An Honest Living

A Novel

By: Dwyer Murphy

Narrated by: Ari Fliakos

“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.

©2022 Dwyer Murphy (P)2022 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“It is precisely style and atmosphere that give An Honest Living so much electricity and dimension. 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. For those who demand a straightforward mystery without any humor, romance and ambience, well, forget it, Jake, it’s literature.”—The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice

“Set amid New York’s rare-book trade, this slow-burning début crime novel is also an atmospheric homage to the film Chinatown.”—The New Yorker

“Murphy’s engrossing debut is a book made for summer reading. It’s a smart, leisurely read, richly layered with movie references and philosophical reflections.”—Minneapolis Star-Tribune

The beginning of the story was very engaging and the reading had a great tone and pace.

The story has a very anticlimactic ending, however the reading was very good. Would recommend this reader maybe not the author.

Promising start, failed to deliver

The narrator was the perfect choice for this novel. He did an excellent job. The story got off to a wonderful start, it was very well written with several interesting threads. The last third of the novel was a huge disappointment. All those threads were left dangling. Quite frankly, the ending baffled me. It made no sense, answered no questions, and generally insulted the listener who had hung in for the whole book. I feel cheated and that I wasted my time.

A noir homage. Or maybe pastiche. You decide.

I picked it up on a whim. I like noir. But this... it was something else. An homage. Or maybe a pastiche. To be honest, it was hard to say. I'm all for mystery, but it starts to get tedious. Maybe this was a book where nothing happens and people are just talking all the time going off into the woods. Is it Chinatown? Or maybe some Conrad story we're stuck in. Who knows? I wasn't sure I was following the story. Not sure I wanted to know. It was a long story that hung together pretty loosely. The man's confession was wrapped in his own skin. There was a great deal more to the story but I couldn't remember all the details. I needed a drink. Deserved one for finishing. Didn't we all?

Great writing!

modern noir! Full of city metaphor. Catch’s the smells and brings them to the readers nose.

A True Noir

There’s a disaffected narrator, a damsel in distress who may or may not have a secret, a crime (or two), enough dry observations to make you reach for a cool drink, and even a fat man. Beautifully read.

Dud

writing style great, performance great, story overall flat and lacking...just kept thinking there had to be more

A thoroughly enjoyable listen

Mr. Murphy’s prose is nicely balanced and sharply executed. I found his attention to detail about the gritty beauty of life in NYC and Brooklyn so gratifyingly rendered. The overall tone is slightly sardonic without being embittered or dark, and i found the protagonist to be relatable and likable. The author takes us into the world of his characters while letting the characters develop in the slow and subtle unfolding of an old-fashioned crime story— no overdramatized hyperbole, just a keen eye for both the facts and ambiguities of life and human nature, with a dash of mystery thrown in.

The narration is excellent, nicely paced and moderated, with just the right combination of warmth and irony.

This is a great first venture into crime noir for the author, and i hope there will be sequels to come.

Very enjoyable

Expertly read, well written. The book references and lightly mirrors Chinatown - I was eager to restart listening throughout. Not as tight as a standard whodunnit, but that somehow made it more likable, not less.

Great narrator no plot

If you like NYC you might like this gritty travelogue but that’s all it is. No big mystery or even plot

Disappointing

This story was lacking in any kind of finality as well as any real plot. Had I realized it was over when it was, I would have stopped listening, and gotten my money back. Read something else.