AN HONEST LIVING

When a lawyer's investigation leads him into the New York rare book world, he finds himself embroiled in a drama of corruption and lies.

Hired by wealthy Anna Reddick to prove that her husband, whom she’s about to divorce, has been selling her rare books, the unnamed narrator infiltrates the Poquelin Society, “a scholarly society dedicated to the art, science and preservation of the book, whatever that meant,” in order to entrap him into a “controlled buy.” This seemingly easy job will lead the narrator to a second one that involves a probable suicide wrapped in a convoluted web of impersonation and misdirection and book auctions, and then leads him to a small-time crook who's suddenly hit it big with waterfront development in Brooklyn. The investigation also puts him in the path of an eccentric female novelist who seems to have stepped out of the pages of Hemingway or Chandler with an edgy charm and casual cruelty that only make her more fascinating. The novel is set in 2005, but the style and the narrative voice feel comfortably rooted in earlier decades. The self-conscious tone and the nostalgia—characters go see old movies and talk about old books—render the plot almost secondary to the setting. In the end, not that much happens, but the characters live and love and fight and die against a backdrop of New York City, its seasons and its landmarks, its underbelly and its flaws. The lawyer/detective ends his quest a little more jaded, a little sadder than he began. To quote a movie that is frequently invoked here, “Forget it…it’s Chinatown.” A bittersweet love letter to New York and times gone by.

More style than substance, but fans of noir fiction will feel right at home.