The Narrowback
This alcohol- and cocaine-fueled noir page-turner follows a posse of Bronx-born Irish "narrowbacks" whose gangster games backfire. The ringleader, Tom Farrell, is an ex-con who dreams of a career as an artist. The trouble begins when Farrell convinces his friends to help him rob $750,000 in cash and jewels from an upscale midtown hotel. When the thugs kill an IRA accomplice who attempts to hijack the booty, the terrorist's superior enlists a Vietnam-trained sniper to claim the booty for the Cause. The bloodiness that ensues?also involving a feckless FBI agent and members of an Albanian mob?contributes to the novel's urban chic, as when Farrell looks in the rearview mirror and notices that "the cut on his chin had stopped bleeding and had scabbed up like a small goatee." A few pistol-whippings later, Farrell is wandering Manhattan in a boozy haze, believing he's the last one left alive, the IRA still on his trail. Ledwidge's too-cool characters are, like his prose, lean and mean, and their inability to distinguish the difference between loyalty to a cause and senseless violence on its behalf creates an aura of futility and hopelessness that pulses through this well-executed debut. BOMC and QPB selections.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.