Refinished Su 5/16/21
This is one of my trade paperbacks that I first finished Sa 6/21/97. I had written 'Excellent' on the flyleaf, and the second time through I still agree.
A really good 'Noir Thriller' set in NYC.
Porter Wren is a tabloid columnist (he works for a Rupert Murdoch publication) who is approached by a beautiful woman who wants him to clear up the mystery of an incriminating tape. She was married to a billionaire, Mr. Hobbs and this man thinks she is blackmailing him. She claims she doesn't know anything about it. Hobbs gets Porter Wren to get to the bottom of the mystery, but the biggest question is what is on the tape?
The 'reveal' is that Caroline Crowley murdered her current husband, Simon who is a famous movie director and his body was found at a building demolition site.
I remember seeing the movie of this book and I plan to see it again. It stars Adrien Brody.
A review from KIRKUS:
"Porter Wren, a tabloid columnist specializing in the human face of death, has climbed to success in part by subverting a real talent for exposing corruption in the city. He has two precious kids, and is married to one of New York's best surgeons, but none of that seems to matter when a beautiful woman approaches him at a party. He finds her mesmerizing and the story she tells of her husband, an acclaimed filmmaker whose body turned up in a building being demolished and whose murder remains unsolved, fascinating. Porter wants more of the story and of her; the next day she takes him to bed, then opens a trunk of tapes her husband left behind, videos that are clandestine scenes of real life and death. Told by his publisher (a ruthless Australian with a worldwide publishing empire built on tabloids—sound familiar?) to retrieve one that he finds compromising, Porter courts disaster when he can't locate it. He does find a tape of an NYPD officer being murdered, a case also unsolved, but he no sooner informs a friend on the force about it than he's beaten and the tape stolen by the publishers' goons. When his toddler is wounded by another intruder on the Aussie's payroll, Porter retaliates, tracking down the material so feared by his boss. In the process, however, he learns his lover's secret too, with a glimpse into her black heart that both ends their affair and binds them uncomfortably together in a lethal conspiracy of silence. Sordid stuff sure to tickle any voyeur's fancy, written with skill and considerable visceral force—even if occasionally straying beyond the credible."
A well written novel and I plan to see if I can get more by Colin Harrison
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