This character-driven crime novel is a spellbinding portrait of three friends confronting the consequences of their carefree youth on the streets of New York. * From the Publisher's Description * Acerbically captivating first novel . . . Benioff creates a pungent, funny urban tableau full of shrewd operators and unfulfilled desires * New York Times * As unusual as it is well wrought: it resonates with a Whitmanesque sense of the city's possibilities and unsatisfied longings * New Yorker * David Benioff's headlong suspense novel is a deceptively simple chronicle of [ Monty's] final day of freedom . . . Working in a novelistic form of "real time", Benioff shows a knack for critiquing his genre while revitalising its cliches . . . Instead of yielding mere irony, the author, in his first novel, achieves both pathos and excitement * Entertainment Weekly * Brilliantly conceived, this gripping crime drama boasts dead-on dialogue, chiaroscuro portraits of New York's social strata and an inescapable crescendo of tension. Monty's solution to his agonising dilemmas will shock even hardened suspense lovers * Publishers Weekly *