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Porter Wren, the voice of Manhattan Nocturne, is a New York City newspaper columnist who must satisfy a public with an increasing appetite for gore, filth and cheap irony. "I sell falsehood and what passes for truth and every gradation in between," Porter says. But times are growing leaner. Newspapers don't pack the visceral wallop of the nightly news, and thus Porter is always looking for that extra angle to keep him one step ahead of the competition.
So when the mysterious young widow of a famous film director entices Porter at a dinner party, Porter puts his family, his job, and his safety at risk in pursuit of the finest story of his career. The woman, Caroline Crowley, shows Porter the brief videos shot by her late husband Simon. The videos are violent, voyeuristic shots of the cruelty humans do to one another, and it's Porter's job to figure out how they tie in to Simon Crowley's suspicious death.
But when one of the tapes turns out to contain a crucial clue to a long-unsolved murder of a policeman, Porter finds himself in more trouble than he's ever known -- and in possession of the ultimate scoop.
Porter Wren's New York is a "landscape of bad possibilities," a place where everyone is guilty and no one is safe. It's a city with millions of stories, and all too many of them end badly. Call it The City Too Scared to Sleep.
Harrison has a gift for the telling anecdote. Porter shows his readers New York City in all its splendor and squalor. From high-society parties where the low men on the totem pole are single-digit millionaires, to the underground communities of homeless led by former college professors, Harrison has honed in on the many voices of New York.
Manhattan Nocturne is a fine novel, as notable for its richness of description as its gripping suspense. Porter Wren is a fascinating and complex narrator, by turns arrogant, insecure, insincere, and worldly. Here's hoping he has more stories to tell.
James Busbee is a writer in Memphis.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.
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