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Null & Boyd Noir #1
Condition Zero: A Null & Boyd Noir
They say dead survivors don’t last too long in Boston.
They haven’t met Null & Boyd.
Detective Lieutenant Kay Boyd, head of Boston’s Organized Crime Task Force, saw her husband and children butchered by Boston’s rising crime crew “The Family.” Gambler junkie Joseph X. Null, a former low-level bagman for “The Family,” was tortured by their chief enforcer until he lost his mind.
Due to an experimental therapy to bring him back from a mutilated, catatonic state, Null recovered everything but his humanity, remaining in effect a chemically reconstructed psychopath. A one-man killing machine now, his single-minded mission is to whack out “The Family” down to its last man. A conflicted Boyd is out to stop him, even though the Boston Police Department unofficially couldn’t care less about “who takes out the trash.”
Believing he’s owed a debt, and having once been her CI, Null wants to recruit Boyd to help him destroy “The Family.”
When Boyd lost her family, she became a functional alcoholic, unable to deal with her guilt and grief. Like Null, she too is maimed. Null and Boyd may be different from each other, but they’re also exactly the same. "Dead survivors." And “The Family’s ace hitman Theron “Thing” LeCoeur is out to remove the “survivor” part from their mutual equation permanently.
They haven’t met Null & Boyd.
Detective Lieutenant Kay Boyd, head of Boston’s Organized Crime Task Force, saw her husband and children butchered by Boston’s rising crime crew “The Family.” Gambler junkie Joseph X. Null, a former low-level bagman for “The Family,” was tortured by their chief enforcer until he lost his mind.
Due to an experimental therapy to bring him back from a mutilated, catatonic state, Null recovered everything but his humanity, remaining in effect a chemically reconstructed psychopath. A one-man killing machine now, his single-minded mission is to whack out “The Family” down to its last man. A conflicted Boyd is out to stop him, even though the Boston Police Department unofficially couldn’t care less about “who takes out the trash.”
Believing he’s owed a debt, and having once been her CI, Null wants to recruit Boyd to help him destroy “The Family.”
When Boyd lost her family, she became a functional alcoholic, unable to deal with her guilt and grief. Like Null, she too is maimed. Null and Boyd may be different from each other, but they’re also exactly the same. "Dead survivors." And “The Family’s ace hitman Theron “Thing” LeCoeur is out to remove the “survivor” part from their mutual equation permanently.
338 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 14, 2021
3 people are currently reading
5 people want to read
About the author
Gary S. Kadet
12 books2 followersGary S. Kadet was a journalist for 15 years working the crime, arts and general assignments beats for such newspapers as the Boston Herald, Globe and the Quincy Patriot Ledger. He was the Crime Editor for the nationally read Boston Book Review and wrote for Playboy Magazine, which published his fiction. He also ran the world's tenth-largest adult website and was a trailblazer in the early years of the Internet. He's the author of the literary thriller/romance novel "D/s - an Anti-Love Story" with Tor/Forge/Macmillan which was a main selection of the Doubleday book-of-the-month-club. The work broke new ground in detailing the seamy side of real-world (non-fantasy) BDSM, much to the chagrin of its self-appointed "community," who felt threatened by this work of fiction (in the same way bogus preachers felt about Sinclair Lewis' "Elmer Gantry"). Not shying away from controversy, his newest work is the literary novel "The Ogre Life," which on the surface is about the world of bodybuilding and all its attendant sexual fetishism, sleaze and drug use, but which actually questions the meaning of reality itself.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 14, 2023
I'm not sure how I feel recommending a book that is only 1/3 of a complete series. But here I go. I read it. I liked it. And I think you will too. Of course, I could have read the second and third parts to figure out whether it is truly worth reading, but I have a feeling everything is gonna be OK.
The characters have Netflix series written all over them. I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't already in development. Taking place in Boston (always a great crime location as you can put up with the accents), we have a good cop whose husband and children are not just killed but dissected like the star frog in an AP Bio class. Lieutenant Kay Boyd is left to pick up the pieces and that means tangling with the worst Beantown has to offer.
The characters have Netflix series written all over them. I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't already in development. Taking place in Boston (always a great crime location as you can put up with the accents), we have a good cop whose husband and children are not just killed but dissected like the star frog in an AP Bio class. Lieutenant Kay Boyd is left to pick up the pieces and that means tangling with the worst Beantown has to offer.
Displaying 1 of 1 review