The Birthday Party

On January 21, 1998, the night before his thirty-eighth birthday, federal prosecutor Stanley N. Alpert was kidnapped off the streets of Manhattan by a car full of gun-toting thugs looking to use his ATM card. He ended up blindfolded in a Brooklyn apartment as his captors changed their plans, alternately threatening him and his family, seeking legal advice, expounding on the "gangsta" life, and offering him the services of their prostitute girlfriends as a birthday present. All the while, Alpert, still blindfolded, talked with them, played on their attitudes and fears, and memorized every detail he could in the event that he ever managed to get out of there alive.

Filled with immediacy, drama, and extraordinary characters, The Birthday Party reads like a thriller-but every word is true."Riveting." -Entertainment Weekly "Too wild to be fiction. The movie should be directed by Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen working in tandem." -Joseph Wambaugh "Alternately funny, appalling, fascinating and scary." -Los Angeles Times "Hypnotizing, bizarre, scary, even weirdly funny at times." -Jeffrey Toobin "I read it in one big gulp." -John Sandford
Stanley N. Alpert served for thirteen years with the U.S. Department of Justice as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, where he was chief of environmental litigation. There, Alpert investigated, prosecuted, or supervised many complex civil and criminal cases, some resulting in multimillion-dollar awards.