Here are 10 reasons to put Colin Harrison’s literary thriller on your reading list:
1. The Voice – A cross between Dashiell Hammett hardboiled and Upton Sinclair social commentary. Mr. Harrison has the literary virtuosity to pull it off. You’d have to go a long way to find a writer with a greater command of language. Here’s a quick sample from the first-person narrator and main character, newspaper reporter Porter Wren: “When the column was done my thoughts returned to the previous afternoon, and I suppose that if my marital guilt were a cave, then I meant now to feel along the dark, damp walls for the sharp places and for the size of the cavity I had opened within myself.”
2. The City – As in Manhattan; all the fast-paced action takes place in the Big Apple – it’s as if the streets, subways and all those multistory buildings inject the characters with super-charged vim.
3. The Beautiful Babe – Porter Wren first encounters her at a publishing party. “Her face was no less beautiful as it approached, but I could see a certain determination in her features. Dark brows, blonde hair lifted off her neck. The rope of pearls. Her breasts moved heavily against the silky materials of her gown, which, I now saw, was not white but, more alluringly, the color of the flesh of a peach.” Meet Caroline Crowley, a femme fatale if there ever was one.
4. The Artist – Filmmaker Simon Crowley, Caroline’s dead husband who died a tragic death but left tons of video footage, including a number of very hot clips people in high places would love to get their hands on. In a series of Carolyn’s flashbacks along with Wren’s commentary on Simon appearing in his own videos, we are given a riveting picture of the filmmaker’s character.
5. The Tycoon – Owner of a series of multinational publishing and media companies, a big, fat Australian by the name of Hobbs who visits NYC to establish his presence and oversee the deals. At one point in the story Hobbs anticipates a deal-making phone-call from Rupert Murdoch. Surely it is more than coincidence the tycoon shares his name with 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbs, author of his famous book, ‘The Leviathan’, wherein he wrote how, prior to political community, the natural state of man is nasty, brutish and short. Ironically, as Porter Wren narrates, modern urban life can still be, if not so short, than quite nasty and brutish.
6. The Cop – Hal Fitzgerald is a hard-talking, high-level NYC policeman who deals with Porter Wren and stands for truth and justice, particularly when it comes to a police officer killed in the line of duty. Video footage Wren comes across is high-stakes; even Mayor Giuliani makes a cameo appearance in the novel.
7. The Family – Porter Wren lives in NYC with his brilliant surgeon wife and their young children, all of whom play an important role as the story unfolds and winds around Manhattan’s sharp corners.
8. The Mood – As in nocturne; a pensive, dreamy mood pervades the novel, especially Porter Wren’s nighttime relationship with Caroline Crowley.
9. The Pleasure – This novel is a page-turner. Once you get several pages in you’ll want to keep reading and reading. If you like your literary fiction with a bite, you’ve found your book of the month.
10. The Movie – A novel screaming to be made into a movie - set up the projector and use your own mind and imagination as the screen.
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