Non-fiction: Bleak picture of a neighbourhood

The gritty, depraved, violent, drug-crazed world of Lower East Side Manhattan is nowhere more brutally portrayed than in Alphaville. It is so good that it could be fiction. Therein lies the shock factor — the horrendous community being described stems from the memories of two New York cops who worked towards cleaning up the city in the 1980s.

Gun crime, gangster violence and addicts peddling heroin are daily encounters for Mike Codella and his partner, Gio.

By 1988, murder, rape and violence levels were hitting highs that had never been recorded before and the drug problem was almost out of control.

The daily beat might take Codella and his partner to hell and back but they persevered for one goal: to capture the increasingly reclusive, murderous druglord Davey Blue Eyes. Considering that no one knew what he looked like (or were going to describe him), this was no easy task.

Codella had been a policeman for 20 years, having worked and supervised in the DEA, Secret Service Task Force, Special Fraud Squad, Missing Person's Squad, Operation 8 and other units. He retired in 2003. Alphaville has been written from the authors' memories and information from some court transcripts and affidavits.

Bruce Bennett lived on the Lower East Side for 20 years, including during the period the book covers. His work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, among other publications. For Alphaville — a nickname for Alphabet City, New York — he spoke to friends from the area, who shared their stories with him anonymously.

The bleak city's description is reminiscent of the hardboiled detective novels of the 1920s, though it is not as romantic as the black-and-white films portraying steaming drains and car headlights flicking past men hiding their faces in the collars of large trenchcoats, hiding in alley shadows.

"Smack was like an X-ray flashing through every apartment, every business, every life in that teeming patch-work neighbourhood. It rippled out from the Avenue D projects like a shockwave. Junkies and non-junkies ran a gauntlet of lowlife rip-off artists that began at the foot of the buildings. Loose gangs of neighbourhood kids were only too happy to risk juvenile detention for the pleasure of cracking open a head and taking drug money or milk money for a kid's breakfast. Vomit, steaming in the summer and frozen solid in the winter, decorated sidewalks, park benches, and stoops whenever a new shipment of dope was strong enough to cause even seasoned addicts to empty their stomachs after snorting or booting it up."

Codella and Gio are greeted by a host of characters on their daily rounds. Pablo Escobar "Medellin Cartel kingpin", takes a memento from each of his ordered kills. A tooth — canine or molar — is pulled from each victim and kept in a jar.

"Lopez flashes the jar like a badge, gently clicking the contents like a voodoo rattle," the authors write.

After Escobar starts to sell dope on Davey's patch, a short territorial fight ensues and the latter emerges victor. Driving past some associates, Davey indicates who is boss.

"Davey looks through the glass at the three men and shakes it. They hear the shake loud and clear and get the meaning even clearer — ‘you may work for Lopez but he works for me now. Respect that or you'll be making this jar louder next time.'"

Forensic Science in the 1980s was still gaining its credibility, methods were being developed and forensic DNA technology was not readily available.

Alphaville is not just an account of drug addicts needling themselves to death on the streets of New York but a historical account of policework. Trials, tribulations, hard graft, death, decay and dope.

Alphaville: 1988, Crime, Punishment, and the Battle for New York City's Lower East SideBy Michael Codella and Bruce Bennett, Thomas Dunne, 320 pages, $25.99