| List Price: | |
| Price: | $15.00 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details... |
| You Save: | $0.00(0.00%) |
| Binding: | Kindle Edition |
| EAN: | |
| Feature: | |
| Label: | Simon & Schuster |
| Publisher: | Simon & Schuster |
| Studio: | Simon & Schuster |
| Tags: |
Editorial Reviews
A DARK AND STYLISH PAGE-TURNER FROM A BOLD NEW VOICE IN FICTION
Harry Bloch is a struggling writer who pumps out pulpy serial novels—from vampire books to detective stories—under various pseudonyms. But his life begins to imitate his fiction when he agrees to ghostwrite the memoir of Darian Clay, New York City’s infamous Photo Killer. Soon, three young women turn up dead, each one murdered in the Photo Killer’s gruesome signature style, and Harry must play detective in a real-life murder plot as he struggles to avoid becoming the killer’s next victim.
Witty, irreverent, and original, The Serialist is a love letter to books—from poetry to pornography—and proof that truth really can be stranger than fiction.
Related Reviews
David Gordon's first novel prompts my first Amazon review. It's stunning. The Serialist is the noir of now. If Raymond Chandler "invested the sun-drenched streets of Los Angeles with the grace of a slumming angel," Gordon gives us Queens without much sun. To be at home in a writer's head (Gordon's protagonist Harry) is one thing, to be inside a serial killer's head (Clay) is terrifying. In fact, I stopped dead after starting chapter 74--the murderer's monologue--and had to finish after getting out of the city. Gordon's layering of narrative voices is so artful it's nearly invisible. Who and what is a "serialist?" I hope it's Gordon.
An Outlandish Tale About Life, Love, and Literature
The Serialist is a whimsical tale of Harry, a down on himself and defeated writer, his colorful past filled with "slut whispering" and vampire novels, and those hilariously lovable or nauseatingly creepy individuals who surround him, both in his life and in his writing. When reading this book, I fell deeply in love with Harry, and Claire as well! These characters feel so real. Every one of them is individually distinct and dynamic in a way that is not easily achieved in fiction. I began to care about the characters which is not something I typically experience when reading novels. Another thing I love about this book is how each chapter ends with a little one or two sentence hook that takes hold of you and forces you onto the next chapter. The books within the book are a delightfully quirky addition. I particularly enjoyed the J. Duke Johnson "Double Down on the Deuce" chapters. I kind of wish that it existed as an entirely separate book so I could read on to find out what happens to Mordechai Jones. I wouldn't typically define myself as a hardcore mystery fan, and part of what I love about this mystery is that it has so many other elements to it. The chapter's on Harry's breakup with his ex, the dialogue between him and his mother, the many dream sequences described throughout the book (I completely LOVED the chapter describing Harry's dream about his mother's death) didn't exactly add to the mystery itself, but they were very intense, riveting, hilarious and turned a crime thriller into a literary work of art. This book is a gem, truly unique, and a pleasure to read.
A worthy homage to pulp fiction
This definitely is a treat for those of us who appreciate the pulp style of fiction. The narrative is penned by a writer who had greast aspirations as a writer, but instead ends up making a living by writing formulaic genre fiction. A convicted serial killer on death row is a fan and contracts the writer to ghost write his autobiography, but with a definite hook. This becomes a challenging whodunnit which verges on graphic sadism at times, but shouldn't be too strong for the average reader of thrillers. This is a most promising debut and left me hoping for more from the author..
I have never written a review on amazon before, but after finishing The Serialist, I felt compelled to do so. David Gordon is a brilliant writer, and I am at a loss for words at the moment.
exciting but grim dark thriller
Harry Bloch is an author who works in many genres, but each book he writes have in common one thing: none were published under his real name. His first gig was writing porn for Raunchy magazine. While at a back cover photo shoot, he receives a letter from death row inmate Darien Clay, who offers to tell Harry a true story of his life if he visits him in Sing Sing.
Darien explains further that he will talk to Harry if the writer will interview his groupies and writes a story about them with the convict as the star and each woman having a chapter. Harry interviews three women, but after leaving the third female, he goes back to her place only to find her cut to pieces with her hand missing; just the way Darien described how he tortured and killed his victims. Harry calls the police who inform him the first women were killed in the same gruesome way. The cops believe Harry killed the three victims until he is shot at and almost killed. As the police look for new suspects, Harry also seeks the culprit before more of Darien's darlings turn up dead.
