Synopsis/blurb….
Mark Smith’s Literary
Masterpiece of Crime Fiction.
A National Book Award
Finalist
The blockbuster New
York Times bestseller.
“Remarkable for both
its ambition and its accomplishment, it reads as though it were written by a
resurrected Charles Dickens, one chilled by a hundred years of graveyard
brooding…every page is a pleasure to read,” New York Times
A killer calling
himself The Deathmaker is on the loose, pursued by Arnold Magnuson, a
grief-stricken detective on the verge of a mental breakdown. Magnuson’s dogged
investigation to find the killer, and himself, takes him deep into urban
Chicago, laying bare the corrupt city and its seething soul in all its macabre,
heartbreaking, and violent complexity. It’s a sprawling, utterly compelling
story, widely regarded as a stunning literary achievement and perhaps the best
detective novel ever written.
“A masterpiece . . .
raises Dickens’ benign ghost to remind us again that we're all connected, all
both innocent and guilty,” Kirkus Reviews
“A brilliant and
arresting novel which so far transcends the detective genre that inspired it as
to stand in a category of its own,” Arkansas Gazette
In its sustained
vitality, power and scale, it is unlike any other fiction I have read....A
complex and unforgettable novel,” The Times (London)
Well after being seduced by the premise of reading the “best
detective book ever,” an assertion somewhat reinforced by the dynamic duo of
Lee Goldberg and Joel Goldman over at Brash Books republishing this 1973 tome, so
how did we get on?
Enjoyable at times, gripping at times, pretty amazing at
times, but by turn frustrating, irritating and by the finish a little bit
anti-climactic.
We have an escaped madman on a mission of revenge, over his
treatment at the hands of Farquarson (and others, including Magnuson) many
years ago. Farquarson, a Chicago business magnate, on his death-bed summons our
detective – Magnuson to tackle the threat posed. Magnuson sets off on his
quest.
Magnuson’s pursuit of the madman, Joseph Helenowski was
compelling and exciting. All through the night from one scene of crime to
another. Helenowski always one step ahead and despite his insanity executing
his plans with a remarkable clarity of purpose and with extreme violence.
Magnuson seemingly attuned to Helenowski’s thought processes, always arriving
just that little bit too late to prevent another death. On and on – possibly a
dozen, by the time we were sated.
As such a scenario plays out, it makes compelling reading.
But frustratingly for me at least; very often the narrative meanders off-point
and we are treated (possibly not the right word) to pages of dense descriptive
prose only tangentially related to more urgent matters at hand.
An amazing portrait of Chicago in all its glory and squalor,
with its wealth, its poverty and ghettos, its politics and its racial and
ethnic differences, its geography, its climate, its architecture, its bars and
taverns and rivers and parks, its festivals and its people.
Extremely dense at times, enjoyable overall, but sometimes maddening.
I’m glad I read it, though I did have to devour it in bite-sized chunks –
limiting myself to a chapter a day and on the odd occasion two - over more than
a month. Any faster and I think my head would probably have exploded.
4 from 5
I bought my 636 page chunkster – with 45 lines of text to a
page - second hand sometime in the last year or so online. Brash Books have re-issued this recently in a slightly more
accessible format on Kindle.
From wikipedia.......
Dark, light, absurd
and irreverent and all thing in-between.
