Suspects [electronic resource] : A Novel

Título:

Suspects [electronic resource] : A Novel

Autor:

Descripción:

In Suspects, Thomas Berger invites us into the most American of towns: a manicured hamlet that’s not quite as safe as it once was but that is still inhabited by good, hard workers, friendly neighbors, and, of course, dysfunctional families.

Editor:

Dzanc Books,

Fecha:

2013

Formato digital:

CLOUDLIBRARY EPUB

Idioma:

Inglés

Resumen

In "Suspects," Thomas Berger invites us into the most American of towns: a manicured hamlet that's not quite as safe as it once was but that is still inhabited by good, hard workers, friendly neighbors, and, of course, dysfunctional families.

Reseñas (4)

Reseña de Publisher's Weekly

Berger's 20th novel suffers from a surfeit of pages and a lack of story. There is probably enough material in this fairly straightforward murder mystery to satisfy the demands of a novella; but for a standard 256-page novel, the mystery, the characters and their histories are not nearly complex enough to sustain the narrative. To fill out the page count, far too many diluting diversions, descriptions and side stories have been introduced. The resulting concoctiondescribed as a meditation on "friendship, family loyalty, and the American dream"is little more than a collection of run-of-the-mill human interest stories pasted onto what could have been a fine, workmanlike whodunit set in a typical American town. In the first two-thirds of the narrative, Berger calls the motives and actions of a large portion of his dramatis personae into question; but, because of his narrative perambulations, there is very little suspense or sense of urgency. In a novel more about police than about suspects, Berger (Robert Crews, 1994, etc.) gets caught up in the inner lives of a rather large cast of cameo characters and in arguments about the good old days before notions of individual rights and accountability came along and made life difficult for cops. Too caught up, as it happens, to be able to divert his readers from the fact that his red herring is far too red to escape notice. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Kirkus Review

Berger takes on the suburban police novel in his latest deadpan deconstruction. Frustrated and tantalized when the patrolmen she's called out to investigate her neighbor's failure to answer the phone or the doorbell leave without doing anything but ringing the bell themselves, placidly nosey Mary Jane Jones lets herself in the back door and discovers Donna Howland and her daughter Amanda, three, both murdered. Shocked Larry Howland returns from a business trip to find himself a widower. It isn't long, though, before the police find that he's never left town; he's been enjoying his latest stint in the Starry Night Motel, accompanied by garish decor, adult videos, and his boss's wife. But Officers Nick Moody and Dennis LeBeau soon give up on him as a suspect and focus on his shiftless half-brother Lloyd, who'd been having an unnervingly bad day, revealed in a series of merciless crosscuts, even before the cops started looking for him. Lloyd had broken his shaver, gotten fired from still another job, angered his boss into lodging a complaint against him, gotten pinched attempting to steal a rubber duckie from the local five-and-ten, and walked into a liquor store determined to rob it--only to stumble on the bloody aftermath of an earlier robbery. In anyone else's hands such elaborate forebodings would be the stuff of melodrama, but master parodist Berger piles up detail on detail with such cool detachment that the whole lurid whodunit recedes into the distance, as if you were watching it through the wrong end of a telescope. What emerges in its place is a crazy quilt of subplots--Lloyd's adventures with trucker Molly Sparks, the growing friction between Moody and LeBeau, and an insultingly inconsequential solution to the mystery--whose lack of connection gives the tale a gravely comic tone. Not the most successful of Berger's enigmatic sendups; as in Robert Crews (1994), fans of the genre under dissection are more likely to be bemused than enlightened.

Reseña de Booklist

Berger wrote his most acclaimed novel, Little Big Man, over 30 years ago and now has 20 novels to his credit, but critics have been disappointed in his recent efforts, including Robert Crews (1993), a not so clever remake of Robinson Crusoe, and this is his worst yet. Suspects is one tired, pointless, and derivative piece of work. It's, guess what, a murder mystery. And the victims are, guess who, a beautiful young mother and her pretty little girl. And one of the detectives on the case is, guess what, lonely and depressed. Heck, his name is even Moody. As the title implies, there are several possible suspects, but it's difficult to care about any of them except, vaguely, for Lloyd, the victim's husband's half-brother. Lloyd is a little guy afraid of women and unable to hold down a job. He's rescued by the only character with an ounce of energy, a young, cute trucker named Molly Sparks, and their sweetly chaste relationship is the only bright spot in this otherwise dreary exercise. Berger is running strictly on reputation here, possibly damaging it beyond repair. Buy only if demand warrants. (Reviewed May 1, 1996)0688119255Donna Seaman

Library Journal Review

In his latest tome, Berger, author of 19 previous novels, including Little Big Man (1964), takes on the "detective story" with all its situational clichés and hackneyed language. The joy of it is that he does it with such a straight face that one wonders if he is not seriously trying to break into this commercially successful entertainment realm. The gruesome murder of a mother and her young daughter provides the backdrop to an investigation featuring a grizzled, semi-alcoholic veteran detective; his younger partner; and an odd assortment of suspects, including a strangely cold husband; a down-and-out, antisocial brother-in-law; and a plumber whose curiosity gets him into trouble. An easy, enjoyable read whether one takes it seriously or as a tongue-in-cheek look at a hugely popular genre. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/96.]David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersberg, Fl. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.