I just finished Ken Bruen & Jason Starr's Bust and I
thought it was a great mix of their writing styles. I have to
admit I'm more of a fan of Jason's being that I'm a New
Yorker, but the one problem I had with the book (okay, two
problems) stem from that fact. Nothing wrong with the book
per se, mind you, which is a real page-turner with very
three-dimensional low-life characters. It's a good read, one
of the best that HCC has issued to date and I highly
recommend it.
Okay, that being said . . . there are no spoilers here . . .
I had a problem with one element of the plot, which leads to
another problem I had with a larger subject of the book--the
city of New York. I had a problem with the assumption that
one could fire a .38 automatic in an apartment building in
NYC and nobody would call the police. New Yorkers may jaded,
and might overlook a lot of criminal activity and strange
noises and, yes, sometimes even screams, but they can always
be counted on to call 911 at the sound of gunfire. New
Yorkers know the sound of gunfire and will not mistake what
the hear on TV for the real thing nor will they try to
appease their consciences by telling themselves that's what
it was. It seems highly unlikely that not at least one person
would have called the police. I even bought the fact that
apparently no one heard the four shots (by my count) inside
the townhouse earlier in the book.
This leads to the bigger issue of the portrayal of New York,
itself. In most of Jason's work, the city is itself a
character. Unfortunately Jason's Twisted City owes more to
Tom Wolfe than Thomas Wolfe. I wish there were some more
romantic notions about the city in his work to balance the
violent and jaded denizens, the tabloids and the rest of the
sleaze. Even in film noir the city was portrayed as glamorous
and exciting, albeit dangerous.
Jeff
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 17 Jun 2006 EDT