Told by Harry in the first person, The Serialist is an exciting but grim dark thriller that reads somewhat like an action-packed pulp tale. The protagonist is an average person except for his writing skill who finds himself in an extraordinary situation that requires him to rise to the occasion to extract himself from a deadly horrific mess. Even he is unsure he can do it, but like many a hero before him, Harry knows he must overcome his fears and shortcomings to face the enemy who is taking a page out of Darien's book.
Harriet Klausner
Darien explains further that he will talk to Harry if the writer will interview his groupies and writes a story about them with the convict as the star and each woman having a chapter. Harry interviews three women, but after leaving the third female, he goes back to her place only to find her cut to pieces with her hand missing; just the way Darien described how he tortured and killed his victims. Harry calls the police who inform him the first women were killed in the same gruesome way. The cops believe Harry killed the three victims until he is shot at and almost killed. As the police look for new suspects, Harry also seeks the culprit before more of Darien's darlings turn up dead.
Told by Harry in the first person, The Serialist is an exciting but grim dark thriller that reads somewhat like an action-packed pulp tale. The protagonist is an average person except for his writing skill who finds himself in an extraordinary situation that requires him to rise to the occasion to extract himself from a deadly horrific mess. Even he is unsure he can do it, but like many a hero before him, Harry knows he must overcome his fears and shortcomings to face the enemy who is taking a page out of Darien's book.
Harriet Klausner
Skillful writing, intriguing plot, and a likable protagonist distinguish this literary thriller. The clever opening sentence, "The first sentence of a novel is the most important, except for maybe the last, which can stay with you after you've shut the book, the way the echo of a closing door follows you down the hall" introduces the deft meta-knowledge pervading the plot.
Protagonist Harry Bloch is interesting, reminding me in some ways of Silverberg's unforgettable David Selig from "Dying Inside". Much of protagonist's concerns were about the craft of writing, and the author here skillfully and entertainingly intercalates excerpts from Bloch's earlier novels. Gordon does an excellent job parodying various genres, particularly vampire romance.
The book is full of mordant asides on writing, as for example this poetical analysis:
"What happened was that the Internet killed .... all magazine publishing, just as TV and the movies killed books before that, and even earlier, something or other that I can't remember killed poetry. Or maybe it was suicide."
The author generally writes well, although at times there is too much dialog, as if he is writing a screenplay (of course, nearly all modern novels from the big publishers suffer from this flaw). But when he's not writing dialog, the prose is excellent, sometimes mesmerizing. More problematically, the novel seems almost to suffer from a kind of Tourette syndrome: otherwise well-written passages are continually and distractingly interrupted by inappropriate profanity. This shibboleth should have been caught in the editing (long ago, editors served as gatekeepers to rein in over-enthusiastic authors), but as is, unless one has a high tolerance for profanity, large passages from this novel will be annoying.
Another annoyance, although no doubt not the author's fault, was that the blurb for the book gave away a major plot development, one that was not supposed to have been revealed until nearly mid-way through.
Protagonist Harry Bloch is interesting, reminding me in some ways of Silverberg's unforgettable David Selig from "Dying Inside". Much of protagonist's concerns were about the craft of writing, and the author here skillfully and entertainingly intercalates excerpts from Bloch's earlier novels. Gordon does an excellent job parodying various genres, particularly vampire romance.
The book is full of mordant asides on writing, as for example this poetical analysis:
"What happened was that the Internet killed .... all magazine publishing, just as TV and the movies killed books before that, and even earlier, something or other that I can't remember killed poetry. Or maybe it was suicide."
The author generally writes well, although at times there is too much dialog, as if he is writing a screenplay (of course, nearly all modern novels from the big publishers suffer from this flaw). But when he's not writing dialog, the prose is excellent, sometimes mesmerizing. More problematically, the novel seems almost to suffer from a kind of Tourette syndrome: otherwise well-written passages are continually and distractingly interrupted by inappropriate profanity. This shibboleth should have been caught in the editing (long ago, editors served as gatekeepers to rein in over-enthusiastic authors), but as is, unless one has a high tolerance for profanity, large passages from this novel will be annoying.
Another annoyance, although no doubt not the author's fault, was that the blurb for the book gave away a major plot development, one that was not supposed to have been revealed until nearly mid-way through.
