Hard, Hard City Hardback - 2004

de Fusilli, Jim

When a troubled, talented teenager goes missing, private investigator Terry Orr's search uncovers a hornet's nest of family secrets.

In just three short years, Jim Fusilli has garnered the kind of praise for which writers wait their entire careers: "Superior . . . This courageous and original writer works against the grain of expectations, looking to make our experience not easy but illuminative and true," proclaimed The Boston Globe. Publishers Weekly writes, "Fusilli's sense of place is stunning: a tangible, poetically evoked Manhattan infuses this complex, haunting story."

In the latest installment of Jim Fusilli's critically acclaimed series, enigmatic hero and occasional private eye Terry Orr has been asked by his precocious daughter, Bella, and her friend Daniel Wu to search for a gifted student who has suddenly disappeared. Terry quickly discovers that documents and cash have been stolen from the home of an elderly family friend with whom the boy had been staying. When Terry travels to the adolescent's New Jersey hometown, he meets with unexpected violence. And when he returns to the city, the trail leads to murder, as his own life hangs in the balance.

But Terry can't say no to this case; something about the damaged boy reminds him of his own difficult youth, as well as his constantly challenging relationship with daughter, Bella, who has begun to push her desperate father away.

Filled with brilliantly drawn characters and imbued with Fusilli's vivid evocation of New York, Hard, Hard City is a revelation.