Hard Hard City - Hardcover

Fusilli, Jim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399152172 ISBN 13: 9780399152177

Publisher: Putnam Adult, 2004

Synopsis

When a troubled, talented teenager goes missing, private investigator Terry Orr's search uncovers a hornet's nest of family secrets.

In just three short years, Jim Fusilli has garnered the kind of praise for which writers wait their entire careers: "Superior . . . This courageous and original writer works against the grain of expectations, looking to make our experience not easy but illuminative and true," proclaimed The Boston Globe. Publishers Weekly writes, "Fusilli's sense of place is stunning: a tangible, poetically evoked Manhattan infuses this complex, haunting story."

In the latest installment of Jim Fusilli's critically acclaimed series, enigmatic hero and occasional private eye Terry Orr has been asked by his precocious daughter, Bella, and her friend Daniel Wu to search for a gifted student who has suddenly disappeared. Terry quickly discovers that documents and cash have been stolen from the home of an elderly family friend with whom the boy had been staying. When Terry travels to the adolescent's New Jersey hometown, he meets with unexpected violence. And when he returns to the city, the trail leads to murder, as his own life hangs in the balance.

But Terry can't say no to this case; something about the damaged boy reminds him of his own difficult youth, as well as his constantly challenging relationship with daughter, Bella, who has begun to push her desperate father away.

Filled with brilliantly drawn characters and imbued with Fusilli's vivid evocation of New York, Hard, Hard City is a revelation.

About this title

About the Authors

Jim Fusilli is a music critic for The Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio's All Things Considered. This is his fourth novel.

Jim Fusilli is a music critic for The Wall Street Journal.

Reviews

The multi-talented Fusilli, a music critic for The Wall Street Journal and NPR, is just as gifted at creating his own work as he is at dissecting that of others. With Hard, Hard City, Fusilli brings back Terry Orr, last seen in 2003’s Tribeca Blues. Critics praise the nuance with which Fusilli imbues Orr—the character is layered like a human being, not a pulpy gumshoe—and the accuracy with which he captures New York City’s dark underbelly. A few blanch at the plot’s twists and turns, however, believing they skid into B-movie territory. Overall, most strongly recommend Fusilli’s novel to both mystery fans and those who usually eschew the genre. As The Washington Post notes, "If you have fallen into the habit of reading the same favorites over and over—Grisham, Grafton, Sandford, whatever—branch out a bit. Live dangerously!"

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

In Fusilli's fourth entry in this complex, character-driven crime series, Terry Orr, single parent and occasional private detective, is more analytical and less self-absorbed than he was in 2003's Tribeca Blues. Daniel Wu, the appealing friend of Orr's precocious teenage daughter, Bella, asks him to find the missing Allie Powell, a student at Manhattan's Fashion Institute of Technology. Orr, guilty about the lack of time spent with Bella and still haunted by the deaths four years earlier of his wife and son, agrees to look for Allie. What initially appears to be a simple search for a wayward teenager evolves into a byzantine trail of theft, violence, murder, blackmail and politics. Fusilli's themes echo those of his mentors, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald and Robert B. Parker: wealth engenders dishonesty and corruption and, as with the latter two, neglected children. It's not hard to identify the culprits here, though their motives are only slowly revealed. Fusilli is a serious novelist who excels in creating a noirish view of Manhattan and strong characters whose relationships continue to evolve with each book.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Contrary to its title, a warm heart beats beneath the wintry surface of the fourth Terry Orr mystery, as one more layer of Orr's hard-boiled exterior melts away in the glowing presence of his precocious daughter, Bella, and her pals; his lover, Julie; his friend Diddio, with the failing Tea Shop; and various other exemplars of the good people of New York. Meanwhile, some scumbags from New Jersey will stop at nothing to recover what was stolen from the safe of a godly man left transfixed on the ironwork three stories below his apartment. Caught in the middle is Allie, a slight teen on the run from callous, warring parents and badly in need of a friend. Orr takes his lumps, exacts revenge, and pops a lot of pain killers, while his roving eye details the big city's frozen bustle, and his mind's eye flashes unbidden on the troubling past. Fans of Michael Connelly and Richard Barre will enjoy this solid, reflective PI yarn, but series newcomers are advised to start with Closing Time (2001) to avoid spoilers. David Wright
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Putnam Adult
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0399152172
• ISBN 13: 9780399152177
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288