Risk by Colin Harrison

 

Risk is a throwback to the classic crime noir of Hammett, Cain, and Thompson - short, intense, and hardboiled. Set in 2007 New York City, I read Colin Harrison's gripping novel when I was up in Manhattan this past week. Here's a highlight reel to whet a reader's appetite:

George Young, One: Meet the tale's narrator: a successful NYC lawyer pushing fifty who's up for a little excitement in his life since he's spent over twenty years sitting behind a desk handling cases involving insurance fraud. George is also a good family man with a wife, Carol, a bank executive, and a daughter, Rachel, in college. George and Carol, both avid fans, occasionally catch the Yankees when they're playing at home.

Wilson Corbett: Founder of the law firm back in the sixties, Wilson was a blazing ball of energy, personally running thirty cases at once. George reflects, “I owed him a lot. It was Wilson Corbett who'd hired me when I was a kid, pulled me out of the muddy waters of the Queens DA's office back in the eighties.” Wilson died some years back, but everyone working at the firm who knew the founder recognizes that they have what they have as a result of Wilson's incredible accomplishments.

Mrs. Corbett: The eighty-one-year-old widow of Wilson beckons George to her Park Avenue apartment for a specific reason: her son, Roger, stepped out of a bar and into the street, where he was run over by a garbage truck. Mrs. Corbett is painfully aware she doesn't have long to live, and before she dies, she wants to know why Roger was sitting in that bar for four hours. So unlike him. She hired a private detective, but the guy was little help. Now she wants George to find out. After all, her husband told her that he was very capable and tenacious. When George tells her he'll do what he can, Mrs. Corbett hands him a green folder with all the current information revolving around the tragic event.

George Young, Two: Oh, yes, George will to it. As he told the old widow, “We can call it replaying an old dept of gratitude to Mr. Corbett.” When he talks with a Detective Hicks who did the initial snooping around for Mrs. Corbett, Hicks tells him bluntly, “My advice? Don't get involved.” And for good reason: George senses Hicks is passing on “something nasty and unfortunate and reprehensible.” Ah, an element of excitement and danger injected into his otherwise rather bland existence – lawyer George just can't help himself. He'll eagerly take on the role of detective. Meanwhile, his wife, Carol, isn't exactly thrilled at the prospect. But, hey, boys will be boys, especially when they're pushing fifty and see their hair turning gray.

Roger Corbett: George hits the internet and discovers a great deal about the now dead Roger. Fifty-one, divorced, two young children, the one-time millionaire gave nearly all the money to his former wife. New York can lift people up and shove them down, and overweight Roger was reduced to living in a tiny downtown apartment while hunting for a job in the world of high finance. Not easy.

The Czech Model: One bright spot in Roger's life: he developed a relationship with Eliska Dedlacek, a hand model who lived in the apartment above his. However, as George discovers, attractive Eliska has had some murky dealings with a couple of Russians with underworld connections. The thick plottens.



Big Apple Vibe: On every single page, we feel the pulse, the dramatic throbbing of what it means to live and work and play in New York City. As Michiko Kakutani wrote in her glowing New York Times review of another of the author's novels, “Colin Harrison is trying to do for New York what Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy have done for Los Angeles: map the sinister underbelly of the city, the nexus of greed and lust and ambition that metastasizes there and its dark spawn of larceny and murder.” For me, this is one of the great appeals of reading a Colin Harrison novel.

The Writing: Colin Harrison's use of language to shape character, to construct a setting, a mood, an atmosphere, to write dialogue, is nothing short of stunning. He's a wonderful writer. You'll usually find his novels shelved in the Thriller section (as I found out this past week, exactly the case at The Strand Bookstore), but he's writing high quality literature on the level of Don DeLillo and Philip Roth.

A Final Word: As I noted above, Risk is a riveting page-turner. And the good news: once you've had a chance to read this short work, you'll surely want to move on to the author's longer novels, such as Bodies Electric, Manhattan Nocturne, The Havana Room, and You Belong to Me. Grab a copy and strap yourself in for an exhilarating ride.


American author Colin Harrison, born 1960