Penzler Pick, June 2000: For noir fans still nostalgic for the feverish (un)reality of Englishman James Hadley Chase"s concocted American underbelly and its depraved denizens, here"s the book you"ve been waiting for. The 1939 hit No Orchids for Miss Blandish was Chase"s debut effort, and New York Graphic is Baker"s: what they have in common is the sense readers will have that both British authors are more concerned with ultimate impact than any verisimilitude. What we get is the USA as hard-boiled theme park. For Baker--onetime gravedigger, embalmer, movie projectionist, and theology student, all of which stints he puts to gleeful use--the city of New York provides the perfect staging ground for going far, far, far over the top. And into this urban nightmare, where rats are as common as dogs and sky-high Japanese shopping malls charge admission, he plunks down just the right sort of protagonist: Virgil Strauss, a tabloid photographer waiting for his big break. Originally published in London, New York Graphic follows Virgil into its own version of metropolitan hell, one that just happens to have "Business Improvement Districts" and a city dump appropriately named Fresh Kill. But the title isn"t just a description of Baker"s visceral style; it also refers to the newspaper where Virgil is finally employed and the pinnacle to which he"s aspired. (The guiding spirit of New York Graphic owes less to William Randolph Hearst than it does to, say, John Waters or James Ellroy.) With its references to iconic mystery-genre masterpieces such as Psycho, The Maltese Falcon, and "The Fall of the House of Usher," New York Graphic reminds us of tradition at the same time that it abandons many standards of characterization and plotting. Does such knowingness make it postmodern? I"m not sure, but such voyeurism as Virgil Strauss"s is always one way to illuminate crime fiction"s darkest corners. "So many stories. So much random death." That"s what Virgil thinks. And if you take the ride with him and his buddies--ex-junkie Larry Onions, porn pinup Marcy, Johnny from Jersey, among others--so will you. --Otto Penzler