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HARD, HARD CITY
by Jim Fusilli
Putnam, September 2004
278 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 0399152172


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Terry Orr has lost his wife and infant son in a terrible accident. It has thrown his life into seething turmoil that even the best efforts of his precocious daughter Bella, appear to have little positive effect. The genesis of the story comes from Bella, who is one of the more sensitive teenagers you'll encounter in life or in fiction. She asks her father to locate a classmate who has abruptly disappeared.

While slowly working his way through his own internal monsters, Orr roams New York and its satellites in a wide-ranging effort to find the missing Allie Powell, a noticeably talented student at the Fashion Institute.

The search brings Orr into contact with a whole host of minor characters, some of who are monsters. Some of them appear and disappear in abrupt and unsettling manner. With almost no exceptions, these minor and important characters are quirky, unusual, memorable, and vital to the story. They propel the action forward, offer rhythmic counterpoints, and when Orr probes far enough to discover all manner of corruption and official malfeasance, some of them turn lethal. Orr then finds himself a target for murder.

In many dark detective novels, the protagonist is mired in such muck and corruption that everyone he or she encounters is guilty of many illegal and morally repugnant acts, and while that's true of any number of the characters in this novel, there are leavening aspects in the sub-plots which not only add balance to the life of this novel and of the characters, but also change the rhythms and the light in such a way that every so often we nod and smile and think that the author has got it just right.

Author Fusilli's ear for dialogue, particularly among the teenagers who have their own agenda and thus their own sub-plot quite apart from their concern for the missing Allie, is quite remarkable. His writing style lends itself to the changes in conversational styles among the characters and his eye for the small detail which brings us smack into the scene is excellent.

In the last analysis, this is a novel about two quite different sets of family relationships and the damage and the nurturing which affect attitudes and outcomes in profound and wonderful ways. Enjoyable, thoughtful and intense, HARD, HARD CITY is a novel to be savored.

Reviewed by Carl Brookins, September 2004

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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