Good Neighbors: A Novel - Softcover

Jahn, Ryan David

3.64

1,297 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 014311896X ISBN 13: 9780143118961

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2011

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A compulsively readable debut crime novel inspired by the legendary real-life murder of Kitty Genovese

At 4:00 A.M. on March 13, 1964, a young woman returning home from her shift at a local bar is attacked in the courtyard of her Queens apartment building. Her neighbors hear her cries; no one calls for help.

Unfolding over the course of two hours, Good Neighbors is the story of the woman's last night. It is also the story of her neighbors, the bystanders who kept to themselves: the anxious Vietnam draftee; the former soldier planning suicide; the woman who thinks she's killed a child and her husband, who will risk everything for her. Revealing a fascinating cross-section of American society in expertly interlocking plotlines, Good Neighbors calls to mind the Oscar-winning movie Crash, and its suspense and profound sense of urban menace rank it with Hitchcock's Rear Window and the gritty crime novels of Dennis Lehane, Richard Price, and James Ellroy.

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About the Author:

Ryan David Jahn grew up in Arizona, Texas, and California. He finished school at sixteen, worked several odd jobs, and spent time in the army before moving to Los Angeles, where he worked in television and film for several years. His first novel, Good Neighbors, won the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasy (New Blood) Dagger Award, and his novel The Dispatcher was longlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award. Translation rights to his books have been sold in twelve languages. Jahn lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife, Jessica, and two daughters, Matilda and Francine.

Review:

"Intensely gripping . . . A fine and memorable novel."
-"Booklist", starred review

"One of the best books I have ever read. . . . The writing is powerful, it takes hold of you from the first page and that hold gets tighter and tighter until the heart-wrenching ending. It was impossible to put down. "Good Neighbors" is a book not to be missed."
-Kendall Gutierrez, "Suspense Magazine"
"Intensely gripping . . . A fine and memorable novel."
-"Booklist," starred review
"Heart-stopping."
-"Library Journal"
"Darkly powerful . . . Jahn inhabits these people and their problems so completely and convincingly that they don't seem like monsters even as they ignore the woman who's dying only a few yards away."
-"Kirkus Reviews"
"A terrific debut . . . A wonderfully visual book-the effect is of watching, unseen, through a dozen different windows as Jahn switches from one scenario to the next. Powerful, compassionate and authentic, it works both as a mystery and as a snapshot of America in the early 1960s."
-"The Guardian

"Compelling, slick, exuberant, flashy, funny, fierce, and cinematic . . . Deftly written with panache and polish . . . This remarkable novel, a lean, psychologically unsettling noir tale, will stay with you long after you put it down and regretfully say, 'I wish I wrote that.'"
-"Library Journal," starred review
"One of the best books I have ever read. . . . The writing is powerful, it takes hold of you from the first page and that hold gets tighter and tighter until the heart-wrenching ending. It was impossible to put down. "Good Neighbors" is a book not to be missed."
-Kendall Gutierrez, "Suspense Magazine"
"Intensely gripping . . . A fine and memorable novel."
-"Booklist," starred review
"Heart-stopping."
-"Library Journal"
"Darkly powerful . . . Jahn inhabits these people and their problems so completely and convincingly that they don't seem like monsters even as they ignore the woman who's dying only a few yards away."
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