I love this book and you will too if you like mysteries sprinkled with humor (some parts are laugh out loud funny). The characters are fresh and you seem to know them after just a few pages. I started this book and could not put it down. This book has quite a few twists not all of them surprising but it didn't matter, as the story is that good. There is some gore and bloody details but it is important to the story. This is his first book and I hope he continues writing about Harry and Claire.
Well done.
Well done.
Review by the Berglund Center for Internet Studies
In The Serialist, the Internet is a factor serving as a sort of symbol of the whirl increasingly overtaking our culture. The protagonist has lost much of his work as a writer because the Internet has destroyed the small serial magazines that were his primary market. He has been reduced to ghosting term papers for wealthy prep school students. But the Internet is not otherwise particularly important. In that way, it may be said to be a very realistic use of it--as we all know, sometimes it is useful, other times not.
For a full review see Interface Volume 11 Issue 2.
For a full review see Interface Volume 11 Issue 2.
Both a mystery and a metafictional literary novel
The Serialist has been nominated for an Edgar Award as the best first novel of the year, and it's easy to see why. This original and entertaining mystery is as good as they get. Not only is it a great book as a traditional mystery, it's also delightful as a book about the nature of books and writing, with passages of carefully crafted literary prose.
The premise of the book is that the first-person narrator, Harry Bloch, is a writer who has been selected by a Death Row inmate, Darian Clay, to write his story. Clay promises to tell Bloch everything, right down to where he hid, buried or disposed of - he's not saying exactly what he did with them yet - the heads of the women he murdered.
For Bloch, this is an amazing break. Bloch's writing has so far been limited to a bunch of different genre knock-offs written under pseudonyms. As Madam Sibylline Lorindo-Gold, he's written a handful of mildly popular vampire novels; his mother has posed for the author picture for these books, beginning with Crimson Vein of Darkness. I'm quite certain that any resemblance to the more risible bits of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books is surely coincidence. He's written a column for Raunchy, a porn magazine, as Tom Stanks, the Slut Whisperer. And he writes noir mysteries as J. Duke Johnson, all starring a ghetto sheriff named Mordechai Jones, a black Jew of mixed Ethiopian and Native American descent. Finally, there are the science fiction books set on the planet Zorg, "where overbreasted miniwaisted women and bearded, brawny, weirdly busty men rode dragons, flew rockets and drank mead from horns." His nom-de-plume for these books is T.R.L. Pangstrom, and any notion that these are a take-off of John Norman's Gor books surely must be wrong. Excerpts from Bloch's writing as each of these authors appear here and there throughout the book, keeping any genre reader giggling, sometimes inappropriately but helplessly.
None of these ventures has made Bloch wealthy, but the Clay book really might. His teenage manager - and how he wound up with a teenage manager is a story in and of itself, also hilarious - insists that he write the book, even though his stomach is turned by the conditions that Clay sets, Clay's lawyer forbids it, and most of the families of Clay's victims beg him not to.
Despite the objections to his undertaking this project, Bloch decides to do it when the twin sister of one of Clay's victims asks him to. Well, there's that and the fact that his former lover's husband mocks him for his pseudonymous writing at a party sponsored by a literary magazine (another set piece, where the pretentiousness of fans of literary fiction is skewered as well as it's ever been done).
Bloch starts the work he needs to do in order to get Clay's story out of him, meeting the conditions Clay has set: meet the women who have been writing to Clay in prison, promising him their love and devotion and, of course and above all, sex. Wild, crazy, perverted sex. Clay demands that Bloch write up a porn scene involving each of the women after he meets them, in exchange for which he will provide Bloch with information for his book. As distasteful as Bloch finds this work, he complies. Things seem to be going swimmingly until one of Bloch's interviewees is found slaughtered in Clay's style - and suddenly this book becomes less a send-up of writing and reading (as well as a love story to both) and becomes a genuine mystery, though without ever losing its humor and charm.
And Gordon clearly knows how to write a mystery. This might be his first book, but he's got the touch. Even when you think the last twist has occurred, another one comes along, and then another. I can't say that Gordon entirely plays fair with his readers in that he doesn't lay out sufficient clues in the story itself to lead the reader to the answers - but any devoted mystery reader will probably have guessed what's going on a bit earlier than Gordon's protagonist does, which I read as yet another comment on the nature of reading and writing.
