Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms: Stories and Essays

An enthralling collection of short fiction and nonfiction that draw upon McLoughlin's three-decade career in the criminal justice system.

Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms couldn't be more New York. Tim McLoughlin drops a ton of big-city knowledge and wisdom, rich in lived-in detail, with humor that's hard as the sidewalk.
--John Strausbaugh, author of City of Sedition

Whether writing fact or fiction, McLoughlin does so with an ear to the street. His Irish cops are as good as anything by Richard Price, and his essays about New York City life are incomparable. Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms is to be devoured in bite-sized bits but savored like a four course meal. Get this book!
--T.J. English, author of The Westies: Inside New York's Irish Mob

Reading Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms is like being a fly on the bathroom wall of my favorite shitty cop bar in south Brooklyn where the horrible and the hilarious are beating the crap out of each other over a game of eight ball. I loved it.
--Lydia Lunch, author of So Real It Hurts

In Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, Tim McLoughlin's slice-of-life observations about the gritty despair and raw humanity of New York City capture the pain and promise of our beloved concrete jungle.
--Nelson George, author of The Death of Rhythm & Blues

Whether in fiction or nonfiction, Tim McLoughlin is an armed and dangerous judge of his own crimes and misdemeanors within the New York underworld. His stories are both tactile and ethereal, offering the square world a scuba dive into the depths of what we do.
--Kenji Jasper, author of The House on Childress Street

With a wry, knowing voice of ruthless authenticity, McLoughlin delivers the goods.
--Gary Phillips, author of Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem

In Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, Tim McLoughlin draws upon his three-decade career in the criminal justice system with his characteristic wit and his fascination with misfits and malfeasance. A lifetime living and working in New York City feeds short stories that evoke a landscape of characters rife with personal arrogance and misjudgment; and nonfiction essays about toeing the line when the line keeps disappearing.

An opioid-addicted catsitter electronically eavesdrops on his neighbors only to hear devastating truths. A degenerate gambler stakes his life on a long shot because he sees three lucky numbers on the license plate of a passing car.

In the nonfiction essays, we learn that the system plays a role in supporting vice, as long as it gets a cut. Altar boys compete to work weddings and funerals for tips in the shadow of predatory priests. Cops become robbers, and a mob boss just might be a civil rights icon.

McLoughlin shines a light on worlds that few have access to. Always urban, often New York-centric, in his work a recurring theme is chronic displacement, people standing still in a city that is always changing. These are McLoughlin's ghosts, these casualties of progress, and he holds them dear and celebrates them.