Review by Ann M. Shayne
New York is all about hassles. Joel Kostman understands this and has found art in his occupation of drilling cylinders and talking to people standing outside their apartments."Keys to the City: Tales of a New York City Locksmith" is a slight book, only 136 pages long. Traveling all over the city, Kostman unlocks doors and glimpses slivers of intense intimacy. In the time it takes to swap out a key or to pick a lock, Kostman finds every sort of humanity, and every kind of nut: the Sutton Place career woman dickering over his price; an old high school teacher sitting in the bathtub; and, finally, a dear couple who discover that Kostman is a locksmith and a writer, and leave him with haunting stories of their own.
Spare and perfectly detailed, these stories are memorable and, yes, curious.
--Ann M. Shayne
©1997, ProMotion, inc.