Question: Tell us a little about Detective Yablonsky, the tough, relentless, "only slightly crooked" cop who first appeared in The Bone Orchard and is now back again in The Shooting Gallery. What does "slightly crooked" mean?

Training ground for the Luchese and Gambino mob families. Guys from this street hand - the name New Lots Boys, June 1942 bolted with rivets into the sidewalk - were killing kids since they were 15 years old. Gang died out there in the 1970s.

Answer: Though I had already published a book of poetry and a novel Abu, I was in my mid to late 30s when I thought about what topic I really knew about - murder and crime. In analyzing the structure of mystery/crime novels, everything fell into place once I decided that my detective grew up in East New York like I did. The hundreds of violent incidents I saw, knew of and participated in became Yablonsky's too. He's a very street-smart cop, as I had to be to survive on the streets of East New York. He's a tough guy, but not a hard guy.

Question: There are a number of truly crooked cops in this novel, how do you feel about having such characters in light of September 11?

Answer: When I grew up it was common knowledge, like in Goodfellas, that most cops in East New York were crooked, although occasionally they would make sorties out of their precincts and collar a couple of criminals. But this seldom happened. As Nick Pileggi pointed out in his book Wiseguys, East New York at the time was much more violent and anarchistic than Harlem. I grew up knowing that you or anyone else could kill a person and get away with it. The reason I kept my knowledge of the murders I saw - which were two - was that I knew my father believed in the police, would tell them, then the cops would inform the murderers and I'd endanger my family.

As far as today, the cops are tremendously courageous, but there is always corruption whenever people have power or want power. This will never be eradicated as long as people wants things and remain people. Take a look at any NYC daily and you'll see that the good and the bad still exist side by side as Mario Puzo wrote in his great crime novel The Godfather.

A landmark in East New York/Brownsville. Joe almost killed a guy who mugged his brother outside this store.

Question: Why did it take you 8 years to write the sequel?

Answer: Like many of the successful writers I know, I wish that I could write books quicker. Like many authors, I was trying to write the best book I could and my research and my methods took five years to outline. The writing and revising took another three. The pay-off is the response I've gotten from other writers, people who've read the bound galleys and have called me up to plead for the lives of some of these characters. People who've read the book are already repeating some of their favorite aphorisms and expressions in the novel. The amount of attention within the industry has been gratifying to say the least.

Question: Throughout The Shooting Gallery, many characters get second chances to make good in the world, yet they often fall short, if not utterly fail. What's your take on second chances?

Answer: The shrewdest statement I've ever read about human nature comes from the Jewish Talmud, which says those who are merciful to the cruel are destined to be cruel to the merciful. This means that if you forgive everyone everything and make excuses for them, then you yourself will lose your moral compass and be unable to recognize evil when it strikes. In my opinion, second chances where prison is concerned should happen rarely because it places society at risk. Why should society and all our families be placed at risk so a criminal can get a second chance?

Typical houses on Linden Boulevard. Gangs of wild dogs roamed these sewerless streets. These roads weren't even paved back in the 1950s and 1960s. Sometimes Joe couldn't tell if he was in a third world country or East New York.

The Shooting Gallery is an attempt to answer Victor Hugo's great novel Les Miserables in that all of the suspects have gotten second or third chances. Unlike Hugo's novel, I made the Chavert, the relentless detective, the hero and several of the suspects the villains.

Question: You've said that those with intimate knowledge of crime usually write the best crimes novels. Why are you so qualified?

Answer: I spent more than 18 years on the street in a neighborhood that has been referred to by other writers as one of the toughest slums in the country. I, myself, got into 90 street or fist fights in and around East New York. My friend Tommy Abruzzo says it best - if you got out of East New York alive and uncrippled, you knew how to handle yourself.

A number of cops who've read my books have told me that they are amazed at how realistic they seem. This is because just after witnessing and fighting in the street, when I write about the violence my character encounters, unfortunately, I know what I'm talking about. I know what it's like to have my hands around someone's throat. I know what it's like to be chased by gangs, shimming up telephone poles to run on garage rooftops. I know what it's like to have thirty guys after me just like in the movie On the Waterfront. I also know what it's like to be part of a gang of thirty guys looking to kill or cripple the people who just jumped one of your friends.

As a fat, shrimpy, four-eyed, baby-faced kid trying to survive there, I never in a million years thought I'd get a career from what I experienced.

Question: But it wasn't until your mid-twenties that you started talking about the neighborhood you were raised in. What opened you up?

Answer: I never talked or discussed what I had witnessed or experienced. After reading Robert Grave's book I, Claudius, I perceived that in order to survive physically and mentally I had to act as if I didn't know what was going on or react to it. So I was used to never discussing these things. My father was a very tough guy, survived Brownsville, and murder incorporated, during the Depression. Except for one or two incidents, I knew that I would not go running to my father.

However you grow up is normal to you. I didn't think there was anything unusual about the way I grew up until my late twenties. I became friendly with two guys and when they talked about growing up and playing at the park in Flatbush - a nice neighborhood - I told them that there were areas I couldn't go because New Lots Boys were waiting in the trees to drop bricks on your head. When they talked about riding their bikes, I told them that if I rode a bike on Linden Boulevard, packs of wild dogs that hung around the nearby sanitation dump to feast on the garbage and murdered bodies, would attack. This happed to two of my friends who were foolish enough to try and ride to Howard Beach.

My friends looked at me in disbelief and said, but Jewish boys aren't supposed to grow up like that. It occurred to me then that people were fascinated by these stories and I could use them and the violence I saw as a way to write crime novels. But it took years to be able to write about the violence objectively because it took time for it to get far enough away from the surface.

Question: Tell us about New York as a character in this novel.

Answer: That's always been part of my writing goals. My first book of poetry was called Streets, in which each poem was about neighborhood characters and the lives they lived. In my first novel, Abu, I used Jerusalem as a character - its moods and beauty.

With New York, there's only one way to write about the city which so many writers have written about before: to write about it as if no one had ever written about it before. That way, if your successful, everything is fresh. New York is a great city with tons of interesting stories. As the television crime show Naked City used to say: There are 8 million people and 8 million stories in the naked city. Now there are 10 million people, so I've got another 2 million more stories to write.

Question: Much of the action in The Shooting Gallery revolves around the lives of people who work at the left wing weekly, The Village Guardian. Why a liberal weekly?

Answer: First, most authors write about daily reporters and I wanted something different. Second, I had sources at primarily left-wing newspapers and magazine and knew about what went on there. I thought it would be new and refreshing - instead of a major NY Daily. I was looking for something new. At a weekly, you have a group of people who tend to be advocates rather than objective reporters. That leaves a lot open for interpretation and questions about advocacy journalism.

Question: In The Bone Orchard, and again in The Shooting Gallery, Detective Yablonsky tries to solve very high-profile Manhattan murders. How do you come up with your crimes?

Answer: I tried very hard to come up with a new scam and motive for murder. A new reason for one person to kill another. I get my ideas from everything -- TV shows, movies, reading, overhearing dialogue and paying attention to stories about corruption. I don't watch many TV cop shows, though, because I don't want them to influence me. It was hard to do, but writers as wonderful as Norman Mailer, Peter Straub, Tony Hillerman, Joe Gores and Loren Estleman, were kind enough to write that I've succeeded.