The Foreigner
Castaldo's debut is full of hip young people hanging out in  Manhattan bars and restaurants, caught up in all manner of  intrigue like sex, drugs and murder. After a month in Europe,  Alex Orlando, 28, is apartment-sitting for her uncle Carmi while  he soaks up the sun in Puerto Rico. She immediately defies his  instructions to avoid the perils of Manhattan, and particularly  the "very forward sort of a man" who lives next door that would  be Christian, a Swedish architect, who immediately sets about  charming his new neighbor. Alex is not lacking for acquaintances  in the city. Her oldest friend, angst-ridden drug addict Kyle,  is in New York, too, and at Barney's, where Alex gets a job, she  meets Malcolm, a neurotic playwright who asks her to read his  masterpiece. Then Jan, her on-again/off-again Belgian boyfriend,  arrives in town and Christian turns up dead shortly thereafter.  Coincidences start to mount: everyone she knows seems to have  had some connection to Christian. Is the villain the obnoxious  Kyle? What about his prickly girlfriend, Yassi? Is it the  uber-temperamental Malcolm, whose play has mysteriously  disappeared while on loan to Alex? Or is it Jan, who has  dealings with a mysterious businessman whom Christian also knew?  And just what was Uncle Carmi's relationship with the dead  Swede? Castaldo's matter-of-fact style is mercifully free of  Gen-X irony unfortunately, observations like "I'd always had a  thing for foreign men; they weren't from here," display a woeful  lack of edge and insight. The sucker punch ending is not  especially original, either, but Castaldo sustains a brisk pace  along the way, and younger adult readers will be entertained.  (June)Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.