Brian McNulty, veteran bartender at Oscar's on the Upper West Side, respects his customer's privacy. And their space. But when one--a tarnished but innocent young woman seduced by New York's bright lights and glitter--is murdered, and another battered innocent charged with killing her, he reluctantly begins his own investigation.
Brian's enthusiasm for the chase is given a boost with the arrival of the dead girl's sister, a young business woman from Massachusetts, equally bent on uncovering the killer. She's put off by his jaded attitude and offbeat lifestyle, but comes to rely upon his familiarity with the city's darker underside. Brian, in turn, enlists the aid of a cadre of neighborhood cronies. The suspects: all of the regulars at Oscar's, each with more to hide than the next.
A leftist politcally, a dedicated union man, Brian learns that when you dig into people's lives, rich or poor, you find things kept hidden for good reason. By stirring up these ghosts, you change the shape of the landscape and put your friends in harm's way.
This special first novel comes wrapped in art work created for it by famed artist Fritz Scholder.

Cornelius Lehane is a writer and editor for the United States' largest teachers union, the National Education Association. In other incarnations, he's been a college professor, a union organizer, and, yes, for more than a decade, a bartender. After spending most of his life in and around New York City, he now lives in a close-in suburb of Washington, DC with his wife, two sons, and an assortment of pets. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in fiction writing from Columbia University School of the Arts. A slightly different version of Beware the Solitary Drinker was published in France by Rivages/Noir this past spring.