East of A - Tapa dura

Payton Sherwood, a novice private detective in New York's East Village, stumbles upon a murder that draws him into the dark and desperate underside of the city, in a neo-noir urban mystery. A first novel. 25,000 first printing. Tour.

y's hot-wired East Village: From Avenue A to Avenue D, Alphabet City is a magnet for all-night revelers, actors, musicians, and artists. But it's also a lair for desperate hustlers, con men, and last-chance addicts.

Just part of the scene East of A.

Payton Sherwood knows that scene. He lives it daily. But Payton also lives by a  creed derived from the white-knight heroes of Golden Age detective fiction. And like those renowned hardboiled private eyes, he is riddled with loss--the loss of an old love who still exists in daydreams, and the loss of a city he barely recognizes.

Payton returns to the Lower East Side after a short absence to find himself an outsider. When he takes a wrong turn on a side street, he stumbles into trouble in the form of three bull-necked heavies and a tough sixteen-year-old runaway named Gloria Manlow. After taking a savage beating, Payton is robbed of his Rolex watch and left bleeding on the sidewalk.

For Payton, t