Ways and Means

Lefferts, a PW contributing editor, debuts with the ambitious and exciting story of a business student, the 30-something gay couple he’s been sleeping with, and the economic forces at work during the rise of Trump in 2016. Alistair, 22, is in his final semester at NYU when he learns that Herve, the billionaire he’s been working for, wants him dead. (The details of Herve’s shady dealings are gradually revealed—at the outset, readers only know the arrangement is earning Alistair $10,000 per month.) Mark and Elijah, the couple Alistair’s been seeing for the past year, are on the outs when he announces he’s skipping town. Mark, who has been supporting Elijah for several years on his dwindling trust fund, is heartbroken over Alistair’s departure. He moves home to New Jersey, where his father, the owner of a chain of trailer parks, plans to cash out to Wall Street. Meanwhile, Elijah, who can’t afford an apartment, crashes with his friend Jay, an edgelord artist whose videos of underwear and MAGA hat–clad gay models are funded by Herve’s brother. Alistair, a talented and humble striver who evokes John Grisham’s Mitch McDeere except for a self-sabotaging refusal to glad hand, hides out from Herve with his mother in Binghamton, N.Y. Lefferts’s nimble sense of scale enables him to convincingly depict the blue-chip firms who rejected Alistair and exploit the housing market, as well as to zoom in for poignant and subtle psychological realism. The results are electrifying. Agent: Chris Clemans, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Feb.)

This review has been updated for clarity.