Title: Dead I Well May Be
Author: Adrian McKinty
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Publisher: Pocket Books
Copyright: 2003
ISBN: 0743470567
Pages: 367
Keywords: crime
Reading period: 4 July, 2007

Michael Forsythe is an illegal immigrant from Northern Ireland, working for a crime boss in Harlem in 1992. When he sleeps with his boss's girlfriend, he and three others are set up to take the fall for a drug bust in Mexico. He breaks out of a hellhole prison, losing a foot and his friends along the way, and makes his way back to New York to exact revenge.

McKinty writes lush, atmospheric prose, with a good turn in dialog. Forsythe grows from a bright, feckless teenager, with a future ahead of him in crime, into a hardened, vengeful survivor.