Recently released from a 2 yr prison term, a forger finds a letter from an old lover in a bag of mail that was waiting for him. She's dying and tells him they had a daughter 30 yrs ago and she needs help. Mother and daughter had a falling out but the daughter has a drug habit and a controlling, brutal gangster boyfriend. She wants him to help their daughter and he sets out to find her. ( )

Good writer but plot uneven. ( )

An art forger learns that he is the father of a woman (a club singer) in danger from a boyfriend. ( )

I am a fan of John Harvey's Resnick novels and short stories. This book takes a minor character from the Resnick novels, failed artist and forger Sloane. This is not a genre novel, although partly a crime novel.

Sloane is a washout, a promising artist in the 50's partying in New York with his older artist lover, he is now jobless and living in poverty having just got out of prison. He beats some money out of the dealer who betrayed him and then, when a letter arrives to tell him his old lover is dying in Tuscany he discovers from her a daughter he never knew he had.

The journey to understand the past takes place in New York and the daughter, a drug addicted jazz singer, has a menacing and murderous boyfriend to bring Sloane back to the present and force his acceptance of the past.

A slow burning, melancholy and well written novel and unusual to find a strong central character in a modern novel who is approaching sixty. ( )