MONTAUK TO MANHATTAN

A down-on-his-luck New York newspaperman hoping to make it big via a lavish TV adaptation of his novel stumbles into controversy.

Jack Denton’s fact-based book, The Life Line—about railroad tycoon Austin Corbin’s theft of tribal land from the Montaukett Indians on eastern Long Island in the 1880s—hasn’t sold many copies. But the story of Corbin’s unscrupulous efforts to build a port in Montauk for “Mile a Minute” trains to Manhattan has captured the interest of Max Kirkland, a “genius” director with uncontrollable Harvey Weinstein–like traits. Hired as a consultant on the project, Denton attends location shoots, stargazes, frets over changes in his narrative, and sleeps with a disgruntled actress who promptly disappears. For Kirkland, her vanishing is the least of his worries. The Montaukett community is up in arms over the casting of a white actor to play the tribal hero and other cultural offenses. And Denton, who is covering the rise of Donald Trump and dealing with a busted marriage, has other fish to fry. While the individual pieces of Maier’s novel unfold agreeably enough—even if Denton’s accounts of the filming go on too long—they never come together in a meaningful way. And the Denton character has a serious credibility problem. He boasts about the awards he’s won for his exposés but never reveals any of the essential qualities he would need to be a standout reporter, including basic smarts. “Covering Trump for the paper these days has really made me think—where is this country going…?” Ya think?

A novel set in “Hollywood East” that never figures out which direction to go.