The Cry of Sirens

Synopsis

Ben
Hawthorne, self-exiled to an absent friend's crumbling Greenwich Village apartment, attempts to write down the events of his
last month in Los
Angeles. He is
desperate to under- stand why he pushed Mark Victor off the balustrade of his
Wilshire Corridor penthouse terrace. What, in God's name, possessed an
easy-going, ethical WASP to murder his oldest friend, who happened to be a Jew?


While
Ben's claim that Mark accidentally fell -they were both drunk -is readily
accepted by the police and public, he knows otherwise.

Ben
and Mark met at college. During the ensuing thirty years, they stayed in touch,
but had gone dramatically different ways. They were each other's oldest, not
best, friend. That is, until the past year, 1992, when Mark chose to enter
Ben's world.

By
now, Mark had become one of the country's foremost financier/entrepreneurs,
with a Time Magazine cover to his credit for effecting the major mergers of the
Eighties. Ben, by now, was considered a "world class" motion picture
director, with hit films and an Oscar nomination attesting to his success.


Four
years prior to killing Mark, however, Ben suffered two shattering setbacks: His
agent of two decades, who had shielded him from most of the harsh truths of the
business, died from a stroke. Only weeks later, an IRS agent informed Ben that
his business manager, also of twenty years, was a compulsive gambler who had
disappeared, leaving his clientele bereft of all assets, including pension
investments. Suddenly, at forty-eight, Ben had to cope alone in a hostile
environment, with no production prospects and his several million, gone.

Does
Mark know any of this when he offers to finance The Cry of Sirens, from a
controversial script Ben owns? What part does Martha, Mark's assistant and Ben's
eventual wife, play in the final encounter on the penthouse roof-garden? How do
ego, guilt and envy bear on the impulse of one American high-achiever to
destroy another?

During
his intense odyssey to uncover his motivation to murder, Ben must re-live relationships
with friends, lovers, relatives and adversaries. Well-known figures, ranging
from John Huston and Robert Redford to political activist Allard Lowenstein and
journalist George Plimpton, play an integral part in
the self-investigation.

Ben's
career has been devoted to mastering the distinctions between reality and
illusion. Once he separates fiction from fact in his personal life, he finally
understands why he killed Mark Victor. Was it a justifiable homicide? Certainly not, by society's standards. Should he be
punished? The reader must judge...