Empire Rising

Joe Klein

And at the center of Thomas Kelly's New York, more vital than plot or characters, is politics. Not the politics of elections, personalities, reform or progress -- no, this is the politics of the never-ending transaction. Public employees' unions may supplant Tammany, bundled campaign contributions may replace envelopes filled with cash, and new ethnic groups provide the crooks and the muscle labor. But the buildings still go up, the contracts are still let out (and not always to the lowest bidder) and zoning variances remain an adventure. There are lawyers, insurance brokers, pension fund managers and mobsters crawling all over each other for a payday, and good government sorts (''goo-goos'' is the term of art) trying to thwart them. Kelly is too smart for idealism, too romantic for reflexive cynicism. He is a realist, who understands that there's just too much here -- too much money, glamour, power -- for the city to ever completely reform itself. The structures are too big to run without a little grease. Empire Rising is an ode to urban grease; I'll never look at that grand old building the same way again.
— The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

Construction was started on the Empire State Building on St. Patrick's Day, March 17, 1930. It was just as the Depression was beginning to squeeze America in its death grip and every job was sacred. Kelly, who created first-rate working-class heroes in Payback and The Rackets, takes a fascinating look at how New York City was run at the end of the Jazz Age-by bribe, kickback and political machination. The characters are tough and vengeful: Michael Briody, steelworker, WWI vet, IRA gunman; Johnny Farrell, a "narrowback" lawyer who functions as the mayor's bagman; Grace Masterson, a beautiful painter who lives on a houseboat on the East River, holds dark secrets and counts both Briody and Farrell as lovers; and Egan, the governor's dour henchman. Historical figures of the time round out the cast: FDR, the governor of New York, making sure that nothing will hinder him on the way to the White House; Mayor James J. (Jimmy) Walker, a dapper rogue and master practitioner of "honest graft"; Judge Joseph Force Crater, stooge of Tammany, destined to be eclipsed in a legendary way; and Al Smith, the "Happy Warrior," a political has-been now in charge of the construction of the world's tallest building. Kelly weaves a fascinating tale that captures the cadences and decadence of art deco New York, where desperate working-class have-nots and powerful elite swells collide violently in a nation on the brink of great change. Agent, Nat Sobel at Sobel Weber Associates. (Feb.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The destruction of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers has brought renewed attention to the world's tall buildings, and Kelly has written an engaging historical novel about the construction in 1930 of the WTC's preeminent New York rival, the Empire State Building. He chronicles the skyscraper's nearly miraculous rise in just over a year to become the world's tallest building, painting a skilled portrait of the men who sent the building skyward and executing a likeness of New York City as it was during the Depression: corrupt, violent, and heartbreaking in both its sadness and beauty. Kelly deftly arranges a complex plot with a believable romantic twist, centering on Irish immigrant Michael Briody, rivet man and IRA gunrunner. Empire Rising is also a story of New York City caught in a transition of power between Tammany Hall and the Irish mob on one hand and the rise of the Italian Mafia, fueled by profits from the Prohibition liquor trade, on the other. Kelly's characterizations, real and fictional, are vivid, and the plot takes enough turns to escape predictability. Michael Deehy's Irish brogue is perfect; recommended for all libraries.-Vince Brewton, Univ. of North Alabama, Florence Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The construction of the Empire State Building in 1930-a display of "the great industrial frenzy of America" in a time of Depression and Prohibition-forms the background for this savage urban melodrama. Like Kelly's previous fiction (The Rackets, 2000, etc., his third novel is a knowledgeable, vigorously detailed portrayal of big-city political and fiscal skullduggery and corruption, featuring a generous host of brawling characters. Foremost among them are transplanted IRA terrorist Michael Briody, who divides his days and nights between sweating as an ironworker on the rising skyscraper, earning chump change as an amateur boxer, running guns to Ireland-and dallying with freelance artist Grace Masterson, the kept woman of NYC Mayor Jimmie Walker's Deputy Commissioner of Buildings, Johnny Farrell (for whom she also makes illegal bank "drops" under various aliases). Kelly keeps it all moving, juxtaposing worksite scenes high above the city, meetings in miscellaneous smoke-filled rooms, hotel rendezvous between Grace and her married lover Farrell, and violence on the perilous streets where men marked by the city's rival Irish, Italian, and Jewish mobs suffer "justice." The supporting cast includes such nicely drawn presences as powerful racketeer Tough Tommy Touhey, crooked Judge Crater (tucked securely into Touhey's pocket until he undertakes an ill-advised double-cross), and Briody's firebrand Irish Republican landlord, Danny Casey, as well as in cameo appearances by Babe Ruth, a sexually frisky FDR, and heavyweight pug Primo Carnera. Alas, it's all a little too familiar. Flamboyant as they are, the characters are mostly types, and their interactions genre-generic. Kelly does buildconsiderable interest in the choices by which Grace and Briody ensure the destruction of the mutual happiness they seek. But we've seen it all before. Nevertheless, Kelly's mastery of narrative drive holds the attention, and few who start this white-hot novel will fail to finish it. Agency: Sobel Weber Associates