Praise for Heavy Sugar
“Boyle skillfully captures the Brooklyn scene and its malcontents, with an emphasis on family. With comic surprises at every turn, the novel is nonstop entertainment.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Boyle follows up the wonderful Saint of the Narrows Street (2025) with this dark comedy featuring the kind of frenetic story filmmakers Preston Sturges or Frank Capra might have had a great time with. Set over the course of a single day in the early 1990s, the story is about an ex-con, a stolen baseball, and a rather eccentric journey of self-discovery.”
—Booklist
“Humor, mob action, betrayal, guns, and family secrets, and wait! a little bit of magical realism too—are all part of this hard driving contemporary noir that is impossible to put down.”
—firstCLUE Reviews
“Boyle’s books strike a coveted balance between grace and grit . . . Arguably his best work yet.”
—The Local Voice
“William Boyle’s Brooklyn is a place where bad decisions become destiny and screwups get one last shot at grace. Foul-mouthed, big-hearted, and gloriously unhinged, this is a wild, funny, deeply tender ride—a love letter to losers, lovers, and all the things we steal because we can’t figure out how to ask for what we really want.”
—Ivy Pochoda, author of These Women
“Thomas Wolfe wrote ‘only the dead know Brooklyn’ and far be it from me to disrespect him, but William Boyle goes a long way toward putting the lie to that list because he’s got the borough by the balls and he ain’t out of the count yet. If the nigh ineffably named Gravesend isn’t the end of the line where everyone gets off, what is? Heavy Sugar is the payoff for noir enthusiasts who still have a sense of humor and heart to go with it.”
—Barry Gifford, author of Wild at Heart
“Donald Westlake and Hubert Selby Jr. had a baby and it’s a novel called Heavy Sugar, William Boyle’s latest (and maybe best) Brooklyn crime epic. Clear your schedule ’cause once you pick it up you won’t want (or be able) to put it down.”
—Larry Charles, award-winning writer on Seinfeld and director of Borat
“Heavy Sugar is a cinematic, heartfelt, funny, and frenetic Brooklyn noir that gives readers William Boyle at the peak of his powers—delivering the kind of grounded, character-driven story that has become his playground. Lived-in and real, Heavy Sugar will pull you in and you’ll never want to leave. His best novel yet.”
—Alex Segura, bestselling and acclaimed author of Secret Identity
Praise for William Boyle
“Boyle’s characters evoke the working-class romantics of Bruce Springsteen, small-time and scrambling for money, love, or answers.”
—Oprah Daily
“Boyle is able to do what today’s best crime fiction writers do so well—tell a captivating, page-turning thriller, but one defined by its characters and the choices they make, rather than the circumstances into which they have been thrust.”
—The Washington Post
“No one can make the everyday vagaries of life feel like Greek tragedies the way William Boyle can. He effortlessly maps the path of desire that moves through the human heart like burning chrome.”
—S. A. Cosby