Following his wife’s death in an air disaster, Philip Sanders, the main character and narrator of A.P. Foster’s CLIFFHANGER, moves from Los Angeles to New York to begin his new life as a widower and single father of a 4-year-old boy. Things go from bad to worse when investigators are unable to definitively confirm that his wife was killed in the plane crash. They get worse still as Philip discovers a series of strange letters and photographs indicating that his wife was leading a double life—that perhaps he didn’t know her at all.

Meanwhile, New York’s crack epidemic is in full swing, Philip develops a cocaine habit, and predatory real estate moguls are gobbling up big swaths of the city by converting former slums into upscale neighborhoods. As the story progresses, Philip becomes convinced that a malevolent, city-wide conspiracy is afoot and that his wife is somehow caught up in it. So down into the rabbit hole he goes in search of the truth.

Foster does an adequate job of capturing what New York looked and felt like in the 1970s and 80s, including the sense of opportunity and promise it held for young people despite widespread poverty and violence. Constantly lurking in the background is the pervasive corruption and duplicity of the city’s ruling class, whose motives are more diabolical than Philip imagined.

The prose is largely straightforward and unadorned, though certainly competent. Every so often an elegance shines through the prosaic surface, like this: “As I moved away from her death, Ellie’s life distorted, bloated. It refused to stay still, to hang on the wall like a painting. Instead it wavered with the inner heat of a desert mirage, charged with all the wants and needs of two souls.” To Foster’s credit, there is almost no extraneous material clinging to the narrative; even moments that seem purely digressive end up having an important narrative function.

Things get a little overheated in the final chapters, which are marked by a series of drawn-out action sequences (think 007) and liberal use of exclamation points. Also, a clumsy attempt at an erotic sex scene earlier in the book is sure to leave some readers cringing. But these and other problems aren't serious enough to overshadow the novel's strengths.

A.P. Foster's CLIFFHANGER is a lean, energetic thriller that manages to convey a sense of urgency and menace from start to finish.

~ Michael Howard for IndieReader