Montauk to Manhattan

“Yet another captivating work by Thomas Maier, who masterfully shares here his unique insider-lens on Hollywood, politics, crime, media and our often scandalous home base, Long Island.” —Claudia Copquin, Journalist and Founder of Long Island LitFest

A fun, provocative murder mystery about the making of a miniseries in the Hamptons during the summer of 2016 that involves today’s streaming TV, #MeToo Hollywood, the rise of Donald Trump, Hamptons parties, the stealing of Native American lands, and a well-known New York newspaper.

Author Thomas Maier (Showtime’s Masters of Sex, Paramount’s Mafia Spies) offers the tale of Jack Denton, a down-on-his luck writer who is happy to see his novel—about the 1880s stealing of Montauk tribal lands by a loud, greedy tycoon—made into a TV series in the Hamptons. Denton is also covering the 2016 political rise of Donald Trump for a famous newspaper. But as he shuttles back and forth between his Manhattan newsroom and the on-location TV set in Montauk, Denton becomes a suspect in the disappearance of a young actress who was part of the same TV show.

Montauk to Manhattan is a story of murder, fame, sex, ambition, and the many political passions of our time—all rolled into one.

Thomas Maier is an award-winning author, journalist, and television producer. He has written seven books. He was a producer for both the Emmy-winning Showtime drama Masters of Sex, and Paramount’s 2024 docuseries Mafia Spies, both adapted from his work. At Newsday in New York, Maier twice won the National Society of Professional Journalists’ top prize and several honors, and now serves on the paper’s editorial board. He won the 2022 Columbia University Journalism School’s Alumni Award for career achievement. He has appeared twice on the Today show and Morning Joe, as well as 20/20, CBS Evening News, Hardball, CNN, and NPR’s Fresh Air. The JFK Library hosted a 2014 forum about his book, When Lions Roar: The Churchills and the Kennedys. His latest nonfiction book, The Invisible Spy, is expected in 2024. As a reporter, Maier first wrote about the stealing of Montauk tribal lands for Newsday’s 1998 history book, Long Island: Our Story, later cited in legal papers by Native American tribes before the US Supreme Court. Though inspired by this historical account, Montauk to Manhattan is purely fictional.