More than knowing how to write a mystery, though, Gordon just plain knows how to write. Consider this passage about reading:
"Why do we read? In the beginning, as children, why do we love the books we love? For most, I think, it's travel, a flight into adventure, into a dream that feels like our own. But for a few it is also escape, flight from boredom, unhappiness, loneliness, from where or who we can no longer bear to be. When I read, the words on the page replace the voice in my head and I cease, for a little while, to be me, or at least to be so painfully aware of being me. These are the real readers, the maniacs, the ones who dose themselves with fiction the way junkies get high, the way lovers adore the beloved: Beyond reason."
He's got me nailed. In fact, I could quote you passage after well-written passage, just to share some great writing. Here's just another little taste of a long passage that is a tour de force:
"Heart of a failed poet, mind of an amateur detective, ass of a middle-aged hack writer - did I really suspect her of the murders? Ass of a detective, spleen of a poet, pituitary gland of a burned-out pulp novelist - what I felt was the sudden abyss that opened between us, the irreducible distance between one body and another, one mind and another."
Oh, it's hard to stop quoting that paragraph, because it goes on beautifully from there. What a novel! You can be sure that David Gordon is now on my list of authors whose works I will buy on sight.
The premise of the book is that the first-person narrator, Harry Bloch, is a writer who has been selected by a Death Row inmate, Darian Clay, to write his story. Clay promises to tell Bloch everything, right down to where he hid, buried or disposed of - he's not saying exactly what he did with them yet - the heads of the women he murdered.
For Bloch, this is an amazing break. Bloch's writing has so far been limited to a bunch of different genre knock-offs written under pseudonyms. As Madam Sibylline Lorindo-Gold, he's written a handful of mildly popular vampire novels; his mother has posed for the author picture for these books, beginning with Crimson Vein of Darkness. I'm quite certain that any resemblance to the more risible bits of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books is surely coincidence. He's written a column for Raunchy, a porn magazine, as Tom Stanks, the Slut Whisperer. And he writes noir mysteries as J. Duke Johnson, all starring a ghetto sheriff named Mordechai Jones, a black Jew of mixed Ethiopian and Native American descent. Finally, there are the science fiction books set on the planet Zorg, "where overbreasted miniwaisted women and bearded, brawny, weirdly busty men rode dragons, flew rockets and drank mead from horns." His nom-de-plume for these books is T.R.L. Pangstrom, and any notion that these are a take-off of John Norman's Gor books surely must be wrong. Excerpts from Bloch's writing as each of these authors appear here and there throughout the book, keeping any genre reader giggling, sometimes inappropriately but helplessly.
None of these ventures has made Bloch wealthy, but the Clay book really might. His teenage manager - and how he wound up with a teenage manager is a story in and of itself, also hilarious - insists that he write the book, even though his stomach is turned by the conditions that Clay sets, Clay's lawyer forbids it, and most of the families of Clay's victims beg him not to.
Despite the objections to his undertaking this project, Bloch decides to do it when the twin sister of one of Clay's victims asks him to. Well, there's that and the fact that his former lover's husband mocks him for his pseudonymous writing at a party sponsored by a literary magazine (another set piece, where the pretentiousness of fans of literary fiction is skewered as well as it's ever been done).
Bloch starts the work he needs to do in order to get Clay's story out of him, meeting the conditions Clay has set: meet the women who have been writing to Clay in prison, promising him their love and devotion and, of course and above all, sex. Wild, crazy, perverted sex. Clay demands that Bloch write up a porn scene involving each of the women after he meets them, in exchange for which he will provide Bloch with information for his book. As distasteful as Bloch finds this work, he complies. Things seem to be going swimmingly until one of Bloch's interviewees is found slaughtered in Clay's style - and suddenly this book becomes less a send-up of writing and reading (as well as a love story to both) and becomes a genuine mystery, though without ever losing its humor and charm.
And Gordon clearly knows how to write a mystery. This might be his first book, but he's got the touch. Even when you think the last twist has occurred, another one comes along, and then another. I can't say that Gordon entirely plays fair with his readers in that he doesn't lay out sufficient clues in the story itself to lead the reader to the answers - but any devoted mystery reader will probably have guessed what's going on a bit earlier than Gordon's protagonist does, which I read as yet another comment on the nature of reading and writing.
More than knowing how to write a mystery, though, Gordon just plain knows how to write. Consider this passage about reading:
"Why do we read? In the beginning, as children, why do we love the books we love? For most, I think, it's travel, a flight into adventure, into a dream that feels like our own. But for a few it is also escape, flight from boredom, unhappiness, loneliness, from where or who we can no longer bear to be. When I read, the words on the page replace the voice in my head and I cease, for a little while, to be me, or at least to be so painfully aware of being me. These are the real readers, the maniacs, the ones who dose themselves with fiction the way junkies get high, the way lovers adore the beloved: Beyond reason."
