Red Fog

Jimmy Dependra, a writer living on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, is obsessed with the mysteries of sex and death as he researches how the city’s underground history was transformed by the telegraph and transatlantic cable, the latter invented by Cyrus Field in Gramercy Park.

He is introduced to Berenice Chawters, a feisty ninety-three year old former courtesan who has lived there for over sixty years and inherited a large portion of the Atlantic Cable Company fortune, and she shares with him her unusual lifetime’s experiences.

Then, cruising Stuyvesant Park late one night, he encounters a dark stranger who turns out to be Dr. Neelem Blegg, a professor of criminology and forensics at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who he discovers is also knowledgeable about Cesare Lombroso, the famous 19th century Italian psychiatrist and pioneering criminologist who was a scientific precursor of Freud. They realize Lombroso has a surprising contemporary relevance and this catalyzes their relationship. Jimmy moves through a labyrinth of unusual intrigues that refocuses the case of a murdered hermaphrodite hooker and her killer that reveals parallels between writing and detection, criminology and crypt-ology. Red Fog is a darkly illuminating roman à clef that probes the city’s taboo underside as it explores intertwining reflections connecting the living and dead. It culminates on September 11, 2001, after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

IT WAS ONE OF those preternaturally auspicious autumn evenings. The air had become suddenly chilled and pungent, summer’s oppressive heat had lifted and been dispersed. Nature had started her retreat. Gnarled bare branches stood out like knotty dendrites as trees turned into gracefully suspended skeletons and buildings took on a starker, razor-sharp definition, casting long slanting shadows. The driving force of the first fierce gusts of wind announced that next distinct change of season—winter. The overcast evening was unusually dank and misty, too.

“This is my favorite time of the year,” Jimmy Dependra thought to himself. “New York City moves in the fall, the metropolitan bustle lurches into high gear with an exciting fitful physicality. A new season of openings, books, concerts, and crowds of fashionably dressed people back from summer’s sojourn sends that magic buzz into the air and underscores the reason for being an ardent urban dweller.

“The changing light clinches the thrill. Summer’s golden glow, transformed into a suffused cool white light, has that particularly austere, steely, harder edge. Fall is the time of the naturata, the in-itself, the withdrawal into the underworld…”

Having arrived early for his Friday night rendezvous, Jimmy dutifully stopped at the darkened corner of One Lexington Avenue, directly across from the imposing black iron fence surrounding Manhattan’s exclusive Gramercy Park—only residents have keys. Squinting in the dim light, he looked up at the famous steel plaque on the corner landmark building and again contemplated its fabled inscription: CYRUS WEST FIELD, NOVEMBER 30, 1819 – JULY 12,1892 HERE FOR FORTY YEARS WAS HIS HOME AND HERE THE PLANS WERE FOR THE FIRST ATLANTIC CABLE LAID IN 1858.

“The Atlantic Cable and telegraph were the historical turning points—they changed everything. My quest begins right here—I’ve got to uncover their hidden secrets!” Jimmy gazed up at the agitated night sky and mused about what he might find out tonight. He was obsessed.

e book explores the seamy underbelly of society, which can certainly capture the imagination… A weighty meditation on the past, sexuality, and criminality…”

Kirkus Reviews

“Red Fog is full of ideas and very good writing… it's a highly imaginative and original work.”

Jonathan Galassi, President and Publisher, Farrar, Straus & Giroux and author of Muse