Night Life by Michael Cassidy - Thrilling Urban Adventure Novel for Evening Reading & Book Club Discussions

For this fast-paced noir thriller set in fifties Manhattan, David Taylor expands on Raymond Chandler’s famous 1950 advice: “When in doubt have a man come through the door with a gun [or switchblade, pliers, lead pipe, fists, whatever] in his hand.”Taylor, however, is never in doubt. He poses his hero, Detective Michael Cassidy of the NYPD, against four or five separate crews of villains, including crooked cops, J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, a couple of CIA agents run amok, Joe McCarthy and his despicable henchman, Roy Cohn, plus a cell of ruthless Red spies — all at cross purposes. Nevertheless, the ending is a surprising cliff hanger, with (almost) all the loose ends tied up.Beyond its deft plotting, two aspects make this book an immersive experience. The lead characters are engaging and genuinely unusual. Cassidy, our main guy, is not just smart, inclined to be honest, good with his fists, and a war hero, he’s knowledgable about art, a jazz aficionado, and comfortably well off, the son of a successful Broadway producer. He also has predictive dreams, although he rarely recognizes what they predict until after the fact. Dylan McCue, the woman he falls hard for, enters gorgeous, green-eyed, and tough: “Nobody makes me do anything I don’t want to do. I do what I want.” A take on Bacall, right? But Dylan is also an expert welder — and more, but that would be telling.Perhaps most satisfying is "Night Life's" atmosphere. The author grew up in New York City, and his deep research brings 1954 Manhattan persuasively to life, grounding a tale that verges on the fantastic in tactile reality. Taylor knows theater people from experience. He knows police procedure. He even knows what tools high-class illegal abortionists used in the fifties. He knows what Manhattan’s streets and neighborhoods were like ca. 1954; how the Waldorf Towers were staffed; where people met to eat and drink — Toots Shor’s and Sardi’s, of course, although “The Three Deuces where [Cassidy] had listened to Billie Holiday was gone.”"Night Life" is filled with lively, sassy dialogue and laced with surprisingly touching and powerful scenes. Best of all, it’s rich and exciting entertainment, hard to put down. Read it now.