A complex and intricately woven story. Drug dealing, pornography, death, mourning, starting over; there's a lot going on in here. I lost the thread a few times but overall, a decent read with a satisfying ending. While it plodded along at some points, the end had my heart racing. I would have liked some character development. I do love stories set in NYC, though.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book.

This book started so well, with Philip struggling to deal with the loss of his wife, thought to have died in a plane crash, but then it all goes badly wrong when he moves to New York in search of the truth about her life and death.

His search takes him into the underworld of drugs, paedophilia, pornography. As the story progresses he is a less and less convincing character. From being a devoted father to his young son, increasingly he leaves him at home alone, or with babysitters he's only know for a very short time in a world in which he can trust no-one and where he and consequently 4-year-old Chris are in increasing danger. In addition, whilst taking on the drugs world he indulges in illegal substances quite a lot himself!

When the 'hero' of a novel takes on the criminal world, puts himself into increasingly bizarre and dangerous situations and survives to tell the tale, it seems such a cliché and is totally unbelievable. And the last straw was sending his little boy down a black ski run. Sadly most of the novel consisted of a catalogue of situations I just could not believe in.

I really enjoyed the writing and some of the insights of this author. Its a tough story, with lots of loss and duplicity, some of the right reasons, some not.
There are some things that don't make sense to me, how a loving mother could put herself into so much danger, but human behavior never fails to baffle me.

Sudden, unexplained loss is hard enough, furthermore to explain to a child. But our hero does the best he can and muddles through with the best of intentions. His awareness of himself is good, but sometimes not enough to make the better decisions. Making a dramatic move after the death leads him into a very dramatic and dangerous series of events, some are truly horrible. I can not stand when animals are involved-

The ending is ok, a bit poignant but hopeful.
Recommend.