Young Men on Fire

As the great American boom ends, four men switch on their "bunny-hunting engines" and embark on a wild tour of Manhattan's nightlife. Dot-com may have fallen, but money is still washing around New York. Jim Troxler arrives in the city to meet his younger brother, Martin, a hip dot-commentator. Little does he know that Martin has planned a night out. Joining the brothers will be Big Guy, a weirdly magnetic e-content salesman, and C.C. Baxter, founder of a "formerly huge" online advertising agency. On the trawl from one bar to another, Jim watches Martin and his pals boozing, ingesting drugs, dancing badly, and jostling for hipness. Soon the men have picked up no fewer than five women -- two marketing chicks who speedload their cigarettes, two husband hunters, and the young, naive, and fabulous Zebra Hat Girl. Then, palming cash and talking trash, the group ends up on an enormous party boat circling Manhattan. The boat is filled with hundreds of young, sexed-up New Yorkers -- all ecstatically unaware that in four days the World Trade Center will be destroyed and their never-ending party will be over. But before then -- by the next morning -- Jim Troxler will be changed forever. Howard Hunt's Young Men on Fire is a brilliant portrait of the desires and deceptions that fueled the great American boom. At once laugh-out-loud funny and shrewdly perceptive, it introduces an exciting new voice in contemporary writing.