Manhattan Nocturne: A Novel

About the AuthorColin Harrison is the author of the novels You Belong to Me, Break and Enter, Bodies Electric, Manhattan Nocturne, Afterburn, The Havana Room, The Finder, and Risk. He serves as the editor in chief at Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. A graduate of Haverford College and the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, he is married to the writer Kathryn Harrison and lives in Brooklyn, New York, and Jamesport, Long Island.Product DescriptionNow a major motion picture, Manhattan Night, starring Adrien Brody, Campbell Scott, Yvonne Strahovski, and Linda LavinPorter Wren is a Manhattan tabloid writer with an appetite for scandal. On the beat he sells murder, tragedy, and anything that passes for the truth. At home, he is a dedicated husband and father. But when a seductive stranger asks him to dig into the unsolved murder of her husband, he is drawn into a very nasty case of sexual obsession and blackmailone that threatens his job, his marriage, and his life.Manhattan Nocturne is a brilliantly drawn tableau of the gritty, gaudy city, and a thrilling literary noir.ReviewMr. Harrison has produced a thriller that seems to want to be equal parts of Raymond Chandler, William Styron, and Tom Wolfe. . . . These corollary aspirations generate some of the greatest pleasures in Mr. Harrison s novel, so that the same narrative that impresses us with its toptobottom knowledge of New York City fauna is also illuminating about the quiet acts of omission that irrevocably damage a marriage. Entertainment WeeklyYou re trapped by page two. . . . This is the work of a powerful writer . . . with a powerful story. The Boston GlobeA smart, entertaining novel. The Washington Post[Harrison] spares no detail of sex and violence, imbuing every phrase with a visceral punch and a sardonic tone. . . . Truly thrilling. Chicago TribuneA great, roaring story of power, lust, greed, and a very human folly that characterizes our preposterous millenniumtold with compassion, intelligence, and striking human insight. Mary Gaitskill, author of VeronicaA whiteknuckle ride . . . With the narrative drive of a hurtling subway express, Harrison plunges readers into a scary subterranean world in which the only comfort comes from the neon flashes of his prose. PeopleManhattan Nocturne soars. The New York Times Book ReviewExcerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.Manhattan NocturneA NovelBy Colin Harrison PicadorCopyright 2008 Colin HarrisonAll right reserved.ISBN: 9780312427627Manhattan NocturneI sell mayhem, scandal, murder, and doom. Oh, Jesus I do, I sell tragedy, vengeance, chaos, and fate. I sell the sufferings of the poor and the vanities of the rich. Children falling from windows, subway trains afire, rapists fleeing into the dark. I sell anger and redemption. I sell the muscled heroism of firemen and the wheezing greed of mob bosses. The stench of garbage, the rattle of gold. I sell black to white, white to black. To Democrats and Republicans and Libertarians and Muslims and transvestites and squatters on the Lower East Side. I sold John Gotti and O. J. Simpson and the bombers of the World Trade Center, and I ll sell whoever else comes along next. I sell falsehood and what passes for truth and every gradation in between. I sell the newborn and the dead. I sell the wretched, magnificent city of New York back to its people. I sell newspapers.The mayor reads me at breakfast, and the bond traders on the train in from New Jersey have a look, as do the retired Italian longshoremen sitting on their stoops in Brooklyn, chewing unlit cigars, and the nurses on the bus down from Harlem to Lenox Hill Hospital. The TV guys read me, and steal the story sometimes. And the Pakistani sitting in his cab outside Madison Square Garden, who, intent on figuring out America, reads everything. And the young lawyers on their lunch breaks, after they ve checked the ads touting the strip clubs. And t