He's got me nailed. In fact, I could quote you passage after well-written passage, just to share some great writing. Here's just another little taste of a long passage that is a tour de force:
"Heart of a failed poet, mind of an amateur detective, ass of a middle-aged hack writer - did I really suspect her of the murders? Ass of a detective, spleen of a poet, pituitary gland of a burned-out pulp novelist - what I felt was the sudden abyss that opened between us, the irreducible distance between one body and another, one mind and another."
Oh, it's hard to stop quoting that paragraph, because it goes on beautifully from there. What a novel! You can be sure that David Gordon is now on my list of authors whose works I will buy on sight.
More clever than good, but pretty good.
A highly imaginative story told with virtuosic chops. At its best the book is a laugh riot of the darkest slapstick. The scene in the nudey-bar bar gave me cramps from laughing. At its worst this book is a self-absorbed manifesto of literary/philosophical drivel, and unfortunately this is how the author has chosen to send readers out the back of the book. The effort was not entirely convincing and absorbing, for lack of cohesion and focus. Excerpts from the narrator's books do nothing to advance or illuminate the plot (as far as I could tell). The narrator's tone swings all over the map. Sure...it may be an impressive display of versatility, but I don't think it served the story. Outrageous characters and roles could have been reigned in just a bit to maintain a closer hold of plausibility.
There's a lot here to delight anyone with a wicked sense of humor. I think there's also a lot to delight literary types, but for me that stuff obscured the melody here. Overall...pretty good.
There's a lot here to delight anyone with a wicked sense of humor. I think there's also a lot to delight literary types, but for me that stuff obscured the melody here. Overall...pretty good.
The Serialist is a fun and witty first novel by David Gordon. The book has been nominated for an Edgar Award for best first novel of the year. It is a great read.
Harry Bloch is a struggling author of mysteries, vampire stories and pornographic tales, all under pen names. A serial killer on death row approached Harry to ghost write the killer's memoirs. After several meetings, people Harry interviewed for the memior turn up dead, killed in the same signature style of the serial killer. Harry is immediatly the prime suspect. To protect himself, Harry is forced to become an unwilling detective.
For anyone who likes mysteries, especially noir mysteries, this is a terrific new voice. The novel is loaded with references to great mystery authors and characters such as Edgar Allan Poe, Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade, PBS mysteries and several others. The voice is strong and distinct. The plotting and pace will keep you reading. Although this is written in the tradition of hardboiled private investigators, Gordon modernizes the characters and the issues.
Recommendation: This page turner is worth a read. You'll read it quickly on a long cold afternoon or on the beach. For hardboiled mystery enthusiaists, it is a must.
[...]
Harry Bloch is a struggling author of mysteries, vampire stories and pornographic tales, all under pen names. A serial killer on death row approached Harry to ghost write the killer's memoirs. After several meetings, people Harry interviewed for the memior turn up dead, killed in the same signature style of the serial killer. Harry is immediatly the prime suspect. To protect himself, Harry is forced to become an unwilling detective.
For anyone who likes mysteries, especially noir mysteries, this is a terrific new voice. The novel is loaded with references to great mystery authors and characters such as Edgar Allan Poe, Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade, PBS mysteries and several others. The voice is strong and distinct. The plotting and pace will keep you reading. Although this is written in the tradition of hardboiled private investigators, Gordon modernizes the characters and the issues.
Recommendation: This page turner is worth a read. You'll read it quickly on a long cold afternoon or on the beach. For hardboiled mystery enthusiaists, it is a must.
[...]
THE SERIALIST is a great first novel. The writer has a keen sense of dark humor that makes the book as hard to put down as the cleverly derived thriller plot. When a barely-getting-by freelance writer gets the chance to write the authorized biography of a convicted serial killer, he finds himself biting off more than he can chew. To say more would be to give away a fantastically addictive story full of twists and turns. Great characters. Great plot line. A really great debut by an author (David Gordon) I will look forward to seeing more from.
Frightening & Fascinating Debut
"A ghost writer is confused by art versus reality when three young women are murdered using the same modus operandi as the killer in his latest book. This is a frightening and fascinating debut mystery."
The Serialist starts out wonderfully - a mix of satire, mystery and a funny examination of the mind of a hack writer.
