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Angela Amato is a former NYPD detective who left the
force and became a Legal Aid attorney. Angela Amato is a co-author of Lady Gold.
Publisher’s Weekly said of Lady Gold,
“Long on atmosphere but short on action, this first novel by former NYPD detective Amato and Sharkey (author of the
true-crime book Above Suspicion, 1993) describes the unlikely friendship between a small-time informer and a street-smart
New York cop at a turning point in her personal and professional life. When 30-year-old Detective Gerry Conte is assigned
to keep an eye on Eugene Rossi, who has promised to rat on his mob-underboss uncle, she feels contempt for the preening, volatile
young con and doubts that his information will prove useful. But as time goes by, she develops sympathy for Eugene, who, she
realizes, was tricked into cooperating with the police through his naïveté and poor reading skills. Meanwhile,
Eugene shows a surprisingly gentle side: he helps insecure Gerry gain confidence in her body by taking her to the gym and,
through his trust in her, gives her faith in her own judgment even as their friendship upsets Gerry's live-in lover, a
fellow cop who already resents her early success and her ambition to become a lawyer. Whether Amato and Sharkey are describing
a seedy Italian pastry shop or the resignation of a hardworking woman who's learned to make the best of an imperfect life,
they are adept at evoking places and mood, and the story of Gerry's friendship with Eugene is surprisingly moving. Unfortunately,
the plot is episodic and meandering which makes for a fine portrayal of an honorable cop's workaday life but also for
a less than thrilling story.”
One reader of Lady Gold said,
“The action is enough to carry the story, but the main strength of this book is that it is intelligently written. As
an avid reader, I have read my share of action/detective stories, and, unlike many, this one really holds together tightly.Lady Gold tells the story of a female in a still-male world,
and the subplots hold up as well as the main story line. I read the book in an afternoon/evening--a classic case of "I
couldn't put it down". I can't wait for the movie and the sequel!”
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From the History
of the New York Police Department Another ordinance authorized the Special Justices, from time to time, to select such of the Constables
or marshals as they might deem requisite, to act as Police officers, whose duty it should be to attend daily at the Police
offices and execute the commands and orders of the said Justices.
The Five Points, of New York, has acquired
a most notorious distinction. Originally, it was a low, swampy pond, which was gradually filled up, and as it became susceptible
of occupation, it in time became the abiding place of an impoverished and desolate population, such as always exist in larger
cities. The locality, however, by degrees, grew to be so notoriously disorderly that it was common for persons from the country
to request the protection of the Police that they might visit the scenes of crime and dissipation rampant there at all times.
There were, it was popularly believed, underground passages connecting blocks of houses on different streets, and the well-known
names of Cow Bay and Murderer's Alley were suggestively characteristic of the place. Neither education nor religion shed
its softening and refining influence upon the abandoned creatures who formed this colony. This is the startling picture drawn
of the Five Points, at a time that religious influences were beginning to eradicate this moral plague spot:
Source: Our Police Protectors Holice and Debbie
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