Westport Public Library BOOK blog

Meet Brian McNulty, an Upper West Side bartender and sometime actor, who, like all good bartenders, respects the confidences he hears and what he learns about the people who drink in his establishment.

In his first outing, Beware the Solitary Drinker, McNulty is unwillingly drawn into a quest for the killer of a young woman who frequented Oscar’s, the bar where he works. All of the suspects are regulars at Oscar’s and in order to figure out who the murderer is, he must violate the sacred rule of bartender–boozer confidentiality.

Calling author Con (Cornelius) Lehane’s writing “compelling and enthralling,” Mystery Scene magazine adds “This is a fine novel with a wonderful sense of place, filled with real characters who seem to experience real emotions.”

The action moves to the East Side in the second book in the series, What Goes Around Comes Around, when McNulty discovers a stiff in a tux floating in the nearby East River while on his way to fill in for a friend at The Ocean Club, a fancy watering hole.

The recently released Death at the Old Hotel finds McNulty -- described by Lehane as “brave, perhaps foolhardy” -- joining forces with a motley crew of workers from the old down-at-the heels Savoy Hotel to tackle a cheating union bureaucrat and a corrupt, tyrannical hotel boss.

A vicious attack on one of his fellow bartenders raises the stakes and puts everyone on edge, so it doesn't take much for the hotel manager to provoke the outraged workers into a strike.

When the manager subsequently turns up dead, McNulty sorts through his collection of reprobate pals to figure out who might be the murderer.

Award winning Irish crime novelist Ken Bruen raves that Death at the Old Hotel is “A fierce novel in the Irish sense...it may well prove to be the definitive Irish American saga. A dark emerald, lit by old glory...a true masterpiece of slow burn.”

Shades of Gangs of New York!

Jason Starr’s latest book The Follower, an updated version of Looking for Mr. Goodbar, is also set in the Big Apple. Ken Bruen’s take on this one is “The Follower does for dating what Jaws did for swimming.”

So, set ‘em up, Joe …