But about halfway through, the tone changes, sickening details are shoved in the reader's face and the previous jauntiness of tone disappears. The net effect of this tonal shift is to make the previously enjoyable characters like Harry and Claire seem just as artificial and as unbelievable as the other characters who emerge.
I almost spoiled the mystery at the centre if the novel, but if, like me, you stick with The Serialist until the bitter end, you'll probably be scratching your head and trying to figure ou how the killer was able to carry out the murders. Logistically, it doesn't make sense, and sadly, the last third of this novel also makes little sense.
Which would be fine, I guess, if the book hadn't also stopped being enjoyable as well.
So, if you like graphic descriptions of dismembered women, then maybe you'll enjoy the last half of The Serialist. If not, I strongly suggest you look elsewhere for your next summer bvook.
But about halfway through, the tone changes, sickening details are shoved in the reader's face and the previous jauntiness of tone disappears. The net effect of this tonal shift is to make the previously enjoyable characters like Harry and Claire seem just as artificial and as unbelievable as the other characters who emerge.
I almost spoiled the mystery at the centre if the novel, but if, like me, you stick with The Serialist until the bitter end, you'll probably be scratching your head and trying to figure ou how the killer was able to carry out the murders. Logistically, it doesn't make sense, and sadly, the last third of this novel also makes little sense.
Which would be fine, I guess, if the book hadn't also stopped being enjoyable as well.
So, if you like graphic descriptions of dismembered women, then maybe you'll enjoy the last half of The Serialist. If not, I strongly suggest you look elsewhere for your next summer bvook.
David Gordon's The Serialist is humorous, witty and gory. Not for the faint-hearted. Harry Bloch is an author is on the edge of actually making the big time. He writes a lot of schlocky novels, but thinks he will get is big break write the biography for a serial killer. Instead the serial killer, Darian Clay wants him to write little vignettes involving women who have written to him while in prision before he will reveal himself to Bloch. The only problem is that after Bloch interviews these women and writes his little porn stories, they end up dead. Now, to avoid prison, Harry takes it upon himself to find out who is murdering these women and stop from getting killed himself. As mention above, this novel has it's funny and witty moments but can be pretty graphic.
David Gordon's The Serialist is a start to an excellent career!
I have to say, it takes a lot for a book to really keep me engaged. I often get bored during slow parts, put it down and come back to it months later. However, The Serialist was a totally new experience for me. Not only did I not put it down, but I COULDN'T put it down. Even the so-called "slow" parts that other reviewers have mentioned were still interesting enough to keep me on edge, waiting to see what happens next. I loved this book from start to finish and I've been recommending it to everyone I know.
Great book. Suspensful and very well written. I could not put it down. Read it! Read it!
the first 30 pages weren't bad
This is the tale of a lame, failing writer who gets involved in a murder mystery. I liked the first few chapters, in which we are introduced to the writer, his oeuvre, and the world of his ex-girlfriend and her new, much more successful writer/boyfriend. Gordon lampoons pretentious literary fiction and the people who write it. But the book soon goes downhill. The narrator is sucked into a murder mystery, punctuated by sex and violence, and interrupted periodically by sample chapters from the lousy books he writes for a living. The latter are not funny or witty, they're just bad writing, and their inclusion is bit of the same structural nonsense Gordon was making fun of in the initial chapters of the book. Ultimately, of course, the narrator solves every crime, identifies three different murderers, seduces the beautiful stripper, and makes his ex-girlfriend very jealous. It's basically the masturbatory fantasy of a failed middle-aged writer of fiction, and offers little to anybody else.
Are we reading the same book ?
Based on all the good reviews, I got an audio version of this book. It's terrible !!! Why ? First, it took 37 chapters for something to happen to the main character. Secondly, that character is a whiny loser. Third, the quoting from the pages of his various works is mind-numbing, boring, and serves no purpose. Fourth, there are NO sympathetic characters. (The closest is Claire, who has some sense, but she vanishes for a long period.) The job that Harry has as a ninth-rate author is cringe-worthy, and almost makes me feel sorry for him. Finally, the extended passage at the end, where Clay (in his last interview with Harry.) details all his crimes is simply disgusting, especially in audio. What WAS good, was the narrator , who made the different characters come to life; but this has nothing to do with the author or plot. In any case, thanks for letting me have my (admittedly) minority say.
Share your thoughts with other customers
Create your own review
Create your own review