Life Amid the Refuse

It is October 2001. New York City Detective Barbara Bucciero (Booch for short) is in charge of the search for human remains in the World Trade Center rubble being hauled to Staten Island’s Fresh Kills landfill. But October 18 brings an unwelcome new discovery: a skull from a body years older than six weeks.

Garbage Town, A Novel by Ravi Gupta opens with Booch trying to unravel a new, yet cold case while the city wants her focused on 9/11 remains identification.

The world’s largest landfill, Fresh Kills creates health hazards for those living nearby. It is also a major source of income for the organized crime family running the rackets in Staten Island. It is big enough that the mob is willing to kill to keep it open and in their control.

Booch lives in Staten Island, near the landfill. She has to solve the case quickly, within three days. The skull is that of a teen, dead several years. She suspects the victim’s identity is known to her former next-door neighbor, the teenaged Raj Patel. He gives her a disk relating events that occurred three years earlier.

The half-Indian/half-Polish Raj is brilliant, a computer geek. He lived on Staten Island in the neighborhood closest to the landfill, plagued by poverty, cancer, and broken families. His father abandoned his family, his uncles and cousins have died of cancers. Raj is determined to get out, hustling in high school to accumulate tuition for a college education, including selling bootleg CDs.

He hangs with friends from school. They call themselves the Victory Boys for their neighborhood’s main street. Then Georgia, a southern girl without an apparent past, drifts into their neighborhood, school and among the Victory Boys. She is feckless, with no filters or limits.

Because of Georgia’s impulsiveness Raj, Georgia, and the Victory Boys are soon enmeshed in a dark secret involving the dump and the mob. The stakes soon rise to life and death, not just for Raj, but also for his family. Survival requires Raj to compromise principle and alienate friends, including Booch. Eventually Raj decides Georgia’s "Gran" is right. It is never the wrong time to do the right thing. The consequences prove powerful.

Garbage Town blends mystery, crime fiction and coming-of-age stories. Gupta captures the high school atmosphere perfectly in a world where school-age teens have to make choices adults would find crushing.

“Garbage Town, A Novel,” by Ravi Gupta, Greenleaf Book Group, (March 2025, 312 pages, $27.95 (Hardcover), $9.99 (E-book)

This review was written by Mark Lardas, who writes at Ricochet as Seawriter. Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, historian, and model-maker, lives in League City, TX. His website is marklardas.com.