City of Lies

Starred review from September 30, 2013
In this outstanding noir from British author Ellory (A Quiet Belief in Angels), Miami hack journalist John Harper, drinking less, believing in God less, but still unable to recapture the muse that inspired his first and only novel eight years earlier, is called back to New York City, scene of his bitter childhood and now the Faustian arena for a deadly gangland game where everyone but Harper knows the rules. While Edward “Lenny” Bernstein, the father Harper never knew, lies near death, shot trying to stop a holdup, Frank Duchaunak, a cop obsessed with nabbing Bernstein for financing mafia-style crimes, prowls the hospital, like a good angel, warning Harper to leave—immediately. Covertly bribing him to stay are Walt Freiburg, Bernstein’s consigliere with his own plans for gang leadership, and Freiburg’s crony, the secretive, beautiful Cathy Hollander. Ellory’s burning insights into Harper’s everyman insecurities drive this thriller beyond sordid crime fiction into the darkest recesses of the human heart. Agent: George Lucas, Inkwell Management.

September 15, 2013
An operatic, excessively serious thriller about an angry, feckless, blocked writer lured back to New York City to learn that there is more, much more, to his past than he thought. The most verbose gangsters that ever lived populate Ellory's latest novel (A Quiet Belief in Angels, 2009, etc.). The story has more plot points than a star map. John Harper has a lousy job with the Miami Herald. He's written one book and can't figure out how to write more. About to go on assignment, he's called back to the office. Evelyn Sawyer, the aunt who raised him, calls to tell him his father has been shot--the father who left the family when John was 2. He flies to the Big Apple, and Aunt Evelyn starts the "everything you know is wrong" story. Turns out, John's absent father is the underworld big shot Edward "Lenny" Bernstein. While visiting his father in the hospital, Lenny wakes up in the ICU long enough to tell John to leave, and John meets Frank Duchaunak, a haunted NYPD detective long obsessed with Lenny and his dark doings. Soon, Walt Freiberg and his femme fatale sidekick Cathy Hollander are squiring John around the city, buying him clothes, putting him up in a posh hotel, calling him "Sonny." Walt was a sort of uncle to John back in the day, before he left for Miami. Things get curiouser and curiouser. Bodies pile up. John ends up "caught between darkness and its shadow." The action is brisk and bloody. But John and a half dozen other characters must have their identity crises, and they talk the reader half to death. If garrulous gangsters appeal, this is the thriller for you.

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September 1, 2013
Until the day his aunt summoned him back to New York to visit his father's deathbed, John Harper believed he was an orphan. Now, a robbery has left his father critically wounded, and John is being fed new versions of his life story. Was John's father merely a successful businessman, as his former partner attests, or was he someone less reputable, as John's aunt and the detective lurking around the hospital suggest. Did John's mother and his uncle commit suicide, or were they victims of his father's alleged gangster empire? Determined to find the truth, John summons his own powers of duplicity and delves into New York's underworld. Ellory (Candlemoth, 2013) layers symbolism and allegory into the airtight crime narrative, constructing a foundation that holds literary weight. Atmosphere and sense of place beg a match with authors known for summoning old-school Mob mojo and manipulating settingsJames Ellroy, for example, or Andrew Vachss in Two Trains Running (2005).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)