The Barnes & Noble Review
Lawrence Block's powerful stand-alone thriller, set in ultra-realistic, post–September 11th New York City, offers readers some fascinating perspectives on big-city life, intertwined with the chilling story of a serial killer wreaking his unique form of mayhem in the Big Apple. This is a novel that looks past the faceless crowds to the personal connections that link people in cities, just as they do those in small towns. Connections between people are a writer's stock in trade, but writer John Creighton learns that they can mean big trouble (as well as potential big bucks) when chance connections lead to accusations of murder -- and worse. As a driven killer carves a deadly path to a glory no one else can see, the lives of dozens of people caught up in his web of terror are changed forever. And, as this complex and compelling tale unfolds, the victims, witnesses, and investigators in the story become more and more real to us: a janitor trying to clean up his life, a gallery owner with a reckless streak, an ex–police commissioner with a taste for power politics, plus detectives and deviants, attorneys and agents, publishing pros and prostitutes -- a compelling mix of ordinary and extraordinary people in jeopardy from the anonymous killer who walks among them. Sue Stone
Small Town
Narrated by Lawrence Block
Lawrence BlockUnabridged — 15 hours, 18 minutes
Small Town
Narrated by Lawrence Block
Lawrence BlockUnabridged — 15 hours, 18 minutes
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Overview
Editorial Reviews
Block (The Burglar in the Library; Eight Million Ways to Die; etc.) is one of today's most well-established mystery and thriller writers, but his gift for crafting compelling narratives does not, unfortunately, translate to a knack for narration. For one, his voice is the nasal half-whine of a New Yorker at its most pronounced. While this might not necessarily be a bad thing-especially since the book deals so intimately with the city and its ways-when coupled with a stilted reading style and a refusal to attempt even the slightest nuance for individual characters, it becomes a distraction rather than an asset. Particularly problematic for this production are the numerous explicit sex scenes. When Susan Pomerance, a beautiful art dealer whose instinct for sexual exploration is awakened by a murder central to the story, is in the throes of ecstasy, Block's reading sounds no different than when detectives are interviewing a subject or patrons are ordering a beer at the local watering hole. The scenes, then, are not only not erotic, but also almost laughable-only slightly less titillating than if read by Andy Rooney. The rest of the story offers a mix of Block's signature street smarts and intrigue, but fans would do well to stick with the book and avoid this disappointing recording. Simultaneous release with the Morrow hardcover (Forecasts, Jan. 20). (Jan.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Although there are eight million stories in the Naked City, Gotham can feel like a small town when some of those stories converge, brought together by an act of violence. In a break from his popular Matthew Scudder and Bernie Rhodenbarr series, Block explores several such connections in the wake of 9/11. His cast includes a novelist whose next book becomes a hot property after police suspect him of murdering a real-estate agent, a beautiful folk-art dealer whose string of sexual adventures are triggered by the killing, a gay housecleaner who keeps finding his clients dead, and a serial killer who lost his family in the collapse of the World Trade Towers. While the book features beautifully drawn characters and a strong sense of place (readers familiar with New York will recognize many of the places depicted by Block with deep affection), the use of a shifting third-person narrative keeps readers at an emotional distance. There is also a darkness and a sexual explicitness not found in Block's other books, which may disturb some fans. As an eyewitness to the terrorist attack that destroyed so many lives, this reviewer also found the novel's premise a bit repellent. Perhaps it is still too soon for fiction to deal with the emotional aftermath of 9/11. For larger collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/15/01.]-Wilda Williams, "Library Journal" Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
A New Yorker devastated by the bombing of the Twin Towers goes on a methodical rampage of his own in this haunting valentine to the Big Apple. The murder of the first victim, East Village realtor Marilyn Fairchild, seems so commonplace that the cops don’t miss a beat before arresting John Blair Creighton, the author she’d brought home the night of her death. But the case starts to go south when Creighton’s lawyer, cancer-stricken Maury Winters, argues a connection to the slaying of two prostitutes and their madam—a crime discovered by the same hapless witness, alcoholic cleaner Jerry Pankow, and one for which Creighton has an alibi. Once the bombing of three bars also on Jerry’s client list sends the death toll into the double digits, most authors would narrow the focus to the manhunt for the killer. But Block (Hope to Die, 2001, etc.) builds suspense by the daring trick of suppressing virtually every glimpse of the bamboozled justice system to focus on the lives of citizens going about their business. Creighton finds his latest novel fetching an incredible advance and himself turned into a celebrity because everybody assumes he strangled Marilyn Fairchild. Gallery owner Susan Pomerance, excited by her upcoming show of an unknown local sculptor and her recent body piercings, stocks up her toy chest and gets in touch with her inner dominatrix. And the most likely detective figure, former police commissioner Francis Buckram, back in town to explore a possible mayoral bid, is too busy writhing on Susan’s bed every Friday night to take much interest in the violent craftsman the media have started to call the Carpenter. "We’re all in the same boat," an unwitting accomplice tells the Carpenter.But can these isolated individuals barely aware of each other’s existence pull together to defeat a madman? It’s an excellent question for us all. Author tour
The title city is New York. Shortly after 9/11. An otherwise miscellaneous group of New Yorkers acquires two characters in common--a kinky and promiscuous gallery owner and an elusive maniac who is avenging the Twin Towers tragedy by murdering assorted Manhattanites. The book features graphic sex and gruesome mayhem, witty humor, vividly drawn (albeit cardboard) characters, and numerous digressive musings. George Guidall does his wonted fine job with this fare. He keeps the narrative enthralling even where the author flags. While many narrators sound embarrassed doing detailed passages of erotic encounters, especially when, as here, they're described in Anglo-Saxonisms, Guidall serves them up without a wink. If, however, they're supposed to be arousing, our narrator has not made them so. He errs further in the postcoital love scenes between the perverse lady and the writer she loves, which sound trite. But they're written that way. Y.R. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940170673544 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Recorded Books, LLC |
| Publication date: | 06/10/2011 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
Small Town
Chapter One
By the time Jerry Pankow was ready for breakfast, he'd already been to three bars and a whorehouse.
