Word Made Flesh - Softcover

O'Connell, Jack

3.8

189 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1842431587 ISBN 13: 9781842431580

Publisher: Oldcastle Books, 2005

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Why would two Eastern European meatboys want to whack an innocent cab driver? That's the question that occurs to Gilrein as Raban and Blumfeld press the gun barrel into his mouth. Does it have something to do with the ritual death-by-flencing of Leo Tani? Or does the answer involve Gilrein's ex-lover, now working as a librarian for a bibliomaniac gangster? Or maybe the whole thing has something to do with the Inspector, inventor of the notorious Methodology? And how does Bobby Oster figure in the mix, with his crew of murder-for-hire rogue cops who call themselves The Magicians? To find the answers, Gilrein will drive the night streets of his hometown and face down more than one demon from his past. From the Vacuum, where child-artists are held captive in veal pens and forced to forge graphic novels, to the Houdini Lounge, where the second annual immigrant death-match is being marketed, Gilrein will wander the underworld, collecting stories and looking for absolution. In the end, he'll brush up against "Alicia's Tale" and learn new truths about the terrifying negotiations always taking place between the storyteller and the audience in the city of Quinsigamond.

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About the Author:

Jack O'Connell is the critically acclaimed author of Box Nine, The Resurrectionist, The Skin Palace, and Wireless. He lives in Massachusetts.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Once again, O'Connell (The Skin Palace, 1996, etc.) tests the boundaries of noir mystery/suspense in this latest mind-boggling installment from Quinsigamond, Mass. Here's the story: A cabbie named Gilrein, who left the police force three years ago after his wife and colleague Ceil was killed in a raid on a bomb factory, picks up Leonardo Tani, a mid-level fence he's driven many times before, for what turns out to be his last ride. Tani falls afoul of a business rivalry between Hermann Kinsky, the unofficial mayor of the Bohemian Wing, and his aspiring lieutenant August Kroger, and gets taken out of the picture in the churningly vivid opening scene. Everyone involved, especially Kroger, is convinced Gilrein's in possession of a mysterious book missing from Tani's possession. Kroger and his creatures apply pressure. Jack responds by looking for the book. Now here's why you should take that familiar story with a grain of salt: Everyone in Quinsigamond is obsessed with horrors from the past. Gilrein can't forget the events that led up to Ceil's death. Otto Langer, the ventriloquist who drives a cab alongside Gilrein, is haunted by the Holocaustic sufferings of a girl named Alicia at the hands of Meyrink, the Censor of Maisel. Gilrein's ex-lover Wylie Brown, a former cop who's now serving as Kroger's librarian and archivist, ceaselessly gathers information about Quinsigamond legend Edgar Carwin Brockden, a visionary who killed his family and himself before any of the current cast were born. Inspector Emil Lacazze, the Jesuit who founded the Dunot Precinct's Eschatology Squad, lives to perfect the Methodology by which he bores into the hearts of the criminals he hunts. All of them, as O'Connell makes clear, are trapped in the inability of language to communicate, and the agonizing need to act out their messages instead of speaking or writing them. Under the conventions of crime and punishment, O'Connell's nightmarishly original vision of incarnation unflinchingly displays the various of harrowing ways words can indeed be made flesh. -- Copyright �1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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