NYPD Detective on Murder, Mobsters & Old New York | Jason Allison

**Jack Murphy** (0:00)
Hey, folks, I'm Jack Murphy. This is The Team House, and I'm here with our guest today, Jason Allison. He's the author of The Killing Yards, which will probably be out as you guys are seeing this. September 22nd is a release date. It is a noir detective novel. I mean, it involves the police, but it also involves the 1990s club scene, the Russian mafia, the Israeli mafia. I mean, everybody's got a hand in these clubs, and there's a pretty epic conspiracy that unfolds in the book. I really enjoyed it. I thought that, it's interesting that you set this in the 1990s, and I grew up as a kid in the 90s, and now I'm seeing my generation have this very nostalgic view of the 90s, which it really is nostalgia. It's like it wasn't as great as you think it was, guys.
You're a little bit older than me, and you were a professional or an adult, and then becoming an NYPD detective. So you have a little bit of a different sort of perspective on the 90s, I think, than many people my age do. Yeah. I mean, I grew up in the Bronx. Where'd you grow up? In Sleepy Hollow, New York. Oh, okay. I lived not too far from you for a long time. But yeah, like I grew up in the Bronx, and I'm 50 now. So I became a cop in 1998 And before that, though, in addition to being a cop in the city and a detective, I was a club kid. And so you were living that Bohemian New York City lifestyle? No, I was the Bridgertonnel trash that was trying to get into the clubs that couldn't get into the clubs because I was never cool because I didn't drink and I didn't do drugs. But the good thing about that is I was able to watch all the stuff that other people did. And so you kind of remember it and that when you're young, whatever you're doing when you're young, it kind of becomes formative, right? Sure. I don't know how old you are. I think I heard on an episode you were like 19 when you joined the military. So that becomes like, that's concrete now for you, that error for the rest of your life. And that error for me was concrete. And also I don't like doing research very much. And I don't know, like for your novel, I don't know how much research you had to do because I think my vision of you is that it's all in your head. For that novel, yeah, it wasn't research intensive. And I also got to the point as a writer where I realized, if I'm really digging into the literature, trying to find details to put in the book, I'm probably overwhelming most of the readers. Like it's more than they want. I just saw an Instagram reel with Harlan Coban. He writes Suspense and he's talking about, I hate research and I advise his writers not to do research. And he said that the reason why is because the more research you do, the more you want to put it in the book. Right. And so it kind of slows everything down. So I mean, I like doing research. And it's a big part of my other job in journalism. But I get what he's saying. Like you have to be very careful about that. I think when you're writing a novel. I know a lot of stuff. Right. And are you just using the book to show off how much stuff you know? Right. You know, as opposed to like telling a story and doing something for the reader or whatever the case.
Well, we'll get into it deeper. But you know, you spent how many years on the police force? 20 years in one day. Wow. And mostly as a detective. Yeah, probably about 16 years doing investigations.
Less than two years in uniform.
I learned early on that I wanted to get out of uniform.
Stop humping the radio. And I've noticed, and we were talking before we started, like there seems to be a common through line with the guys and women that you have on, that in the military that wanted to do like Rangers or Green Berets or Special Ops or whatever the case might be. And it's because you don't want to do the boring stuff. Sure. Yeah, that's true. And so like I wasn't good at anything. I wasn't a great student. I was not a good athlete. Wasn't cool. And so I realized that like if you volunteer for stuff, sometimes they give it to you. So I got out of uniform shortly after 9-11.