East of a

Readers nostalgic for the shabby PI with the manly integrity of Bogart will cheer the debut of Atwood and his '90s noir hero, whose turf includes the stained sidewalks, perilous tenements and pierced, tattooed denizens of New York's Lower East Side. Payton Sherwood is a marginally employed gumshoe with a yen for justice and a healthy dash of self-deprecating charm. While making a food run late one night in his East Village neighborhood, he saves a young street girl from three toughs, only to have her steal his watch and split after the thugs leave him in a puddle of his own blood. A quick search turns up the girl's beeper and her name: Gloria. Payton vows to track her down, retrieve his watch--and find out why Gloria was being hunted by the goons. The beeper leads Payton to a string of idiosyncratic East Villagers, all involved in the interconnected underworlds of dance-club culture and drug trafficking, where fierce loyalties are met with equally fierce betrayals. Payton's dogged (and unpaid) footwork brings him to the murderous vortex of the club-kid drug ring, a church-cum-nightclub called the Hellhole, where Atwood sets up a devilishly classic denouement. The narration pulses with verve and threat, and through Payton's vividly rendered voice readers will know the sweat, lust and fear. Author tour. (Feb.)