Cityside - Hardcover

William Heffernan is a former investigative reporter for the New Daily News and the New York Post.

Tough-talking, two-fisted tale from Heffernan (The Dinosaur Club, 1997, etc.) of a Manhattan tabloid newspaper reporter whosurprise, surpriselearns that his employers are just as morally bankrupt as the bad guys he exposes in print. Sprung by one of his cocky editors after he's busted for taking a swing at a drunken cop, Billy Burke, a gung-ho assignment reporter for the sleazy New York Globe, gets the story that might garner him a Pulitzer: a nurse, angered at a cardiac surgeon's sexual importuning, tips the Globe that the wealthy doctor won't operate on a boy dying of a perforated heart until his uninsured, impoverished single mother comes up with $72,000 in cash. Burke's manic, foulmouthed editor, Lenny Twist, wants a series about the boy that will play off an investigative one about University Hospital's fraudulent billing practices, and warns Burke not to get emotionally involved. But Burke, separated from his wife and sharing support of an eight-year-old autistic daughter, naturally falls for Roberto Avalon's beautiful mother Maria. While he masquerades as a doctor to dig up dirt inside the hospital, the paper (which could easily pay for the operation or put pressure on the hospital to write off the cost) launches a charitable drive, encouraging readers to chip in for poor Roberto. Burke's story is almost ruined when Maria is arrested for running numbers for the mob in an effort to raise the cash. Not to worry, though: the newspaper's colorful, street-smart staff call in favors on both sides of the law so that Maria and her child remain a fitting subject for public largesse. Burke feels plenty of pressure, but doesn't smell a rat until the Globe fails to come up with the money for the operation when the boy needs it. Set during the simmering summer of 1975, when journalists everywhere are lusting for circulation-building exposs that can top Watergate, Heffernan's peppy tale crackles with profane, darkly comic insider lore that almost, but not quite, patches over the holes in his plot. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.