Motor City Burning: A Novel

by Bill Morris Narrated by Richard Small

Overview

From the critically acclaimed author of Motor City, Detroit comes alive in a powerful and thrilling novel set amid the chaos of the 1960s race riots and the serenity of baseball's opening day.

Willie Bledsoe, once an idealistic young black activist, is now a burnt-out case. After leaving a snug berth at Tuskegee Institute to join the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, he has become bitterly disillusioned with the civil rights movement and its leaders. He returns home to Alabama to try to write a memoir about his time in the cultural whirlwind, but the words fail to come.

The surprise return of his Vietnam veteran brother in the spring of 1967 gives Willie a chance to drive a load of smuggled guns to the Motor City-and make enough money to jump-start his stalled dream of writing his memoir. There, at Tiger Stadium on Opening Day of the 1968 baseball season-postponed two days in deference to the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr.-Willie learns some terrifying news: the Detroit police are still investigating the last unsolved murder from the bloody, apocalyptic riot of the previous summer, and a white cop named Frank Doyle will not rest until the case is solved. And Willie is his prime suspect.

Bill Morris' rich and thrilling novel sets Doyle's hunt amid the history of one of America's most tortured and fascinating cities, as Doyle and Willie struggle with Detroit's deep racial divide, with revenge and forgiveness, and with the realization that justice is rarely attainable-and rarely just.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

★ 05/19/2014
Having focused on 1954 Detroit in his debut, Motor City (1992), Morris eloquently captures the Detroit of 1968, a city shaped by the auto industry, ravaged by violence, and rejuvenated by Motown, in this outstanding crime novel. Disaffected with the civil rights movement, Willie Bledsoe helped his Vietnam veteran brother smuggle a load of weapons to Detroit shortly before the 1967 race riots. Now, as he buses tables at a white country club and struggles to write his memoir, he’s haunted by the fear that he killed a woman during the riots. Irish cop Frank Doyle has personal reasons for wanting to solve the murder, but develops a grudging respect for Willie, his chief suspect. Meanwhile, the Tigers’ unlikely winning season unites a city searching for optimism amid racial and economic tensions. Morris adeptly evokes time and place, displaying a profound passion for Detroit and astute insight into the era’s fraught climate. Characters represent a cross-section of the city’s population, adding nuance to this tale of a young black man seeking his voice, a cop pursuing justice, and a country searching for a way forward. Agent: Alice Martell, Martell Agency. (July)

Loren D. Estleman - The Washington Post

A vivid and entertaining expedition.

The Los Angeles Review of Books

A sharp critique of the contemporary American post-racial narrative. Morris does an especially lovely job of elevating the ordinary.

The New York Times

Switching between Bledsoe and Doyle’s perspectives allows for a crackling pace, and Mr. Morris clearly loves the nooks and crannies of his hometown the way George Pelecanos loves Washington.

Marilyn Stasio - The New York Times Book Review

Morris sees something heroic in these well-matched adversaries, both representative of a city the author loves and salutes.  And of course, its great ball club.

Edan Lepucki

I really enjoyed Motor City Burning! It’s such a deftly drawn character study that also doesn’t scrimp on plot and big themes, like justice, purity of aims, and loyalty.

Nelson DeMille

A wonderfully atmospheric novel that captures time and place, an illumination of a pivotal point in history.  Bill Morris is an exceptionally gifted and savvy writer.  The comparison to Graham Greene is fully merited.

The News Review

The success of the story is the smooth confluence of familiar echoes washing up against the tensions of the time, all reverberating with a street-level sense of pressure.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A
jarring, challenging book that breaks a lot of rules from a writer already excitingly and powerfully in command of his craft.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A
jarring, challenging book that breaks a lot of rules from a writer already excitingly and powerfully in command of his craft.

The New York Times

Switching between Bledsoe and Doyle’s perspectives allows for a crackling pace, and Mr. Morris clearly loves the nooks and crannies of his hometown the way George Pelecanos loves Washington.

Michiko Kakutani - Past Praise for Bill Morris: - The New York Times

Morris has the same gift John Updike displayed in his Rabbit novels,
a gift for delineating his characters' inner lives while at the same time making their dilemmas emblematic of impulses in American society at large. He is a vigorous, nimble writer.

Michiko Kakutani - Past Praise for Bill Morris: - The New York Times

Morris has the same gift John Updike displayed in his Rabbit novels,
a gift for delineating his characters' inner lives while at the same time making their dilemmas emblematic of impulses in American society at large. He is a vigorous, nimble writer.

The Boston Herald

Morris' rough and edgy writing brings the city alive. [An] incredible narrative. Motor City Burning does something important—it captures the feeling of being alive in a time and place so well you feel like you were there.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer

A gripping tale and a meditation on race, class, and justice set during the year the country was rocked by the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. Motor City Burning is Morris' third novel, and it may be his best. If there's any justice, it should bring him the attention and the audience he deserves.”

Frank Rich - The New Republic

The
'50s were the first American decade that could be caricatured by the brand names of its material goods, and Morris recaptures the clean,
voluptuous pleasure of it all.A skillful first novel.

Michiko Kakutani (Past Praise for Bill Morris) - The New York Times

Morris has the same gift John Updike displayed in his Rabbit novels,
a gift for delineating his characters' inner lives while at the same time making their dilemmas emblematic of impulses in American society at large. He is a vigorous, nimble writer.

Kirkus Reviews

2014-06-29
A former Freedom Rider and a determined detective face unfinished business in the aftermath of the Detroit riots.Willie Bledsoe has left Alabama for the Motor City to write a memoir about how he lost faith in the civil rights movement even before the recent assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Although Willie is articulate and educated, the only work Detroit seems to offer a young black man is as a busboy at an all-white country club. But race doesn’t seem to matter at Tiger Stadium, and in watching the battle for the pennant, Willie can forget for a while the part he played in the race riots the previous year. Frank Doyle, a detective with a gift for getting people to talk, is less willing to forget, since he’s handling one of the two remaining homicide cases from the riots. The victim was the wife of a store owner in Frank’s neighborhood. A sexy art student working as a waitress and late-night one-way talks with his father, who died on the job at the Ford complex called the Rouge, offer Frank comfort but don’t bring him answers. Then a new break comes when a witness recalls seeing two men go up to the roof and hearing them fire guns. While Frank’s searching for more clues, Willie’s trying to stay one step ahead of a past that’s catching up with him in a city of flashy cars and Motown music, wealthy suburbs and burned-out neighborhoods, civic pride and despair.As usual, Morris (All Souls’ Day, 1997, etc.) uses historical figures and events, as well as a uniquely American city, as a backdrop for an intense cat-and-mouse game, though it’s not clear who’s the cat and who’s the mouse.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169909050
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	07/15/2014
Edition description:	Unabridged

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