Forests of the Night — John Minahan

This is the haunting and exquisitely crafted mystery of Eddie Conroy, a brilliant but homeless middle-aged man living in New York.. Working as a dishwasher after a long military career, Conroy suffers from a multiple-personality disorder that has no known cure, alternating from the defensive posture of a street-smart functional illiterate to the highly visible stature of an animal-rights advocate.When a 500-pound male Bengal tiger escapes from the Central Park Zoo during an animal-rights demonstration, Conroy's close friend is brutally killed by the animal. A logistical nightmare develops for the police, who must take the unprecedented step of closing the park to all pedestrian and vehicular traffic until the tiger is captured or killed. After several days and nights of intense searching by police officers, the hungry and disoriented animal is spooked by gunfire. And virtually all attempts at control and protection are lost. Throughout the upper East Side, a panic ensues, exacerbated by sensation-seeking media coverage.Mr. Minahan draws indelible and thought-provoking parallel lines between the instinctive actions of the tiger and the intuitive insights of Eddie Conroy, linking their lives in a compelling metaphysical alliance that is difficult to forget.