Hard Boiled

Matt Geiger
Middleton Times Tribune
Tue, 06/16/2015

Longtime Middleton resident Nick Chiarkas’ debut novel, “Weepers,” is a gritty tale of crime, revenge and redemption on the streets of New York City where the author spent his formative years.

The air was thick with pesticides and the shouts of children. Adult voices hurdled down from apartment windows. Gang members, merchants, cops, priests and mothers lived side by side, playing out their individual dramas on concrete stages of streets and stoops.

“If I close my eyes and imagine it, there is always a hint of DDT in the air,” recalls Nick Chiarkas, smiling tenderly as he envisions the housing project where he grew up on New York City’s lower east side. “As kids, we would chase the trucks that drove through the city spraying it. Elsewhere people were shouting from windows. Men would urinate in the street, between parked cars, and that was considered okay.”