Way Past Legal: A Novel - Softcover

Green, Norman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060565667 ISBN 13: 9780060565664

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks, 2016

Synopsis

Longing to break free from a criminal past, Manny flees the Russian mobsters from whom he stole his latest score and moves to a Maine wilderness community with his son, inadvertently placing unlikely new friends in danger. By the author of The Angel of Montague Street.

About this title

About the Author:

Norman Green reports this about himself: "I have always been careful, as Mark Twain advised, not to let schooling interfere with my education. Too careful, maybe. I have been, at various times, a truck driver, a construction worker, a project engineer, a factory rep, and a plant engineer, but never, until now, a writer." He lives in Emerson, New Jersey, with his wife, and is hard at work on his second novel.

From Publishers Weekly:

Green's third novel (after Shooting Dr. Jack and The Angel of Montague Street) starts like a gritty crime yarn, told in slangy, crackling first-person prose by its tough but likable hero, an ex-con named Manny Williams. But early on, the story takes an unusual detour into something more like a coming-of-age tale. Turning the tables on his partner, Rosey, who, in a deft bait and switch, has managed to keep all the loot from a successful heist, Manny burgles his crony's cache in New York. Then he sneaks his adorable five-year-old son, Nicky, out of foster care and hits the open road. When their car breaks down, the two stop in Maine, at the home of generous strangers Louis and Eleanor, who become surrogate grandparents in short order. Trouble inevitably follows, but not before Manny has come to know and like an assortment of good-hearted locals. Ironically, one is the town sheriff, Bookman, who asks Manny to help him with a problem: his deputy, Hopkins, has a habit of beating his girlfriend, Brenda, and Bookman wants to cure him of it. Manny, of course, has reasons of his own for not getting involved, but he knows the right thing to do even if hasn't always done it in his life. As he grows attached to the people around him, he gradually learns that he can't run from trouble: "I needed to stop taking the easy way out, stop sneaking out the back window, stop running away. I always thought I was so fucking smart." That lesson is brought home to him with brutal force when his past comes back to haunt him. By breaking with formula conventions, Green creates genuine suspense and richly rewards the reader.
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About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0060565667
• ISBN 13: 9780060565664
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272