The Deed
A Novel
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
A hip and hilarious debut novel about a twentysomething guy searching for love, for meaning...and for a long-lost deed that could make him heir to the island of Manhattan
Meet Jason Hansvoort, a single New Yorker with a curious knack for surviving near-death experiences. Wistful about college, apprehensive about the future, he's currently flailing around in post-college limbo as low man on the totem pole at one of Madison Avenue's "Big Five" ad agencies, impatiently waiting for the Next Thing to happen.
And then one day he's approached by Amanda, an attractive young law student and one of the last members of the Manahata, the Native American tribe who sold Manhattan Island to the Dutch almost four hundred years ago. She's spent years on the trail of a lost document that supposedly gave ownership of Manhattan to a seventeenth-century benefactor and all his descendants. She believes Jason's the last of this line...and therefore heir to the island of Manhattan and everything on it. If they can find the deed, that is. Jason's skeptical...but enchanted enough to play along.
If Jason and Amanda can indeed locate the deed, the consequences will be tremendous and far reaching: grave for millions of landowners and mortal for every title insurance company on the Eastern seaboard. There are literally billions at stake, and when a dysfunctional New York City crime family looking for a big break picks up the scent, it places Jason's streak of surviving near-death experiences in peril.
Informed by Blanchard's gift for dead-on observation and pitch-perfect ear for dialogue, The Deed heralds the arrival of a fresh comic voice in contemporary literary fiction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A missing 17th-century deed to the island of Manhattan has a young advertising executive, a pretty law student and a couple of mobsters in a tailspin in Blanchard's featherweight debut novel. Twenty-three-year-old Jason Hansvoort, a grunt at an advertising firm (he's currently working on a campaign for "Hair Peace," a toupee that's "supposed to soothe itchy scalps and provide an appetizing 'wet look'"), is approached by a mysterious, sexy-voiced law student named Amanda. Her research has led her to believe that Jason is the last living descendant of a Dutch family that was deeded the island of Manhattan centuries ago in other words, Jason stands to inherit the mother lode. The proof is in an ancient scroll, hidden somewhere in the city. Is all this for real? After much skepticism, Jason indulges the possibility of a potential windfall but first, he has to find the document. Two stereotypically slapstick mobster goons with big casino plans are hot to find the deed as well. A treasure map, a graveyard, a charming if fairly tame romantic interlude and a showdown in the shadow of Lady Liberty drive the quest to its somewhat anticlimactic finale. The premise is silly and the resolution much sillier, but Maxim magazine editor-in-chief Blanchard is on solid ground depicting the worldly routine of contemporary New Yorkers and the inner life of a male in his early 20s. He keeps the pace fast and the dialogue light and mildly amusing, though not quite razor-sharp. The babe quota is relatively low, but Maxim readers should enjoy this literary confection anyway.
