Book excerpt: A Brooklyn stickup artist, his taxi-dancing wife, a murderous newspaperman, a risk-taking warden, and a wife with a dark past converge in 1930s Sing Sing heading toward death, redemption-and Ebbets Field. *** "DANCE HALL: A NOVEL OF SING SING" unveils a grand and riveting tale of a violent and desperate past, unforgettably narrated in a gripping, often wry, fashion--recorded in tears and punctuated in--rarely innocent--blood. Dance Hall flawlessly transports readers to a seedy, volatile 1930s underworld where love and honor and redemption jostle for mere survival with greed and lust and betrayal. Dance Hall reveals the story of a Brooklyn stickup artist, his taxi-dancing Filipina spouse, a murderous newspaperman, a risk-taking warden, and a wife with a dark past converging in Sing Sing, destined for love, death, forgiveness, redemption--and Ebbets Field. Dance Hall reveals a page-turning web of perfectly-balanced back stories: of a young parish priest gone wrong and then right again, of a brutal Bowery killer with escape on his mind, a con man with the vestige of a conscience, a thuggish Garment District goon with a devout sister, a tell-all Broadway gossip columnist who can make or break you, a rat of an accomplice, a once-disgraced private detective who now surprisingly elevates a principle above a paycheck. Read Dance Hall and you live and breathe life inside cold and desperate prison halls and cells; sweaty and often violent Brooklyn dime-a-dance dance halls; threadbare tenements, back-alley speakeasies where anything you wanted badly enough was for sale; the offices of the rich and powerful and still conflicted; and of a waiting area for Sing Sing's "Death Row" called "The Dance Hall"--all while returning you to Depression days when hope reigned supreme. Because hope was all you had.