I’ve always been a huge fan of Michael Silverstein. I first read his wonderful political poetry on his site Wall Street Poet. We ran a little of it here on TMV. I then invited the former NPR poet and environmental advisor to the Clinton-Gore campaign to do Guest Voices and eventually he joined TMV, writing prose more often than poetry on Wall Street and economic issues. So when I learned he had a book available on Kindle I was curious and decided to invest the $2.99.
Fifteen Feet Beneath Manhattan (The Bizarre Adventures of Morey Caine) is a comic, thriller gothic novel centering on the saga of how Caine, a struggling alternative newspaper reporter, gets drawn into sinister things going on and lurking beneath the streets of Manhattan. There are creepy humans under the streets — and non-humans almost as creepy as the creepy humans. he gets sucked into events by an insidious sanitation bureaucrat. But the real villain is Victor ben Shargis who dreams of a future in which he takes over much more than the underground.
The only question in reading this book is: exactly where has Silverstein been HIDING all these years as a fiction writer?? He is a GREAT writer and enthralling storyteller whose writing packs a hay-maker punch with vividly constructed scenes and punchy, realistic dialogue — a writer who easily elicits a chuckle or two (or more). The real shocker of this book is that you’d think Silverstein has been been writing this kind of lightening-paced thriller for years since it stacks up well against any thrillers on the market today or yesterday. Hopefully, Silverstein will do more lively fictions books such as this and try to get into print editions. I could easily see him selling a script to Hollywood.
Michael Silverstein: I LOVED your book…I really loved your book. And this is coming from someone who does not always enjoy fiction.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.