The Havana Room - Softcover

Harrison, Colin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312427018 ISBN 13: 9780312427016

Publisher: Picador, 2007

Synopsis

Bill Wyeth is a rising real estate attorney living the lofty heights of success. Then a tragic accident claims everything he has: his family, his fortune, his career. But this is Manhattan, and Bill has much further to fall. His downward spiral lands him at the table of Allison Sparks, the dangerously alluring owner of a midtown steakhouse. She needs a personal favor of him--to engineer a midnight trade-off in a shady multimillion-dollar real estate deal. For a man with nothing left to lose, the set-up is too lucrative to refuse, and like Allison, too forbidden to resist. But her favor draws him deeper into a web of sex, deception, and murder--and to a secret place at the back of her restaurant, the Havana Room, where a man might find both evil and redemption. The Havana Room is a great New York thriller from a modern master of the genre.

About this title

Review:

In the prime of his successful, happy existence attorney Bill Wyeth suffers a ghastly tragedy that he might have prevented. It robs him of everything and everyone he values--his family, home, wealth and career. His subsequent slide into oblivion is arrested by Allison Sparks, a restaurateur who involves him in a complicated real estate transaction on behalf of her lover, the owner of a valuable parcel of land on Long Island. The circumstances of the last-minute deal are unusual enough to set off warning bells in Wyeth's mind, but he agrees to help Jay Rainey pull it off in exchange for access to the Havana Room, a private club in the basement of Allison's restaurant, whose mysterious members and their activities have long intrigued him.

Handling a complicated plot with consummate ease, maintaining a high level of dramatic tension during a brilliantly paced narrative and creating a complex cast of unusual minor characters as well as a wholly believable, sympathetic protagonist, Colin Harrison has written a riveting novel that grabs the reader from the beginning and doesn't let go. The Havana Room is a terrific, original, engrossing read by a masterful writer. --Jane Adams, Amazon.com

Review:

"You don't read Colin Harrison; you devour him, and that sends you back to discover his four earlier New York novels filtered through a film-noir lens. . . . It's hard to imagine there will be any more books offering more sheer fun than The Havana Room." --The Philadelphia Inquirer

"To read [Harrison] . . . is to plunge happily into a world of dead-on dialogue, fully realized characters, and rare insight into how money and power distort American life." --Los Angeles Times Book Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0312427018
• ISBN 13: 9780312427016
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 408