Blood from a Shadow (Con Maknazpy Book 1)

“We are in the realm of tough guys doing tough guy things against other tough guys. There is something about author Gerard Cappa’s style, as well as his hero Con Maknazpy, that carries echoes of Dashiell Hammett and the Continental Op.” San Francisco Book Review


I read a lot of what might be called “noir thrillers,” and I ask myself where the critique of the 21st century “Chinatown” is going to come from. Speaking directly to supra-national, neo-liberal depredation, Jean-Patrick Manchette and Don Delillo (in Point Omega) are matched by Gerard Cappa, in Black Boat Dancing and his earlier Blood from a Shadow . As with noir of the mid-20th century, protagonists are not destroyed but potentially redeemed by their own sin and suffering. They force their humanity to come to life. The ultimate 21st century heroism is to struggle for the control of one’s own destiny. Con Maknazpy’s struggle is a remarkable example - Jay A Gertzman, Pulp According to David Goodis


Very strong characters and beautifully written” Duygu Altinok, Istanbul

“On one level, it can be read as a page-turner, and on that level it works perfectly. I can recommend it highly to anyone who wants thrills from beginning to end and value for their money.
But Cappa does not present Con solely as a mindless Rambo figure. Although limited by the cultural boundaries of his upbringing, Con is an observer who becomes aware of the men, women and children he sees in Iraq and Turkey and realizes that the people who have been misrepresented to him as primitive and violent are, in many ways, equal or superior to the ones he comes from, which have been waging terrible warfare and attempted genocide on the rest of the world since the beginning of the modern era.
So, on another level, this book can be read as a scathing indictment of what Northern Irish bigotry, American redneck patriotism, the billions of Western dollars invested in weapons and men of mass destruction, what Eisenhower described as the “military-industrial complex”, and the wish to transform the rest of the world into fawning clones of Western democracy can do to their own trusting children: make monsters of them.
In this novel, Con begins to doubt the ideology that formed him: he cannot ignore the finer points of the people and cultures he has been trained to destroy. That is what makes Blood from a Shadow even more than an action thriller.”
John J Gaynard, author of ‘Green Blood is for France’

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“Red herrings abound, and false leads. The Turkish sections become very intricate, so the busy plot demands patience amidst the threats and mayhem, as in the midst of rapid movements and conversations with which I sought to keep up. Similarly, its New York scenes turn as energetically as a quickly edited sequence from a film such as ‘The Bourne Identity’.” - Fionnchú, Los Angeles, Amazon Top 500
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“Whether it’s through this literary subtext or whether it’s through the strengths in the writing itself, it does have an indefinable quality and true originality, finding a way to delve into a particularly Irish sensibility that has deep historical and mythological roots in its connection with the United States, and it places an unusual spin on a conventional genre that at times gives it an almost otherworldly quality.”
Keris Nine, Amazon Top 500 Reviewer

“This kind of talent is something seen in the great and famous writers around the world, and Cappa is a great writer” Dragonmount Books, Brazil