The Last Green Light

[Foy is] a storyteller who, like Conrad, can compress into a tale you can't put down all the complexities of a time and place.

--Doris Lessing, winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature

America's love affair with gangsters didn't start with The Great Gatsby and doesn't look like it's ending soon. Fitzgerald's novel and the party-throwing icon at its centre are set like a dazzling jewel on the forehead of Modern Fiction. But that is only one side of paradise, and in The Last Green Light, George Foy takes us on a thrilling, beautifully written ride through another, darker side. How did Gatsby come into all that money? Foy answers that question with a realistic expos? of Gatsby's past and the rum-running mayhem exploding off the shores of Jazz Age Long Island ... Readers will recognize names from Fitzgerald's book, but this novel stands on its own. Foy deploys a cast of vividly imagined characters into scenes of slash-bang action intertwined with a deeply humane evocation of longing--for love, status, and ultimately self-respect.

--Giles Blunt, author of the Cardinal series (novels and TV)

If The Great Gatsby had a subconscious it would be this lovely, often poetic novel, in which working people pull the mask off "Gilded Age" New York City to reveal the violence and exploitation underlying the 1920s American dream. A must-read.

--Thomas H. Cook, Edgar-winning author of Red Leaves and The Chatham School Affair