The Foreigner

A hip debut offers a cheeky tale of intrigue, Manhattan-style.
Recent college grad Alex Orlando agrees to housesit in New York for her uncle Carmi while he makes his yearly pilgrimage to Puerto Rico to visit his "friend" Julio. Don't go to the East Village or take the subway, Uncle Carmi warns, and especially don't talk to the pushy foreigner next door. Naturally, Alex manages to break all three rules on her first day. Carmi's right about one thing: Swedish architect Christian is pushy. With barely time to blink, he and Alex are having dinner, going to the gym, and finally rolling around on the floor of Uncle Carmi's hallway. But Christian isn't the only friend Alex finds in Manhattan. She reconnects with her old buddy Kyle, still experiencing fits of existential angst while nursing a drug habit. At her job in the hosiery department at Barney's, she befriends the fanciful Malcolm, an up-and-coming playwright. And handsome Jan, a Belgian jeweler she had a fling with while traveling through Europe, turns up in town on business. Alex is enjoying her New York frolic until she discovers Christian's dead body, with his curly blond head bashed in. In the ensuing mystery, disguised as a stylish study of young urban life (or is it the other way around?), red herrings and suspicious coincidences abound. Christian was Kyle's drug dealer. Algerian terrorists threaten Alex in regard to Malcolm's latest play, a manuscript of which was found in Christian's apartment with Kyle's handwriting on it. All of it proves to our heroine that she should have heeded Uncle Carmi's advice and stayed out of the East Village. Unfortunately, the suspense the story successfully builds anticlimaxes in a conclusion far more mundane than the clues indicate.
A mediocre whodunit in the midst of an amiable and often witty debut.