Good People draws readers into the world of comedy clubs in New York City in the 1980s through incisive writing sprinkled with Raymond Chandler-like similes and pace, and complicated characters whose lives and relationships you'll care about. Appropriate to a novel about comedy clubs, the author's writing style is humorous and at times biting--like the shark on the cover! Music, stagecraft, and the business-side of the stage are woven into the narrative along with ambition, competition, and weather imagery that reflects the tumultuous and uncertain world the characters inhabit as they pursue their dreams. A sharp contemporary novel of a neglected and important era of American popular culture. ( )