In the rail yards of Queens, contractors repair and rebuild the city's subway cars. These contracts are lucrative, so graft and corruption are rife. When Leo Handler gets out of prison, he finds his aunt married to Frank Olchin, one of the big contractors; he's battling with a minority-owned firm for contracts. Willie Gutierrez, Leo's best friend, is Frank's bag man and heads a crew of midnight saboteurs who ruin the work of the Puerto Rican-owned firm. Leo needs a job, so Willie pays him to be his back-up. Then things go badly wrong one night, a cop IDs Leo, and everyone now wants him out of the picture. Besides his ailing mom and his cousin Erica, to whom can Leo turn? Written by jhailey@hotmail.com

John Shaft is the ultimate in suave black detectives. He first finds himself up against Bumpy, the leader of the Black crime mob, then against Black nationals, and finally working with both against the White Mafia who are trying to blackmail Bumpy by kidnapping his daughter. Written by John Vogel jlvogel@comcast.net

Billy Wong is a New York City cop whose partner is gunned down during a robbery. Billy and his new partner, Danny Garoni, are working security at a fashion show when a wealthy man's daughter, Laura Shapiro, is kidnapped. The Federal authorities suspect that Laura's father is involved with Mr. Ko, a Hong Kong drug kingpin, so the NYC police commissioner sends the two cops to Hong Kong to investigate. Once in Hong Kong, the pair causes no end of trouble for both Mr. Ko and the local authorities. Written by Tad Dibbern DIBBERN_D@a1.mscf.upenn.edu

When a judge is charged with rape, Arthur Kirkland is forced to defend him. Kirkland has had problems with the judge in the past, including one incident when the judge wrongly sentenced his client Jeff McCullaugh because of a technicality. Kirkland faces a moral and legal dilemma. Written by Melissa Portell mportell@s-cwis.unomaha.edu

Buddy, Barilli, Mingo and Ansel, detectives with the NYPD, comprise a secret investigative unit called the Seven-Ups, who, largely undercover, focus on cases leading to felony convictions with prison sentences of seven years or more for the criminals in question. Many within the NYPD who know about the unit don't support the idea of it because of the often unethical way they work on the cases, but their superior, Inspector Gilson, defends the unit solely because of the results. On the sly, Buddy, who is the head of the team, gets much of the information for the cases from Vito Lucia, a childhood friend who still lives and works in the old neighborhood where much of the crime is based. Vito knows that his life could be in danger if the mob finds out that he acts as a snitch for the police. After Buddy starts looking into the loan sharking business of some local mob members, unknown to him some of those mob members are shaken down for a minimum $100,000 apiece, one by one kidnapped for ... Written by Huggo