DEATH BEFORE COFFEE

By 2:27 on a Thursday afternoon, the one-legged man from Room 8 at 147 Loxitor Avenue had been beaten to death with a lead pipe. Twenty-eight minutes later, Detective Mike O’Shea is testifying in a stuffy courtroom, unaware that, within an hour, he will be standing in an alleyway littered with beer cans and condoms while his new partner uses a ballpoint pen to flick bugs off of a battered corpse. When a rogue undercover copper leaves Mike balancing what is legal with what is right, an unlikely rapport develops between Mike and the lead homicide investigator, a cop’s cop in stilettos. At the end of his seventy-two-hour shift, three men are dead, and Mike O’Shea is floating in and out of consciousness in an emergency room hallway, two women by his side.

In the second book of The Mike O’Shea Series, Death Before Coffee weaves a homicide investigation through the life of an inner-city police detective intent on balancing his responsibilities as a son, brother, and newly single father with his sworn oath of duty and the promise he made himself to find the man who murdered his former partner.

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"Riveting. Edgy. Thrilling. Real. You enter the world of real policing, where personalities collide, emotions run high, and cops express how they really feel. You are in the thick of things, from personal lives to the daily grind. You have a front row seat to the investigative process and the conflicts that arise trying to do the right thing all while trying to find a decent cup of coffee."

~ Donato (Dan) Sinisi, author of The Art of Private Patrol:

What You Really Need to Know and Keep Yourself Safe

"The details Desmond P. Ryan uses to describe the gritty city underbelly in Death Before Coffee could only be written by a police detective who has walked dark alleys, stood over bodies, and has more than a passing familiarity with seedy street lizards who hide in shadows. Ryan’s flair for painting a vivid picture puts you right beside Detective Mike O’Shea and I found myself continually looking for parallels between Ryan’s characters and the officers I have known over the years. A great read for crime fiction lovers.

~ Cal Miller, Toronto Star retired crime reporter