Book description
Worlds within worlds-enter into a very special culture with unwritten
rules... Brian McNulty, veteran bartender at Oscar's on the Upper West
Side, respects his customer's privacy. And their space. But when one--a
tarnished but innocent young woman seduced by New York's bright lights
and glitter--is murdered, and another battered innocent charged with
killing her, he reluctantly begins his own investigation. Brian's
enthusiasm for the chase is given a boost with the arrival of the dead
girl's sister, a young business woman from Massachusetts, equally bent
on uncovering the killer. She's put off by his jaded attitude and
offbeat lifestyle, but comes to rely upon his familiarity with the
city's darker underside. Brian, in turn, enlists the aid of a cadre of
neighborhood cronies. The suspects: all of the regulars at Oscar's, each
with more to hide than the next. A leftist politically, a dedicated
union man, Brian learns that when you dig into people's lives, rich or
poor, you find things kept hidden for good reason. By stirring up these
ghosts, you change the shape of the landscape and put your friends in
harm's way. This special first novel comes wrapped in art work created
for it by famed artist Fritz Scholder. The characters who inhabit
Oscar's bar on New York's Upper West Side are serious drinkers with more
than their share of quirks, shames, secrets and strengths. In this
strong debut novel, Lehane exhibits a sensitive empathy for those who
find solace in drink and drugs and the ambience at Oscar's, where one
can be solitary but not alone. Mostly older, mostly men, Oscar's patrons
are captivated by Angelina, an alluring, available young woman, who
begins to frequent their bar. Even bartender Brian McNulty, a
participant/observer-presiding, absorbing, but never probing-is drawn
into her orbit. But when the beautiful, troubled Angelina is murdered
and Brian's customers and friends become suspects, he reluctantly
abandons his bartender's code: "I enter my friend's house deaf; I
leave dumb." Instead, prodded by the arrival of Angelina's sister,
Janet, from their hometown of Springfield, Mass., Brian begins to learn
more than he wants about Angelina's past. Brian is a wonderfully complex
character, and Lehane reveals him to the reader with exquisite skill.
Brian takes shape, developing substance and form, just as his stumbling
investigation does. Set in 1983 but timeless in its depiction of men and
women struggling to cope with whatever demons beset them, Lehane's
assured debut merits a warm welcome from readers who prize originality
and insight. Cornelius Lehane is a writer and editor for the United
States' largest teachers union, the National Education Association. In
other incarnations, he's been a college professor, a union organizer,
and, yes, for more than a decade, a bartender. After spending most of
his life in and around New York City, he now lives in a close-in suburb
of Washington, DC with his wife, two sons, and an assortment of pets. He
holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in fiction writing from Columbia
University School of the Arts.
