Steve Bassett Father Divines Bikes

Offering an extensive look inside the history and urban problems — and how they began — in post-World War II Newark, New Jersey like never before, author Steve Bassett releases the first in the trilogy, Father Divine’s Bikes. In this noir crime thriller, Bassett melds character, time and place into a mosaic that uncovers the plight of a city on a downward spiral immediately after the war, a time when our nation was basking in the afterglow of victory.

A gangster war, three murders, a gun-toting paperboy, and the numbers racket lay bare a dark, compelling story in a world of poverty and hopelessness from which there is little hope of escape. In the autumn of 1945, a battle rages when the city’s competing mobs end their truce. When it gets bloody, other criminal forces are ready to move in. Citywide corruption is endemic. Bookies using Father Divine’s controversial International Peace Mission Movement as a front, recruit two Catholic altar boys, Joey Bancik and Richie Maxwell, to run numbers under the guise of newspaper routes. The boys quickly realize they are players in a dangerous game, but the easy money is too good to pass up. They are now petty criminals and being hauled into juvie court is a risk they’re willing to take. Two homicide detectives track Joey to a luxury apartment, but arrive too late to prevent the inevitable. Joey’s body lay in a pool of blood on the basement floor.