Tensions are high and the dangers multiply, as New York City bartender and man-about-the-mean streets Brian McNulty, always a sucker for the plight of the little guy, joins forces with a motley crew of workers from the old Savoy Hotel to tackle a cheating union bureaucrat and a corrupt, tyrannical hotel boss.

Keeping the goons off his back and away from his son Kevin is more than enough motivation for McNulty to put his not especially well-honed detective skills to work in the service of justice. Not surprisingly, neither justice nor McNulty himself fare very well in the endeavor, but as in past escapades, his dogged determination and willingness to see life without illusion bring the case to closure and McNulty face to face once more with unyielding and unpleasant truth.

Con Lehane’s mysteries about a genial Irish-American bartender named Brian McNulty are as cruelly charming as those Irish saloon storytellers who make sure you’re laughing before they flatten you with the sad stories of their lives. Running true to form, DEATH AT THE OLD HOTEL (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s Minotaur, $24.95) opens in the still-carefree days of the early 1990s at a hotel bar on Midtown Manhattan’s far west side.



It’s December, and everyone’s in a Christmas mood. But holiday spirits take a dive when the nasty manager unfairly fires a waitress and Brian, proud son of an old Commie organizer and a devoted union man, finds himself leading a strike. Goaded by his friend and fellow bartender, Barney Saunders, “a wild, young Irishman” of irresistible appeal, this big-hearted hero tries to prove a connection between the manager and a crooked union boss, and before you know it, two people are shot dead — and everyone on the picket line is a suspect.



For all the sentimental trimmings he hangs on this tale, Lehane has an honest feel for the working-class life of New York. And he’s clear-eyed about those crimes of the heart that have nothing to do with class.“ -- Marilyn Stasio, NYT



A fierce novel in the Irish sense...it may well prove to be the definitive Irish American saga. A dark emerald, lit by old glory...a true masterpiece of slow burn.” -- Ken Bruen, author of The Priest



"Forget the glitterati, the Eurotrash and the robber barons. Brian McNulty is my kind of New Yorker, and Con Lehane writes about the New York I love." -- SJ Rozan, author of In This Rain

Con Lehane’s third bartender Brian McNulty mystery, Death at the Old Hotel, in which he puts his background as a former bartender and a one-time union organizerto good use, was published in June. The first in the series, Beware the Solitary Drinker, was a 2002 Publisher’s Weekly Best Mystery Novel. The second, What Goes Around Comes Around, was likened to Lawrence Block’s early Matt Scudder mysteries by George Pelecanos and others.