“Like the best noir practitioners, Murphy uses the mystery as scaffolding to assemble a world of fallen dreams and doom-bitten characters . . . Murphy’s hard-boiled rendering of the city is nothing short of exquisite . . . For anyone who wants a portrait of this New York, few recent books have conjured it so vividly.” —The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice

• A Best Book of the Year from The New Yorker, LitHub, CrimeReads, and more!

A sharp and stylish debut from the editor-in-chief of CrimeReads in which an unwitting private eye gets caught up in a crime of obsession between a reclusive literary superstar and her bookseller husband, paying homage to the noir genre just as smartly as it reinvents it

After leaving behind the comforts and the shackles of a prestigious law firm, a restless attorney makes ends meet in mid-2000s Brooklyn by picking up odd jobs from a colorful assortment of clients. When a mysterious woman named Anna Reddick turns up at his apartment with ten thousand dollars in cash and asks him to track down her missing husband Newton, an antiquarian bookseller who she believes has been pilfering rare true crime volumes from her collection, he trusts it will be a quick and easy case. But when the real Anna Reddick—a magnetic but unpredictable literary prodigy—lands on his doorstep with a few bones to pick, he finds himself out of his depth, drawn into a series of deceptions involving Joseph Conrad novels, unscrupulous booksellers, aspiring flâneurs, and seedy real estate developers.

Set against the backdrop of New York at the tail end of the analog era and immersed in the worlds of literature and bookselling, An Honest Living is a gripping story of artistic ambition, obsession, and the small crimes we commit against one another every day.

A smart and stylish debut from the editor-in-chief of CrimeReads that pays homage to the noir genre just as smartly as it reinvents it, if Chinatown took place in twenty-first century Brooklyn

After leaving behind the comforts and the shackles of a prestigious Midtown law firm, an attorney makes ends meet in mid-2000s New York City by picking up odd jobs from a colorful assortment of clients in private practice. When a mysterious woman named Anna Reddick turns up at his apartment with ten thousand dollars in cash and asks him to track down her missing husband Newton, an antiquarian bookseller who she believes has been pilfering rare items from her collection, he trusts it will be a quick and easy case. But when the real Anna Reddick-a magnetic, if jaded, literary prodigy-lands on his doorstep with a few bones to pick, he finds himself out of his depth, drawn into a series of unexpected deceptions involving powerful forces of commerce and real estate looking to redevelop Brooklyn's industrial waterfront.



Set against the backdrop of a perpetually changing New York at the tail end of the analog era, An Honest Living is a gripping story of artistic ambition, obsession, and the small crimes we commit against one another every day, serving up nail-biting mystery with a sly comedic touch.



Story Locale: New York, New York

"Dwyer Murphy’s debut novel, An Honest Living, is a noir love letter to New York City. It is a sublime trip through a city teeming with professional idlers, hustlers, poets, politicians, insurance scammers, and real estate developers, all vying for their share of New York’s divinity."
—Walter Mosley, author of Blood Grove
 
"An Honest Living is an electrically good time meted out in fine, sharp, crackling prose that somehow manages to be an homage, a send-up, and a reinvention all at once."
—Téa Obreht, author of The Tiger's Wife and Inland
 
"Dwyer Murphy's An Honest Living is a deliciously smart PI novel set in New York's antiquarian book world that channels Chandler and Chinatown to take us into a recent past that already feels like a bygone era. A brisk, funny, and fabulous debut."
—Adrian McKinty, author of The Chain
 
“A terrific book.”
—Don Winslow, author of City on Fire

"A witty, observant debut that's as much a love letter to New York as it is a slick noir."
—Andrea Bartz, author of We Were Never Here
 
"An Honest Living is a superb debut novel by a supremely gifted writer. It's as if Roberto Bolaño and Lawrence Osborne got together to reimagine Chinatown. I was as gripped by the mystery at the heart of this book as I was by Dwyer Murphy's perfect prose."
—Jonathan Lee, author of The Great Mistake