RARA-AVIS: Re: Fast Lane

From: Dave Zeltserman ( davezelt@comcast.net)
Date: 27 Jun 2005


Mark, I appreciate your reading this one and am glad you liked it
(you too, Mr. T!). About my next book(s), well, they're written, but when I find a publisher willing to buy them is another story. The price you pay writing dark noir. One of them, Small Crimes, is scheduled to be published in Italy by Meridiano Zero after they publish Fast Lane, so there's always Berlitz! I do have a story coming out soon in Ellery Queen that I'm pretty happy with. It's a 9000 word grifter story - my take on Jim Thompson's great Mitch Allison stories.

Dave

--- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, DJ-Anonyme@w... wrote:
> I finished Dave Zeltserman's Fast Lane last night. Quite a read.
It's
> really something how this unreliable, or is he, narrator pulls you
in.
>
> SEMI-SPOILERS (I'm not giving away any specifics, but in dealing
with
> the plotting in general, I hint at some things I'm not sure I
would have
> wanted to know before I read it.)
>
> Johnny Lane's folksy voice immediately made me think of Thompson's
Lou
> Ford. So I was suspicious of how reliable he was as a narrator
from the
> very beginning. However, I was wondering whether Lane was just
fooling
> the directly addressed reader or himself, too. It becomes
increasingly
> clear it's the former as Lane "remembers" to tell the reader
things he
> previously "forgot" to mention.
>
> The pacing is also very good. At first I was kind of afraid that
the
> book would end with a revelation that, while startling, would not
have
> been at all surprising, since Lane often exposes more of himself
than he
> seems to be aware of (which is a very neat balancing act of
> Zeltserman's). However, the reader officially finds out this
secret
> just before the halfway point and the rest is an increasingly
wild, dark
> ride as the consequences are dealt with and the true Johnny comes
forth
> more and more.
>
> Yes, the book all flows from a pretty incredible coincidence, but
once
> you get past that (which really isn't hard, one of those things we
tend
> to accept more easily in crime novels than real life), everything
flows
> quite naturally.
>
> So Dave, when's the next book coming out?
>
> And thanks Juha for publishing books like this.
>
> Mark

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