Board #5: Johara

This is the city tourists don't see and most New Yorkers - the ones with jobs, the ones with money, the ones who own homes - don't even know about. It's the city where the hookers and pimps and strippers live and survive, where the predators exist and prey on the rest of us and on each other, the city where violence is commonplace and nearly always present. It's midtown Manhattan where visitors come to see shows and eat in fancy restaurants and sleep in expensive hotels but it's also where the furnished rooms and SRO's are, where the chicken hawks work the streets and docks, where weapons are always close to hand and the police write off murders and assaults. It's the world of John Board and John Puddle and others like them. This is the fifth in an exciting and almost unbelievable series of books about life in the underbelly of New York City, a place populated by strippers and pimps, prostitutes and predators. The author was a New York State parole officer for thirty years and lived the life he writes about. His characters come alive, their problems become your problems and their adventures will be felt and experienced by you. The story is told by a man who barely survives each day but does manage to do so. He is violent but some people depend on him and trust him with their lives. It's a book that you will probably have difficulty putting down and may read more than once.