face. The face I didn’t see haunts me every second. All I remember are those ultra-white Reebok sneakers as he ran away. The fucking coward would have shot me in the back, but I turned around and caught the blast in the chest. I didn’t have time to pull my Glock. The shot knocked me to the ground. I thought I was having a heart attack—I couldn’t catch my breath. Then I understood what happened, and reality hit: I was going to die. It seemed to take minutes rather than seconds, but I managed to radio into headquarters. The response from the good guys was impressive, to say the least. They saved my life. Cops from my own town and others surrounded the scene. I knew they would come. When a cop gets shot, they all come, and with one thing in mind—to find the bastard who pulled the trigger. Things grew foggy. I saw blue uniforms scurrying around the scene while white-clad EMTs lifted me onto the gurney and loaded me into the ambulance. I could hear people talking about me—reporters, other cops, curious residents. “Detective Matthew Longo…Only 29 years old, been on the force nearly 10 years…Shot in the fucking chest and shoulder. No wife or children. Parents live in town; Hutchville lifers. Oh yeah, the town is going to go batshit over this.” Blood oozed from my left shoulder. My friend and paramedic Scotty Franks hovered over me and placed direct pressure on my wound. Even through my fog I could tell he was holding back tears. My shoulder was on fire. I never wore my bulletproof vest unless making entry on a search warrant, or if a hot pursuit was coming my way; then I quickly threw it over my shirt. I was lucky I had it on that night. Maybe someone on the other side was looking out for me. I fell unconscious even with all the shouting around me. I dreamed of my funeral and who would be there. I saw myself in the blue box surrounded by a sobbing crowd of familiar faces. My parents looked horrible. My poor mother clutched her bible and rosary beads. My dad kept his eyes glued to the floor, angry and broken. My little brother Franny, in full uniform, stood near my casket at full attention, his white gloves damp from tears. Donny was there too, trying to keep it together. I heard Scotty screaming for me in the distance. The poor guy loved me, but why was he screaming my name, spitting all over my face, at my wake? Maybe I should have had a closed casket. Suddenly I felt him slapping me. I awoke and found myself back inside the ambulance. Scotty took a deep breath, in and out, and said, “Okay Matt, okay. Don’t do that again.” The pain was relentless, and I couldn’t help but cry. Scotty put a needle into an IV line in my arm and the pain vanished almost immediately. “Don’t give me morphine Scotty,” I managed to whisper. “It killed my grandparents.” Then I lost consciousness again, falling into a world between life and death. I heard someone screaming in the night. Was it me? It was too dark to see. Where’s Donny? I really needed him now. Was I dreaming again or was this some delusion of reality? I slapped myself and felt a sharp sting, jolting me awake. It has been three weeks of hell living inside this apartment. My social life has been placed on indefinite hold. The phone rings constantly but who cares? I don’t answer. The window shades are drawn. I don’t know if its day or night, and I don’t give a shit. Thankfully, the wound has been healing well. But I look at my shoulder and am repulsed by the scar and missing flesh. People say scars are sexy but this one may be the exception. My left arm is still in a sling. At times, the pain is still unbearable. The Percocet I’m still taking makes me pass out. The sink is loaded with paper dishes and plastic cups. Last week’s dinner from my mother sits on the kitchen table still wrapped in tin foil, and the smell is starting to ferment in my kitchen. I can hear my Dad’s deep voice in my head: “Why don’t you pull it together and clean up around here? You’re making your mother nervous.” She’s nervous? I can’t help laughing. Hey Dad, your oldest son was almost shot dead in the same small, safe community where we played Little League baseball. Mind if I take a week or two to let that one sink in? Only cops—and maybe some of their wives—realize how dangerous police work can become in a millisecond. Parents of cops usually choose to ignore the reality—it’s too difficult to accept that a life-or-death choice awaits their son or daughter at any moment. A bank robbery turns into a shootout; a wanted felon gets pulled over for a broken tail-light and decides suicide by cop is his only way to avoid a lengthy jail sentence. As a detective, this is my everyday reality. This isn’t supposed to happen in a small town. We’ve never had a police shooting—never. In fact, the last time we had any kind of criminal shooting was ten years ago, and it was a domestic dispute between a father and his cheating son-in-law. These old-school Italians are no joke.

Readers Favorite professional review
Reviewed by Molly Edwards for Readers Favorite

This book right here. This is it. This is what a thriller novel should be all about. I loved this book from start to finish. Mr. Di Giacomo has taken a wonderful plot line and mixed it with amazingly captivating characters and threw his readers an intense, witty debut thriller.
Well done, Mr. Di Giacomo!

