HAVANA ROOM, THE by Colin Harrison - FIRST EDITION BOOK

Bill Wyeth is a real estate attorney in his late thirties who seems to have it all: a wonderful wife and son, a successful practice, and all the benefits wealth can bestow. Then, through a devastating twist of fate, he loses everything. Within weeks, he is unmoored and alone, drifting toward the city's darker corners. Wyeth is soon drawn to an old-time Manhattan steakhouse, where he becomes intrigued by the manager, Allison Sparks - sexy, complicated, and independent in all ways. Allison controls access to the restaurant's private bar, the Havana Room - and what goes on in there, he's told, is secret." To impress Allison, Wyeth agrees to help her friend, Jay Rainey, conclude a last-minute midnight real estate transaction. But once he sees the players and the paperwork, Wyeth knows something is wrong. And before long, he's inextricably ensnared in Rainey's peculiar obsessions, which involve a Chilean businessman who feels he's been swindled, an old farmer frozen dead to a bulldozer, an outrageous black owner of a downtown hip-hop club, and a fourteen-year-old English girl. Only Rainey knows the connections between these people, which are revealed when Wyeth is finally admitted to the Havana Room where the survival of its occupants is most uncertain.