Man of the Hour
When David Fitzgerald, a teacher at a Coney Island high school, saves a student from a terrorist’s bomb he becomes the emblematic modern hero—the President talks about him, TV talk shows fight over him and camera crews dog his every step. But when the police reveal he is a suspect in the bombing, everything turns upside-down. His media appearances are made to look sinister. His livelihood is taken away. Even his right to see his own son is threatened. And in the meantime, the real bomber, is at large: Nasser Hamdy, a former student of David’s and an angry young man with a very different definition of what it means to be a hero.
Praise
—Scott Turow
“Blauner handles Fitzgerald’s predicament with compassion and a knowing way with character… In Nasser, expertly captures the acute mixture of anger, frustration and bewilderment of a young man who does not understand his new culture… his presence gives the story its edge as well as narrative spark.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Successfully brings together three social and moral worlds.”
—The New Yorker
—Michael Connelly
“Superb… Blauner adds a moral complexity to a thriller with more echoes of Kafka than Ludlum… Marvelous entertainment, the kind that is remembered long after it’s read.”
—Providence Sunday Journal
—Arena (UK)