It was, he'd discovered, a great opening line. "By the time I had my eggs and hash browns this morning ... " Wherever he delivered it, in backroom bars or church basements, it got attention. Made him sound interesting, and wasn't that one of the reasons he'd come to New York? To lead an interesting life, certainly, and to make himself interesting to others.
And, one had to admit, to plumb the depths of depravity, which resonated well enough with the notion of three bars and a whorehouse before breakfast.
Today he was having his breakfast in Joe Jr.'s, a Greek coffee shop at the corner of Sixth Avenue and West Twelfth Street. He wasn't exactly a regular here. The whorehouse was on Twenty-eighth, two doors east of Lexington, right around the corner from the Indian delis and restaurants that had people calling the area Curry Hill. Samosa and aloo gobi wasn't his idea of breakfast, and anyway those places wouldn't open until lunchtime, but he liked the Sunflower coffee shop on Third Avenue, and stopped there more often than not after he finished up at the whorehouse.
This morning, though, he was several degrees short of ravenous, and his next scheduled stop was in the Village, at Charles and Waverly. So he'd walked across Twenty-third and down Sixth. That stretch of Sixth Avenue had once afforded a good view of the twin towers, and now it showed you where they'd been, showed you the gap in the downtown skyline. A view of omission, he'd thought more than once.
And now here he was in a booth at Joe's with orange juice and a western omelet and a cup of coffee, light, no sugar, and how depraved was that? It was ten o'clock, and he'd get to Marilyn's by eleven and be out of there by one, with the rest of the day free and clear. Maybe he'd catch the two-thirty meeting at Perry Street. He could stop by after he left Marilyn's and put his keys on a chair so he'd have a seat when he came back at meeting time. You had to do that there, it was always standing-room-only by the time the meeting started.
Recovery, he thought. The hottest ticket in town.
He let the waiter refill his coffee cup, smiled his thanks, then automatically checked the fellow out as he walked away, only to roll his eyes at his own behavior. Cute butt, he thought, but so what?
If he were to show up at a meeting of Sex Addicts Anonymous, he thought, nobody would tell him to get the hell out. But did it make his life unmanageable? Not really. And, more to the point, could he handle another program? He was in AA, sober a little over three years, and, because drugs played a part in his story, he managed to fit a couple of NA meetings into his weekly schedule. And, because his parents were both drunks -- his father died of it, his mother lived with it -- he was an Adult Child of Alcoholics, and went to their meetings now and then. (But not too often, because all the whining and bitching and getting-in-touch-with-my-completely-appropriate-anger made his teeth ache.)
And, because John-Michael was an alcoholic (and also sober, and anyway they weren't lovers anymore), he went to Al-Anon a couple of times a month. He hated the meetings, and he wanted to slap most of the people he saw there -- the Al-Anon-Entities, his sponsor called them. But that just showed how much he needed the program, didn't it? Or maybe it didn't. It was hard to tell.
Three years sober, and he started each day by visiting three bars and a whorehouse, inhaling the reek of stale beer and rancid semen. The bars were in Chelsea, all within a few blocks of his top-floor walkup on Seventeenth west of Ninth, and of course they were closed when he arrived for the morning cleanup. He had keys, and he would let himself in, trying not to dwell on the way the place stank, the odor of booze and bodies and various kinds of smoke, the dirty-socks smell of amyl nitrite, and something else, some indefinable morning-after stench that was somehow more than the sum of its parts. He'd note that and dismiss it, and he'd sweep and mop the floor and clean the lavatories -- God, human beings were disgusting -- and finally he'd take down the chairs from the tables and the stools from the bar top and set them up where they belonged. Then he'd lock up, and off to the next.
He hit the bars in what he thought of as working his way up from the depths, starting with Death Row, a leather bar west of Tenth Avenue with a back room where safe sex required not just condoms but full body armor. Then one called Cheek, on Eighth and Twentieth, with a neighborhood crowd that ran to preppy types and the aging queens who loved them. And, finally, a straight bar on Twenty-third Street -- well, a mixed crowd, really, typical for the neighborhood, straight and gay, male and female, young and old, the common denominator being an abiding thirst. The place was called Harrigan's -- Harridan's, some called it -- and it didn't reek of pot and poppers and nocturnal emissions, but that didn't mean a blind man might mistake it for the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens.
In his drinking days, Jerry might have started the evening at Harrigan's. He could tell himself he was just stopping for a quick social drink before he settled in for the night ...
Small Town. Copyright © by Lawrence Block. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.Videos
