The Narrowback

This alcohol- and cocaine-fueled noir page-turner follows a posse of Bronx-born Irish ""narrowbacks"" whose gangster games backfire. The ringleader, Tom Farrell, is an ex-con who dreams of a career as an artist. The trouble begins when Farrell convinces his friends to help him rob $750,000 in cash and jewels from an upscale midtown hotel. When the thugs kill an IRA accomplice who attempts to hijack the booty, the terrorist's superior enlists a Vietnam-trained sniper to claim the booty for the Cause. The bloodiness that ensues--also involving a feckless FBI agent and members of an Albanian mob--contributes to the novel's urban chic, as when Farrell looks in the rearview mirror and notices that ""the cut on his chin had stopped bleeding and had scabbed up like a small goatee."" A few pistol-whippings later, Farrell is wandering Manhattan in a boozy haze, believing he's the last one left alive, the IRA still on his trail. Ledwidge's too-cool characters are, like his prose, lean and mean, and their inability to distinguish the difference between loyalty to a cause and senseless violence on its behalf creates an aura of futility and hopelessness that pulses through this well-executed debut. BOMC and QPB selections. (Jan.)