REVIEW:

When you start a book titled One Night, New York, which the publisher describes as being set “over the course of a single night,” you’d think the story would take place… over the course of a single night, right? Wrong.

While the novel does open atop the newly-built Empire State Building on a freezing cold evening in December 1932, it quickly ping pongs back in time to reveal what led our main character, Frances, and her friend Agnes to be there on the verge of murder. Readers follow her journey from dysfunctional family farm life in rural Kansas to the tenements of NYC, where she joins her older brother and tries to start anew.

One Night, New York is billed as a literary thriller, and I suppose it is. I’m shelving it as historical fiction though, because it reignited my desire to read books that take place in other time periods. I was less interested in the story itself than the superb atmosphere and surprising characterization achieved by debut novelist Lara Thompson. For the time I spent with Frances in her world (which, I’ll note again, was NOT just one night), I felt deeply immersed in Depression-era New York and its melting pot of humanity.

The audiobook is narrated by Stephanie Cannon, and I would like to applaud her choice to avoid attempting to sound like men while reading the male dialogue. Well done, Ms. Cannon.

And Ms. Thompson too, of course.

My thanks to Dreamscape Media for the gifted audiobook review copy. One Night, New York is now available in print and will be released on audio in the US on December 23.

PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:

For the hundredth time since they'd made their promise, she wondered if she and Agnes were really going to go through with it, if she was brave and terrible enough...

At the top of the Empire State Building on a freezing December night, two women hold their breath. Frances and Agnes are waiting for the man who has wronged them. They plan to seek the ultimate revenge.

Set over the course of a single night, One Night, New York is a detective story, a romance, and a coming-of-age tale. It is also a story of old New York, of bohemian Greenwich Village between the wars, of floozies and artists and addicts — lighting up the world while all around them America burned with the Great Depression.