Justice in Manhattan: The Adams Round Table

A Clean Sweep,"" Mickey Friedman's ""Bad Haircut,"" Stanley Cohen's ""How Much Justice Can You Afford?"" and Thomas Chastain's ""Te+a3te-a+a6-T+a3te,"" and six other tales sets against the colorful backdrop of New York City. Reprint.

Another round of stories on a single theme (Missing in Manhattan, 1992, etc.) by the monthly lunch group first convened by Thomas Chastain and Mary Higgins Clark. The theme this time isn't especially specific or demanding, but it does prescribe some kind of reversal in the ending, and that's exactly where most of the contributors fall down. The stories by Justin Scott and Joyce Harrington are underplotted, as if cut off too soon; Clark and Lucy Freeman telegraph their punches so clearly that their entries seem to drag on forever; Mickey Friedman and Judith Kelman work toward hollow reversals; Chastain and Stanley Cohen dispense with climaxes almost entirely; and Dorothy Salisbury Davis's account of the abortive love affair between a priest and a married parishioner never quite fulfills its moody premise. Only Warren Murphy's malicious anecdote about a put-upon husband who kills his wife in the name of true love displays the professional competence you'd expect from this crowd. The rest of the stories hang in the air like the bright remarks of after-dinner speakers who find themselves smiling without anything to say. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The authors are an ad hoc gang of New York writers who regularly meet to chat and tell tales. Perhaps the most famous is Mary Higgins Clark. In this, their third thematically based collection of original stories (after Missing in Manhattan), Mickey Friedman leads off with a fine story about a woman reporter's scheme to take revenge on her overpriced hair stylist, who nevertheless gets the last laugh. Justin Scott offers a bleaker work about the fairly complex plan that a lonely immigrant who runs a handbag-repair shop hatches in order to prevent a youngster from killing a hired gun. Dorothy Salisbury Davis is romantic and longwinded over a priest, a married woman and a spying kid; Thomas Chastain is short, sweet and to-the-point in his tale of a wealthy widow who hires a young woman companion after suffering a long string of clingy male companions. While not necessarily outstanding, this collection is well worth reading.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.