Professional review by Indiereader.com
Detective Matthew Longo has shut himself in his apartment to recover from being shot in the line of duty. Drifting in and out of his private hell of anxiety, fear and depression, he relives memories of milestones in his career, the crimes he has investigated and how Donny Mello, his entrusted partner showed him the ropes. When Longo is finally able to return get back to his life, FBI Agent Cynthia Shyler approaches him with startling evidence pinpointing who shot him.

Author Marc A. Di Giacomo persuasively reveals the multifaceted emotions in the life of a young police officer – bringing out the hopeful and uplifting side that comes with naiveté and newness and so often turns into a darker and more cynical look at life and the people around him. Di Giacomo also conveys the themes of honor greed, corruption and the double-edged sword of close-knit ties within a family, community and the mob.

IN A SMALL TOWN effectively reveals the grittiness of police life, conveying a special ability to separate the experiences on the job with personal emotions for the most part, that allows the policemen to do their job without falling apart – for example, when Longo exchanges phone numbers of girls with another cop while standing over the corpse of an old woman who has died on the toilet. But, equally powerful are the moments when Longo and his co workers are unable to separate themselves from the crimes they see – and are driven to fight crime their own way.

Di Giacomo’s writing is crisp and clear and the storyline is fast moving. Longo’s character is well developed and credible, as are most of the other characters. His journey from a bright-eyed, naïve newly appointed police officer to a seasoned officer is unraveled with care to create suspense but also a bittersweet element to the story. In addition to showing the seedy aspect in some sexual episodes, the narrative effectively captures Matt’s various states of consciousness, and the adrenalin rush of the police calls. The dialogue credibly evokes police ‘lingo’ and also brings out the closeness between Longo and his brother as they banter and insult one another.

Though some of the transitions and the change of perspective are rough and distracting, and the love story element a little unnatural, the grittiness, the precariousness of life and the suspense is deftly maintained.

A powerful, insightful and moving glimpse into the life of a good cop trying to keep crime from taking over the streets and the police force in a small town.

Reviewed by Maya Fleischmann for IndieReader


I Heart Reading.com review
In A Small Town tells the not-so-small story of police detective Matthew Longo. Whenwe first meet him, he’s been shot. He wasn’t even on the job at the time, and the experience left him more than a little spooked. The small town of Hutchville is filled with criminals in all shapes and sizes from pedophiles to murderers to wifebeaters to drug dealers. But Matthew has no idea who is after him this time around, and that’s what worries him. His opponent has no face, instead he’s a shadow. And as long as he doesn’t figure out who is behind the attack, it could be anyone.

Matthew hides in his bedroom day in day out, trying to come to terms with what happened. No matter how much his parents and brother push him to go out and back to the job, he’s scared of doing so. His partner, the person he can rely on more than anything, Donny Mello, is attending a funeral in Italy, and as long as he’s not around, Matthew feels like there’s no one who has his back. But then a FBI agent pops up who has some interesting intel on the attack that nearly killed him and the person behind it.

Matthew realizes that sometimes the true villains aren’t the ones that you catch while on the job. The life of a cop is anything but simple.

I loved how the author managed to put so much reality into this book. When I read the author bio on the back, I discovered that the author is a retired police detective and well, it shows. He obviously knows what he’s talking about, both about regular police life, and about the hardships that come when something bad happens. After Matthew is shot, he goes through real pain, real fear as he tries to recuperate, and those emotions are so honest and raw that they left me more than a little impressed. While I did enjoy the side characters, and the fact that they’re all well-developed for side characters, Matthew stayed my favorite character throughout the book. Which is odd. Because Matthew isn’t your standard hero. He’s a cop, which in my book counts for at least some heroism, but he didn’t always work by the book. He tells the readers something about what happened to him and his partner Donny about halfway through the book, about how Donny reacted to a criminal by beating him to pulp, and well, it left me conflicted. I think it would leave anyone conflicted. If a person is bad enough, do you get to kill them? If you’re afraid no justice will be served, does that grant you the right to serve it yourself?

That’s one of the questions Matthew struggles with, but hardly the only one. I liked his inner turmoil. I liked the short, interesting dialogue and the vivid descriptions. The author has a gripping, suspenseful writing style that definitely kept me on the edge of my seat. The only downside of this book, in my opinion, was the romance. It didn’t work for me. Sure, there was passion, but that was about it. I can’t believe people would form a meaningful relationship in such a short period of time. It didn’t convince me, and I was actually convinced the book could do well without. The plot is more than strong enough on its own, without an added romantic subplot. But I bet some people will love the addition of romance, and it’s not so bad, nor does it slow down the plot, so I could live with it.

As far as police thrillers go, I was happily surprised by this one. It was gritty and suspensful, nothing over the top, no spectacular but near impossible heroic stunts. This is a detective thriller the way I want it to be, and I very much enjoyed reading it. If you’re a fan of the genre, you should definitely read In A Small Town. It’s a strong, powerful book by a talented author of whom I hope to read more books in the future.