9 BRONX WEEKLY June 16, 2019 www.BXTimes.com
Crime novel’s TN setting hints at author’s Bronx stint
Author William Boyle might be wearing a Brooklyn Dodgers cap at an event for his latest crime novel, A Friend Is A Gift You Give Yourself, but his obvious familiarity with Throggs Neck,
where much of the book is set, hints at the time he spent living in that Bronx neighborhood. PHOTO BY JOHN ROCHE
BY JOHN ROCHE
Author William Boyle has come to be
both critically acclaimed and well-known
for writing about his native Brooklyn,
but his latest crime novel gives away one
of the ‘plot twists’ in Boyle’s own life.
Not only is much of A Friend Is A Gift
You Give Yourself set in the Bronx, but
its rich detail also hints that the writer
spent some time living in Throggs Neck.
The novel, hailed as ‘Goodfellas meets
Thelma & Louise,’ begins in Brooklyn
but quickly heads to Silver Beach, and
the names of some characters might
sound familiar to longtime residents,
as will settings, especially many of the
real life bars of Throggs Neck, including
Alfi e’s and the now-closed Clipper and
Charlie’s Inn.
There’s good reason for that: Boyle
married into the Farrell family, who
owned the popular bar Farrell’s on East
Tremont Avenue and Sampson Avenue
that later became McGinnis & Farrell’s.
When Boyle and his girlfriend Katie
Farrell lived on Quincy Avenue from 2006
to 2008, he and Katie—who he married
during that two-year span in Throggs
Neck—spent a good amount of time in
the watering holes of the neighborhood,
either on their own or with Katie’s uncle
Bobby Farrell, whose house they were
living in. Kate’s uncle Bobby, along with
her father John, remain popular fi gures
in the neighborhood, especially with
anyone who has spent any time in bars
throughout Throggs Neck over the past
50 years.
A Friend Is A Gift You Give Yourself by William
Boyle is a madcap, mobbed-up crime
novel that’s been described as “Goodfellas
meets Thelma & Louise.”
“It was magical,” Boyle recalled of
that pivotal time in his life, when he
began writing crime fi ction in earnest
while teaching English at Iona Prep and
also teaching as an adjunct at SUNY Maritime.
“As Bobby Farrell’s niece and John
Farrell’s daughter, Katie was royalty. As
soon as we’d show up, people would start
buying us drinks. I loved hearing about
the neighborhood through the stories I’d
listen to at the bar.”
After a few hours in the afternoon
spent with the old-timers and other
regulars at bars along Tremont, he’d go
home and write. Many of those Throggs
Neck-based short stories found their way
into magazines such as Thuglit, Out of
the Gutter and Plots With Guns. Those
same pieces of crime fi ction were later
published in his fi rst book, a short story
collection titled Death Don’t Have No
Mercy.
“When I wasn’t working, I spent my
time pretty evenly between the library
or in bars, or just walking around,” he
said. “I’d been to the neighborhood several
times before we moved there, but I
got to know it really well in those couple
of years living there. It remains one of
my favorite places.”
No wonder, then, that Throggs Neck
takes center-stage in A Friend Is A Gift
You Give Yourself, a gritty, madcap novel
set in 2006 that kicks off with the main
character, Brooklyn mob widow Rena
Ruggiero, cracking her Viagra-popping
neighbor over the head with an ashtray
when he makes an unwanted move on
her.
Rena takes off in her neighbor’s old
Impala, heading to Silver Beach, where
her estranged daughter and granddaughter
live. Throw their neighbor, Lacey
‘Wolfi e’ Wolfstein, a former porn star,
and a bunch of pissed-off mobsters into
the mix, and it’s easy to see how, as one
fellow writer put it, “a thunderous locomotive
of a novel, driven by remarkable
characters and sparkling dialogue…
dark wit and piercing insight” unfolds in
A Friend Is A Gift You Give Yourself.
Like his earlier acclaimed literary
crime novels Gravesend and The Lonely
Witness, Boyle’s latest book brings the
setting to life virtually as another character
in the story, but this time around,
it’s primarily the Bronx instead of
Brooklyn.
“I like exploring the mythology of
the city through smaller lives,” Boyle
explained. “I like the way those neighborhoods
can feel like small towns. My
neighborhood in Brooklyn—or neighborhoods,
really, since I grew up on the
border of Gravesend and Bensonhurst—
have a lot in common with Throggs
Neck, or at least they did at some point.
But there are big differences too, one being
the lack of a bar culture in my part
of Brooklyn, or really anything cultural
that’s not food-related. But also, I was always
struck by the sense of community
in Throggs Neck. My neighborhood in
Brooklyn might have been like that once,
but by the time I was growing up, it felt a
lot more like everyone was just watching
out for themselves.”
Boyle, who now lives with his wife
and family in Oxford, Mississippi, also
has another feather in his cap indicating
that he might have been born in
Brooklyn, but can be counted among
true Bronxites: He had to battle it out
with copyeditors working on A Friend
Is A Gift You Give Yourself over the fact
that the neighborhood of Throggs Neck
is spelled with two ‘Gs,’ while the bridge
and expressway only have one. “That’s
what Katie’s family tells me is right,” he
said.
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