Dirt Track Mosquito

Set in the autumn of 1989 in New York City, the story of a disillusioned blue-collar worker and dedicated barfly, Pete Manson, and his disintegrating marriage to his beautiful and more aspirational wife, Kate.  Sharing an inadequate apartment together, Manson spends his time cruising bars and parks and avoiding work as best he can.  His regular drinking haunt is Frank's Bar, where he hangs out with affable barman, Mike, and fellow barfly and drifter, fading beauty, Mary.  On his travels he encounters a young barmaid with a troubled past, Claire, whilst foreman, Joe, continues his futile attempts to keep Manson on the straight and narrow and in a job.  Matters come to a head at a party organised by one of Kate's work colleagues, where Kate unexpectedly has the opportunity of a new life without Manson.  Dirt Track Mosquito is a dark, claustrophobic, latter-day beat novel about failed love and the failure of The American Dream, as Manson faces the awkward dilemma of choosing between suicide, trying to win his wife back, or starting a new life without her.  It was Andy Botterill's first novel, originally written in the Iate 1980s but subsequently heavily revised for this second edition.