Manhattan Nocturne

Colin Harrison

The book opens:

"I sell mayhem, scandal, murder and doom. Oh, Jesus I do. I sell tragedy, vengeance, chaos, and fate. I sell the sufferings of the poor and the vanities of the rich. Children falling from windows, sub- way trains afire, rapists fleeing into the dard. I sell anger and redemp- tion. I sell the muscled heroism of firemen and the wheezing greed of mob bosses. The stench of garbage, the rattle of gold. I sell black to white, white to black. To Democrats and Republicans and Libertari- ans and Muslims and transvestites and squatters on the Lower East side. I sold John Gotti and O.J. Simpson and the bombers of the World Trade Center, and I'll sell whoever else comes along next. I sell false- hood and what passes for truth and every gradation in between. I sell the newborn and the dead. I sell the wretched, magnificent city of New York back to its people. I sell newspapers. The mayor reads me at breakfast, and the bond traders on the train in from New Jersey have a look, as do the retired Italian longshoremen sitting on their stoops in Broklyn, chewing on unlit cigars, and the nurses on the bus down from Harlem to Lenox Hill Hospital. The TV guys read me, and steal the story sometimes. And the Pakistani sitting in his cab outside Madison Square Garden, who, intent on figuring out Amer- ica, reads everything. And the young lawyers on their lunch breaks, after they've checked the ads touting the strip clubs .And the doorman in the apartment buildings on the East Side, looking up from the pages as teh professional women storm past each morning, rushing brightly into their futures. And the cops - the cops all read me to see if I got it right."

So begins the story of Porter Wren. This mystery has it all, sex, prostitution, film making, money, more money, sleaze and a whole passle of characters that scurry in the light of day if you lift the rock. I couldn't put it down.