“Like the best noir practitioners, Murphy uses the mystery as scaffolding to assemble a world of fallen dreams and doom-bitten characters . . . Murphy’s hard-boiled rendering of the city is nothing short of exquisite . . . For anyone who wants a portrait of this New York, few recent books have conjured it so vividly . ” — The New York Times Book Review , Editors’ Choice • A Best Book of the Year from The New Yorker , LitHub , CrimeReads , and more! A sharp and stylish debut from the editor-in-chief of CrimeReads in which an unwitting private eye gets caught up in a crime of obsession between a reclusive literary superstar and her bookseller husband, paying homage to the noir genre just as smartly as it reinvents it After leaving behind the comforts and the shackles of a prestigious law firm, a restless attorney makes ends meet in mid-2000s Brooklyn by picking up odd jobs from a colorful assortment of clients. When a mysterious woman named Anna Reddick turns up at his apartment with ten thousand dollars in cash and asks him to track down her missing husband Newton, an antiquarian bookseller who she believes has been pilfering rare true crime volumes from her collection, he trusts it will be a quick and easy case. But when the real Anna Reddick—a magnetic but unpredictable literary prodigy—lands on his doorstep with a few bones to pick, he finds himself out of his depth, drawn into a series of deceptions involving Joseph Conrad novels, unscrupulous booksellers, aspiring flâneurs, and seedy real estate developers. Set against the backdrop of New York at the tail end of the analog era and immersed in the worlds of literature and bookselling, An Honest Living is a gripping story of artistic ambition, obsession, and the small crimes we commit against one another every day. “It is precisely style and atmosphere that give An Honest Living so much electricity and dimension. Like the best noir practitioners, Murphy uses the mystery as scaffolding to assemble a world of fallen dreams and doom bitten characters . . . Murphy’s hard-boiled rendering of the city is nothing short of exquisite . . . For anyone who wants a portrait of this New York, few recent books have conjured it so vividly. For those who demand a straightforward mystery without any humor, romance and ambience, well, forget it, Jake, it’s literature. ” — The New York Times Book Review , Editors’ Choice “Set amid New York’s rare-book trade, this slow-burning début crime novel is also an atmospheric homage to the film Chinatown .” — The New Yorker , Best Books of 2022 “Murphy’s engrossing debut is a book made for summer reading. It’s a smart, leisurely read, richly layered with movie references and philosophical reflections.” — Minneapolis Star-Tribune   "[Murphy] knows not just where the bodies are buried but how readers want them to be discovered." —Boston Globe “This territory-marking debut is seductively steeped in motifs reminiscent of the golden age of noir. Fans of the genre will likely be nodding appreciatively from the introduction of a mysterious woman out to get her husband, which launches this story, to the concluding shot of a vintage car.” —Shelf Awareness “A rain-spattered love letter to a bygone New York, a wry homage to a classic of the genre, and a delightfully meta work of neo-noir . . . [B]rilliantly assured . . . The mystery is beautifully constructed, the writing crackles on every page, and Murphy’s portrait of early 2000s New York City is nothing short of exquisite. If you’re looking to lose yourself inside a smart, atmospheric literary crime novel, An Honest Living will not disappoint.” —LitHub, Our 38 Favorite Books of 2022 “A lyrical valentine to New York City and literature.” — Oline Cogdill, South Florida Sun-Sentinel “Quietly brilliant . . . The novel explores the ways in which we're nothing without our curiosities—even if those curiosities, in the end, undo us.” — Los Angeles Review of Books “ An Honest Living is a novel about ambition and obsession, shadow and light, smoke and mirrors—a shimmering, often surprising, exploration of how fact and fiction reflect one another until the boundaries disappear.” — BookTrib   “ If Cara Black’s Aimee Leduc smoked pot, or if Michael Connelly was from Paris, their books might read a little something like Dwyer Murphy’s absurdly entertaining and extremely literary debut.” — CrimeReads, “Most Anticipated Crime Books of 2022”   “An Honest Living hits all the right notes . . . [a] smart and seductive page-turner.” — Fine Books & Collections   “ For those who covet ‘reading in a bar with lousy lighting and good air conditioning,’ this one is pure pleasure.” — Booklist   “ An Honest Living is a smartly updated literary noir set in pre-financial crisis Manhattan; it’s suffused not only with risk-taking and critical thinking, but with Murphy’s generosity of spirit. The novel is playful and welcoming, coaching t