This crime thriller from the author of "Floater" takes the reader on an entertaining tour of New York City's sleazier side. It centres around Russian-born Kate Piro, who has no difficulty attracting men, but soon finds that they are about to lead her into some complicated trouble.

Witty crime fiction and a snapshot of New York in the 1980s, limited to the world of borderline legal and criminal activity and characters, with some family resemblance to the fiction of Elmore Leonard and George V. Higgins. With these models, you can expect the crime leans more toward disorganized, hapless petty criminals; organized crime has no role at all. Despite the title, the Russian enclave in Brighton Beach plays a part, but not a featured role; other places include Times Square, and, further uptown,72nd street, as well as other places in upper and lower Manhattan, Coney Island (including the Typhoon roller coaster), and a mansion in Forest Hills. New York of the period is as grimy as I remember it; wonder if they still make egg creams? Major player is Kate Piro, aka Little Odessa, M. Anita Supreme— thoroughly Americanized Russian-Jewish immigrant (at the age of 9), a topless-bottomless dancer on Times Square, a dog and house-sitter, a belly dancer and temporary manager at the Arabian Knights [sic], Middle Eastern restaurant run by an Israeli who is also a smuggler with a stash. Piro is, eventually, a woman in peril, largely because of the dog, a Russian wolfhound named Isaac Grynzpun. Kate Piro is a surprisingly complex portrait: intelligent, ambitious, and probably the most ethical of the characters (but the bar is set low). On the other hand, she can be infuriatingly irrational and naïve or gullible. A nice role for Mila Kunis if this had a chance of being a movie. Other characters: her boyfriend Nathan Metrevelli, a small time drug dealer looking for another line of work, Stan Bucyk, a very corrupt cop who later becomes a “consultant” for the FBI, Harry Lema, a skillful but unfortunate burglar and dognapper who becomes the novel’s punching bag, Howard Ormont, the Israeli smuggler and dog owner, Mike Nicholas another member of the small world of smuggling, though considerably more elegant, and Paul Infante, a cop on the right side of the law. ( )