By Paul Carrier
In the span of 24 hours, the lives of several New Yorkers from diverse backgrounds are forever changed in Pete Hamill’s latest novel, as the high-profile murders of a socialite and her secretary, and the death of a newspaper, alter the face of America's greatest metropolis.
Tabloid City features a varied cast of characters, and Hamill, a veteran journalist and author of some 20 books, sends them careening through New York. His high-octane prose leaves the reader too caught up in the story to put the book down for long, if at all.
In spare, emotionally charged chapters, each focusing on a specific time, locale and person, Hamill introduces us to Sam Briscoe, the 71-year-old editor of the last afternoon newspaper in New York; disabled Iraq veteran Josh Thompson, who’s out for revenge; and home-grown Muslim extremist Malik Shahid, aka Malik Watson.
The would-be terrorist is the son of New York cop Ali Watson and his wife Mary Lou, who works for Greenwich Village do-gooder Cynthia Harding. The plot picks up speed when Harding and Mary Lou Watson are stabbed to death in Harding’s home. Even after they are killed, the threat of more violence looms.
Initially, the myriad individual story lines seem largely unrelated, beyond the fact that Briscoe had been Harding’s lover and Ali Watson lost his wife in the double slaying. Other characters, such as Thompson and crooked financier Myles Compton, seem to be peripheral to the story. But lives intersect as Tabloid City draws to a close.
On another level, this is a tale about the many faces and countless facets of New York itself. So the fact that the city binds these characters together is just as important as who meets whom on this cold winter night. New York is the setting for their tragedies, dreams and triumphs, a city that embraces hope and despair, virtue and hatred, greed and compassion.
Hamill shows us the New York of today, but also the New York of a time long gone. The city is littered with ghosts that only old timers like Briscoe can see.
Recalling a walk through Manhattan after World War Two, for example, Briscoe remembers that he and his father “passed pawnshops and saloons, full of workers from the slaughterhouses down where the UN now stands. Some of the workers wore aprons covered with bloodstains, drying into darker colors, swatting at horseflies. In summer, the saloon doors were always open, for there was no air-conditioning then, and the joints all smelled of sour beer.”
Just as Hamill, a New Yorker, describes his city in loving detail, he also cherishes old-school, mainstream journalism. Hamill has worked as a columnist and editor at both the Daily News, and the Post, and his devotion to newspapers in general, and tabloids in particular, shines in Tabloid City.
The feel of a newsroom, the black humor of jaded reporters and editors, the contemptuous attitude toward upper management, the adrenaline rush from a good story and a looming deadline - all are on display here.
The publisher of The World, the fictional paper in Tabloid City, is referred to by his employees as “the FP” - the Fucking Publisher. Briscoe and a subordinate rack their brains to craft the perfect headline for the homicides, because “murder at a good address” always makes the front page. On another occasion, Briscoe recalls an old colleague telling him how important it is for journalists to verify assumptions before printing them, because "if you want it to be true, it probably isn’t.”
Hamill tells a hell of a yarn, and he does it with panache and gusto, making compelling characters of a great city, a doomed newspaper, and the people who walk New York's sometimes glittering, but often dark, streets. Tabloid City builds to a riveting finish whose high drama would make for a great newspaper story . . . especially in a tabloid.
