Gary Morrissey is a New York City musician with problems.  He's divorced, drinks too much, and his rock-and-roll dreams have slipped away.  He works at a day job, picks up recording session gigs at night, and hides in his Yonkers (New York) apartment, watching a violent world implode from his living room window.

A friend, Marty Seddon calls to tell him that Devon, a musician, may have been murdered by the police.  Devon had a theory that the government was behind the "sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll" culture, a conspiracy to control the population through self-destructive hedonism.  Just before he died, Devon claimed to have some kind of proof...

At first, Morrissey is reluctant to get involved.  The murder intrudes on his reticence.  But the mystery won't go away.  Who are the bikers and the government men who meet at Charlie's Roost, the local biker bar?  Why does a drug kingpin want Morrissey to find and return a certain photo negative?  What happened to Devon's girlfriend?  And why would a police detective be shadowing Morrissey's moves?

LOW END works as a rough-edged sort of cozy, with a reluctant amateur sleuth trapped in dangerous circumstances.  The story winds its way through a darkly beautiful urban setting, informed by the tastes and smells of New York.

Morrissey is a complex, compelling protagonist.  He's been beaten numb by his life, and when he wakes up, he doesn't like what he finds.  The reader becomes aware of Morrissey's dark side as the character reaches a similar epiphany, a neat trick accomplished in a single scene involving an observed incident of domestic violence.  The scene is galvanizing, a fine piece of thematic writing.

I enjoyed this novel.  The author's behind-the-scenes look at the music world is authentic, and appropriately low-rent.  The conclusion is bittersweet and ambivalent.  Like the very best genre fiction, LOW END takes the reader to a world they seldom see, riding the tight strings of a good story.