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When ex-con Paco Johnson turns up dead the day after his release from prison, James Beck is distraught. Johnson had saved his sanity sixteen years earlier when he was first released into the prison population after sixty days in SHU, by befriending him and showing him how to survive in a violent maximum-security prison in upstate New York.
Beck was exonerated from the crime of murder, was paid a large settlement which he has been using to fight the crime that the NYPD either ignores or is implicated in. And he had just finished securing Paco's release. To up the stakes, the whole criminal world of the Bronx has somehow gotten involved in the investigation of Paco's death.
The NYPD is represented by a young and ambitious detective, John Palmer, who is anxious to solve his first murder. There are plenty of murders as the story progresses and Palmer settles on James Beck as the one he wants to take down.
Over on the gang side is Amelia, Paco's daughter, who has been forced into prostitution by her poverty at 16 years old. Somehow she has gotten in the sights of her pimp who is about to kill her when she gets her hands on a gun and shoots him in the face in front of Beck's crew.
Beck's crew is made up of three dudes, all ex-cons with the righteous goal of bringing down the Bronx gangs, especially their prostitution rings. Manny, Ciro, and Demarco, with Beck as their leader, must fight to save themselves from the bad guys and the police while protecting Amelia, who is running from her pimp's gang while shooting anyone who gets in her way.
As the plot thickens and the fights to the death mount up, we discover that the cops and the prison guards are involved in another prostitution ring in upstate New York, servicing the prison guards. However, we still do not know who killed Paco, the man Beck has sworn to take out. It looks like the police are getting close to taking Beck and his gang out, and it looks like they will finish Amelia off as well.
The dénouement of this intricate plot is very well staged, as exciting as a wild western, and the surprise ending really does not free anyone from guilt.
I suppose it is an unhealthy pleasure to root for a gang of vigilantes who spread mayhem and murder. But in the world of BRONX REQUIEM, the criminality, the violence and the corruption leave us no one to trust other than these righteous men trying to set things right. And of course, Beck, Manny, Ciro and Demarco are as cool and loveable as anyone you might meet in the Bronx.
§ Susan Hoover is a playwright, independent producer and retired college English teacher. She lives in Nova Scotia.
Reviewed by Susan Hoover, December 2016
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