About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

BEWARE THE SOLITARY DRINKER
by Con Lehane
Poisoned Pen Press, September 2003
269 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 1590580168


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

An Upper West Side bartender and occasional actor, Brian McNulty, is unwillingly drawn into the search for the killer of a young woman, a recent regular at Oscar's, the Manhattan bar where McNulty currently works. McNulty, like all good bartenders, respects the confidences he hears and what he learns about the people who drink in his establishment. But now, in order to figure out who the murderer is, he must probe and question and learn still more about the private lives of his customers, about things he'd rather not know. He has an ethical as well as a personal dilemma.

This dark, leisurely look at a community of people within the larger city of New York, is compelling and enthralling in a way not easily described. In the middle of the book there is a conversation between McNulty and a long-time customer who says, "These are sad things to talk about, aren't they? Your life goes along its usual route. It's ordinary. You might even think boring. You think nothing will ever be different. You don't even notice you're growing older. Then something tragic happens and all the ordinariness is gone. You don't feel safe anymore. Did you ever think your friends would be murdered?"

Author Con Lehane wields a powerful pen. We experience the anguish of the people McNulty questions, his relationship with the sister of the dead girl, and his own anguish at becoming the repositor of so much intimate knowledge. Each new revelation alters the way he looks at those who frequent his bar, those he calls friend. And he knows, often with a sharpened sense of sadness, that those friends' perceptions of him are likewise, altered forever. This is a fine novel with a wonderful sense of place, filled with real characters who seem to experience real emotions.

The reviewer is the author of

INNER PASSAGES and

A SUPERIOR MYSTERY

http://www.Minnesotacrimewave.org/

Reviewed by Carl Brookins, February 2003

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]