Cityside - Hardcover

Heffernan, William

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688164064 ISBN 13: 9780688164065

Publisher: William Morrow & Co, 1999

Synopsis

In the world of high-stakes, post-Watergate journalism, Globe reporter Billy Burke is assigned a story about a dying child whose family is too poor to get the surgery he desperately needs and becomes torn between his conscience and his career.

About this title

About the Author

William Heffernan is a former investigative reporter for the New Daily News and the New York Post.

Reviews

"Flawlessly plotted, seamlessly written, it portrays investigative reporting accurately."

Tough-talking, two-fisted tale from Heffernan (The Dinosaur Club, 1997, etc.) of a Manhattan tabloid newspaper reporter whosurprise, surpriselearns that his employers are just as morally bankrupt as the bad guys he exposes in print. Sprung by one of his cocky editors after he's busted for taking a swing at a drunken cop, Billy Burke, a gung-ho assignment reporter for the sleazy New York Globe, gets the story that might garner him a Pulitzer: a nurse, angered at a cardiac surgeon's sexual importuning, tips the Globe that the wealthy doctor won't operate on a boy dying of a perforated heart until his uninsured, impoverished single mother comes up with $72,000 in cash. Burke's manic, foulmouthed editor, Lenny Twist, wants a series about the boy that will play off an investigative one about University Hospital's fraudulent billing practices, and warns Burke not to get emotionally involved. But Burke, separated from his wife and sharing support of an eight-year-old autistic daughter, naturally falls for Roberto Avalon's beautiful mother Maria. While he masquerades as a doctor to dig up dirt inside the hospital, the paper (which could easily pay for the operation or put pressure on the hospital to write off the cost) launches a charitable drive, encouraging readers to chip in for poor Roberto. Burke's story is almost ruined when Maria is arrested for running numbers for the mob in an effort to raise the cash. Not to worry, though: the newspaper's colorful, street-smart staff call in favors on both sides of the law so that Maria and her child remain a fitting subject for public largesse. Burke feels plenty of pressure, but doesn't smell a rat until the Globe fails to come up with the money for the operation when the boy needs it. Set during the simmering summer of 1975, when journalists everywhere are lusting for circulation-building exposs that can top Watergate, Heffernan's peppy tale crackles with profane, darkly comic insider lore that almost, but not quite, patches over the holes in his plot. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The 1970s are a big pop culture phenomenon these days: the clothes, the hair, the music, even the television shows being made into movies. This novel takes a look at journalistic practices of a fictional New York paper, the Globe, in the post-Watergate era. Billy Burke, the quintessential battered newspaperman whose integrity outweighs everything else, including the shady maneuverings of his opportunistic editor, is assigned to a tearjerker/hospital-exposestory. A big private hospital won't operate on a young Latino boy with a hole in his heart, yet surgeons are falsifying records left and right. The dashing Burke, dating a gorgeous reporter, falls for the young boy's mother--until his own ex-wife comes back into the picture. He still has feelings for the ex, and they have an autistic child. Heffernan obviously means well here, and despite the white hats worn by Burke and the women in his life, all the bad guys aren't necessarily all bad. Joe Collins

More media fallout; here a reporter struggles with his conscience. Should he write the story that could win him a Pulitzer or risk his career by denouncing his newspaper's greedy ways? From an Edgar Award winner.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow & Co
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0688164064
• ISBN 13: 9780688164065
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288