A Friend Is A Gift You Give Yourself: A Novel

"Noir is alive and well, and William Boyle is one of the new masters of the genre. A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself is a quintessential New York City noir novel that subverts the tropes of the genre by putting women at the center of the narrative and ignoring guns in favor of focusing on feelings and the ways the past influences the present. Told with superb economy of language and packed with New York trivia, this is a deep, funny story about running away and finding yourself that features a Brooklyn mob widow, an estranged daughter and a Golden Age porn star."