A HIGH PRESSURE SYSTEM
by Ken Gross
Queens Borough President John Fasio is finally taking the cue from his manipulative assistant Murray Gerber and allowing himself to stand for the New York mayor's job when the current mayor resigns to run for governor. Fey weathercaster Bonnie Hudson (Hell Bent, 1992, etc.), impoverished by a five-minute fling in Atlantic City, has gone back to work for her old boss Harvey Levy, who's busy funneling campaign contributions to Fasio in hopes of leapfrogging to the head of the Queens cable-franchise line. Bonnie's ex-roommate, ex-cop Jack Mann, is working for an agency tailing Murray Gerber for an unnamed client. Obviously all these intrigues have something to do with each other, and watching them all come together with a kind of skittish majesty is a joy to behold. Gross's panorama of back-room Gotham politics is so exuberant that Jack and Bonnie's routine investigation of the inevitable homicides, when the plot finally kicks in, comes as something as a letdown: you wish these guys could go on stabbing each other in the back, like Dante's sinners, for all eternity.