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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780375701146
ISBN: 0375701141
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 176
Publication Date: January 26, 1999
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: January 26, 1999
Sales Rank: 297085
Studio: Vintage
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Detective Mike Hoolihan has seen it all. A fifteen-year veteran of the force, she's gone from walking a beat, to robbery, to homicide. But one case--this case--has gotten under her skin.
When Jennifer Rockwell, darling of the community and daughter of a respected career cop--now top brass--takes her own life, no one is prepared to believe it. Especially her father, Colonel Tom. Homicide Detective Mike Hoolihan, longtime colleague and friend of Colonel Tom, is ready to "put the case down." Suicide. Closed. Until Colonel Tom asks her to do the one thing any grieving father would ask: take a second look.
Not since his celebrated novel Money has Amis turned his focus on America to such remarkable effect. Fusing brilliant wordplay with all the elements of a classic whodunit, Amis exposes a world where surfaces are suspect (no matter how perfect), where paranoia is justified (no matter how pervasive), and where power and pride are brought low by the hidden recesses of our humanity.
Amazon.com Review:
On a beautiful night in a second-tier American city, a beautiful astrophysicist with the clichéd everything to live for shoots herself dead with a .22. Tough-talking detective Mike Hoolihan, quickly summoned to the scene, has witnessed every sort of victim: "Jumpers, stumpers, dumpers, dunkers, bleeders, floaters, poppers, bursters." But this case is different. Mike has known the young woman for years--she's the daughter, it turns out, of Mike's mentor, Colonel Tom Rockwell. And the colonel is desperate to find a perp, despite massive evidence to the contrary.
In Night Train, Martin Amis has fixed his sights on the American female--with a difference. Mike is in fact a woman--a hulking, chain-smoking, deep-voiced alcoholic who comes complete with a squalid family background and a none-too-happy foreground. She even lives in a building next to the proverbial night train and can't survive without her tape with eight different versions of the R & B "hymn to the low rent."
Did this novel begin as narrative flexing, yet another test the hypertalented author--and number-one Elmore Leonard fan--wanted to pose to himself? If so, he has passed with flying colors. True, Mike's search occasionally pushes her up against pulp pathos, but mostly the genre keeps Amis true. "Police are pretty blasé about ballistics. Remember the Kennedy assassination and 'the magic bullet'? We know that every bullet is a magic bullet. Particularly the .22 roundnose. When a bullet enters a human being, it has hysterics. As if it knows it shouldn't be there."
Mike spends her time weighing the evidence, wishing it would point to murder, and letting us in on some current police realities. Whatever television tells us, in real life (not to mention postmodern crime fiction), there's no neat solution. Even that old standard, the good cop-bad cop approach, no longer works: "It's not just that Joe Perp is on to it, having seen good cop-bad cop a million times on reruns of Hawaii Five-O. The only time bad cop was any good was in the old days, when he used to come into the interrogation room every ten minutes and smash your suspect over the head with the yellow pages." With such discourses, Amis is stretching the rubber band of his book's realism. But in the end, all his fancy footwork doesn't stop us from admiring and pitying his heroine, and hoping she won't board the ultimate night train: suicide.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
Maybe I need to read the book "Understanding Martin Amis" before I read another of his books. I did not find a thing of redeeming value in this narrative. My Dad was a cop, my husband is a cop, and I found that the "police" known as Mike was not the norm. Her approach to her job, her reactions, her thought processes . . . not a typical "police" at all, to use Mr. Amis' verbage. At this point I would say I am not likely to read another of his books.
Rating: -
My first Amis book was "The Moronic Inferno," which fairly well roasted, if not scorched, a few American literary heroes, such as Mailer and Capote. Amis has published mainly fiction since then, and I have to say that "Night Train" was only my second Amis book, and my first novel.
A tiny bit of research based on street names will convince you that the setting is Seattle, Washington (plus, Mike's quick side trip to Vancouver to meet with Phyllida). Not mentioning the city the novel ... Read More
Rating:  -
Our book club's novel for February was Night Train, by Martin Amis, which we'd selected from a series of proposed books that our members described as "quirky" or "out of the ordinary." We picked Night Train not only because of the author's reputation but also because of its brevity (175 pages).
Our discussion started with a fairly lengthy of what exactly genre fiction is. Night Train has all the elements of a traditional hard-boiled mystery: a hard-edged, bitter, cynical female cop ... Read More
Rating: -
44-year-old female detective and recovering alcoholic, "Mike" Hoolihan, takes on the job of investigating the apparent suicide of Jennifer Rockwell, the only daughter of police brass, Colonel Tom. Tom is a powerful father figure for Mike: he saved her life by getting her off the booze. Now he wants her to explain what happened to his daughter. Jennifer had everything anybody wants: beauty, wit, health and a stimulating career. So the discovery in her orderly apartment of her naked body with three shots ... Read More
Rating: -
Well when i got this book i thought that there was going to be more action in it. But it is just a story about a girl who did suicide (i am not done with it yet). This book also has to many swears in it, no one talks like that, only teens do (that are immature). I can't wait to be done with this book.
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