A delicious, darkly comic work of new urban noir from an original new literary talent.
Meet Virgil Strauss, a physically and emotionally unkempt yet somehow appealing tabloid photographer whose passion is bearing photographic witness–à la Weegee–to the obscene, malevolent and sanguine viscera of New York culture.
To his disapppointment and defeat, The New York Graphic–the city’s most renowned shock-based tabloid daily–has routinely rejected Virgil’s work. But when Virgil and his friend Larry Onions rip off a local church, he gets the picture of a lifetime, a job at the Graphic, and a generous measure of trouble, leading to serious indiscretions that include (but aren’t limited to): grave robbing, straining his neighbor’s dog’s feces for an inadvertently consumed diamond, widely circulating the work of a renowned "art terrorist," and being an FBI informant in a serial bombing case. Helping Virgil through his hard times is Marcy, HIV-positive porn-star girlfriend, whose wispy, hardened, tragic strength brings tenderness and humanity to Virgil’s cold-blooded reality.
New York Graphic is a winningly fresh contribution to the noir genre: alternately hilarious, vulgar, touching, seriously disturbed–and a delightfully heady reading.
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