Tabloid City

February 21, 2011
Hamill (North River) forays into Dominic Dunne society crime territory before veering uncomfortably into a far-fetched terrorist plot. Just as the last ever edition of the New York World is getting put to bed, veteran editor Sam Briscoe stops the presses for a sensational murder: socialite Cynthia Harding and her personal secretary are found stabbed to death in Harding's Manhattan town house. The story unfolds in time-stamped, you-are-there bursts that follow a large cast, including several journalists; Cynthia's adopted daughter; a disgraced Madoff-like financier; a media blogger; the murdered secretary's husband, a police officer assigned to a counterterrorism task force, as well as their son, a convert to radical Islam; and best of all by the weary and worldly Briscoe himself. Hamill is at his best in the Briscoe portions, rich in print anecdotes and mournful for a passing age, but as both the initial murders and the closing of the paper play into a larger plot and the young extremist becomes the driving force of the novel, the quality slides precipitously, and, as if sensing defeat, the book is brought to a too abrupt conclusion with most of the principals gathered for a group of scenes that strain credulity. Hamill nails the dying newsroom, but gets lost on the terrorism beat.

March 1, 2011

The veteran newspaperman and novelist (North River, 2007, etc.) couples a lament for a dying tabloid culture with a cockamamie plot about the murderous rampage of a jihadist; it doesn't work.

Few writers know the newspaper business as intimately as Hamill; he has reported for and edited New York tabloids. So we feel in safe hands as we enter the newsroom of the fictional New York World in this winter of the Great Recession. Our guide is 71-year-old Sam Briscoe, editor in chief. He's the novel's center of gravity as it cycles through some 14 different viewpoints. Hamill uses broad strokes for a big canvas. There's Cynthia Harding, the love of Sam's life, a philanthropist in the Brooke Astor mold who's hosting a fundraising dinner for the library; her black secretary, Mary Lou; Mary Lou's husband Ali, an anti-terrorist cop; the almost blind artist, Lew; the office cleaner Consuelo, who Lew painted years before in Mexico. They're all connected to the rest of the large cast. The contrivance is brazen, but less disconcerting than Ali's son Malik, a would-be street criminal who needs money for his very pregnant teenage girlfriend. He's also a spiritual brother to the 9/11 terrorists; his thoughts are one long rant, a collection of scraped-together clichés. In due course, besides knocking off an imam, he will murder his mother Mary Lou and her "slave owner" Cynthia. Back at the World, the murders feed "the tabloid joy of murder at a good address." It's a good, knowing line, and could have been the trigger for a more focused, credible work. As it is, the joy is clouded by the news that the publisher is closing the paper, moving it online, and also by Sam's anguish over Cynthia's death. Hamill ratchets up the melodrama with a climactic confrontation at a mosque turned disco between Malik, now wearing a Semtex vest, and his father. 

A wasted opportunity to memorialize the tabloids through fiction.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

April 1, 2011

Employing a symphony of voices--a venomous blogger trying to masquerade as impartial, an angry wheelchair-bound vet with a gun, a black cop whose errant son has become a jihadist, a hedge fund manager on the lam, an illegal alien who's just been laid off--Hamill (North River) moves across disparate narratives with protagonists ineluctably drawn together by the unfolding of events. At heart, his novel is a paean for an endangered world of journalism, done in by the economy and the attacks of the digital media. Although Hamill draws in and entertains the reader, he is done in by his own sentimentality. It's not so much the occasional overwriting as it is an attitude: Hamill should simply have written lean, clear prose all the way, instead of the kind of poetry he attempts in certain passages. Where he shows off style least, he writes best. VERDICT Even a mediocre novel by ex-journalist Hamill is an occasion for celebration. His many fans will enjoy this latest book. [See Prepub Alert, 11/15/10.]--David Keymer, Modesto, CA

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 1, 2011
Hamill is as New York City as the Empire State Building and the Bowery, a classic newspaperman schooled in the old days of several daily newspapers. And his many novels (which include the widely applauded Snow in August, 1997) have been based in the Big Apple. His latest is no exception, with a title that suggests both journalism and New York. As the novel opens, were in the offices of the New York World, and we follow a step or two behind the editor in chief, 71-year-old Sam Briscoe, whose career harks back to ways now considered antique (he can remember seeing page-1 letters actually cut from wood). Briscoe knows his own days and the days of old journalism are numbered, under assault from digitalized artillery. But a more specific crisis looms. His longtime girlfriend and her maid are found murdered in the girlfriends townhouse in Greenwich Village. With this murder as the actual centerpiece of the plot, Hamill moves the story around and around through a cycle of characters all related in some fashion to the central event, each visitation to each character adding layers to the authors knowing depiction of New Yorks varied lifestyles. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: An author tour to major U.S. cities, an intensive online marketing campaign, and interviews in the print media and on radio and television will bring public attention to what is certain to be a national best-seller.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)