David Benioff: The 25th hour

By MICHAEL LARSON

Monty has sway. He gets seats at Madison Square Garden like that. He enters New York's finest nightclubs through the staff entrance, thus avoiding the metal detectors.

The best stores open late so he can make his purchases, alone, away from the crowds. Sway, to Monty, counts more than money. And he has plenty of that, also.

Sway is locking eyes with an undercover cop on the subway; you know what he is and he knows what you are, and you wink at him because he drives a battered Buick and you drive a Corvette and he cannot touch you. But then the cops do touch him, and Monty Brogan's world ends.

Busted for drugs - set up by someone within his criminal connections - Monty is sentenced to seven years at Otisville Federal Penitentiary. How could it happen?

Monty is beautiful, almost pretty, streetsmart, discreet - and has the magical sway. But it has happened, and now he has to face a change of circumstances.

His friends rally round, and the basis of this book is the different takes they have on what happened, what should happen and what Monty should do.

There is Slattery, a hard drinking, self-centred Wall Street broker with an eye on Monty's exotic girlfriend, Naturelle; Jakob, an ever-so-slightly uptight teacher with inappropriate thoughts about one of his students; and Monty's long-suffering father, who ultimately offers his son an unlikely escape.

Then there are his crime comrades who throw him a party with a catch. Within it all is Monty, his eye on the clock, fearful of what will happen to him inside, both literally and figuratively.

The scenario - one night of freedom - gives Benioff the opportunity to use his wild imagination to its full extent.

The personality of New York, the disparate buddies with their own neuroses trying to do what's best, unsure as to what they may be, his well-meaning, confused father; they're all great characters, well written.

Pathos, action, sex, drugs and violence are all here, dictated at a snappy pace, with surprising heart. And the ending - well, that would be telling.

A quick and brilliant read.

Hodder & Stoughton

$19.95