A Couple of Cops: On the Street, in the Crime Lab - Hardcover

Cuomo, George

9780679418511: A Couple of Cops: On the Street, in the Crime Lab

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679418512 ISBN 13: 9780679418511

Publisher: Random House, 1995

A portrait of two crimefighters--street-wise veteran John Cuomo and Al Della Penna, a young college graduate--and their adventures and misadventures shares insights into the law enforcement profession. 25,000 first printing.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly:

This is the story of the author's two cousins: Al Della Penna, detective sergeant and chief firearms examiner with Long Island's Suffolk County Police Department, and John Cuomo, detective second grade, NYPD. Their stories are related in the first person, with author narratives interspersed throughout. Della Penna, the suburban senior crime scene investigator, tells how evidence is collected and why he is wary of the press ("They want news. I want evidence"). He takes us to the scene of the murder of a middle-class housewife, who was found naked, strangled and stabbed, and describes how he nabbed a local punk for the vicious murder. He takes us on the case that became the basis for The Amityville Horror-a boy's murder of his parents and his four siblings-and why some questions regarding it are still unanswered. Detective Cuomo, a natural-born storyteller, regales us with tales of life as a Big Apple cop. Starting out in 1954 in Spanish Harlem's 25th Precinct, he was soon working narcotics in the Bronx, earning his detective's shield. He relates how his investigation of a homicide of an insurance broker with mob ties set him up for an indictment for bribery, which was eventually dropped. As graphic as it is interesting, Cuomo's (Trial by Water) portrait of two very different cousin cops makes exciting reading. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

Novelist Cuomo found inspiration close to home for this rambling and episodic nonfiction narrative. His cousins, who became cops, talk about their careers, one on the mean streets of Harlem and the Bronx, the other as a firearms specialist in a crime lab in suburban Long Island. A Couple of Cops is surprising and engaging. It offers little in the way of excitement, danger, or derring-do. The only shots fired are for ballistics tests, and both cops remind the reader that solving crimes is more about profoundly dumb lawbreakers than about brilliant police work. These cops aren't crusaders, heroes, or real-life Dirty Harrys. They're just a couple of cops, and their experiences illuminate real life in a way that novels, films, and television rarely do. Thomas Gaughan

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.