The Dishwasher - Hardcover

Martin, Dannie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393037908 ISBN 13: 9780393037906

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 1995

Synopsis

Finishing a fourteen-year prison term, Bill Malone takes a job at the Star Motel and tries to start over, but his new life is shattered when one of his new friends is raped, forcing Malone into a confrontation with the local mafia. A first novel.

About this title

Review:

Martin began writing while in prison for a variety of offenses; under the pen name "Red Hog" he published a series of disturbing, fascinating articles. Now he has brought those same qualities to his first novel, the story of a man just released after a 14-year-stretch for armed robbery. All Bill Malone wants to do is work at the only job which ever brought him any satisfaction -- running an industrial strength dishwashing machine in a Fresno restaurant. But his record and his natural bent toward violence make even that limited ambition impossible. Fans of the hardboiled novels of Jim Thompson (After Dark, My Sweet, The Grifters, The Killer Inside Me) will especially enjoy this debut.

From Publishers Weekly:

Martin brings an interesting resume to his first novel: three decades in prison and coauthorship of Committing Journalism: The Prison Writings of Red Hog, an acclaimed nonfiction book composed of prison reportage first published in the Sunday Punch section of the San Francisco Chronicle while Martin was still incarcerated. Like Martin, Bill Malone, this novel's protagonist, is a recently released convict. Attempting to lead a quiet, reformed life, he returns to Fresno, Calif., the site of his arrest, where he finds a job as a dishwasher in a restaurant. After a brief affair with a waitress, Malone enters into a budding romance with Gail, the manager of the hotel where he has taken a room. Malone's newfound tranquillity and emerging domestic life with Gail and her daughter, June, come to an abrupt end when June is the victim of a vicious attack by a drug dealer. The tough ex-con soon finds himself battling the local mob, a third-rate band of hoods who are almost as stupid as they are violent. Martin persuasively paints Malone's ambivalence as he both avoids and relishes the challenge. But the plotting is contrived, and the prose labors awkwardly between hard-boiled and awkward. Clearly Martin has intriguing stories to tell; hopefully he will learn to tell them better.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0393037908
• ISBN 13: 9780393037906
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 252