I can’t believe I’ve gone this long without discovering Cornell Woolrich. I had heard of him, but I had never read his work until now. The blurb on the cover of the book compares Woolrich to Raymond Chandler. I would actually say he’s quite a bit deeper and more nuanced. While Chandler focuses on the social world, Woolrich focuses much more tightly on the interior world of his main character.
This book contains some brilliant writing and colorful characters. It’s a freewheeling 1970s update on the classic noir detective novel.
The book begins just as private eye C.W. Sughrue is catching up to famed author Abraham Trahearne. Trahearne has been touring the seedy dive bars of the western states on an epic bender since his second wife disappeared. Sughrue was hired by the author’s first wife to bring him back home. The detective and fugitive are well matched for adventure. Both are war veterans and literate, intelligent, reckless alcoholics.
BestThrillers.com just listed Gate 76 on their “Best of the 2018 So Far” list, right after The President Is Missing, by James Patterson and Bill Clinton.
Gate 76 just picked up a couple more nice reviews. It goes on sale tomorrow, June 1, 2018. You can pre-order through the links below.
Here’s a nice bit of news. Kirkus Reviews calls Gate 76 “A consummate thriller with some of the best characterization you’ll see all year.”
See the review at Kirkus. .
And we got a star too!
C.S. Lewis’ allegory opens with the narrator, presumably a middle-aged Englishman, walking through the rainy streets of a city at dusk. He happens upon a line of bickering people waiting for a bus and, almost by accident, he’s in the queue, and then aboard the bus, not knowing where it’s bound.
Gate 76 is available for pre-order on IndieBound, Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and a number of independents like Politics and Prose. Advance copies are available for reviewers through NetGalley.
A mysterious woman fleeing an unknown terror boards the wrong plane at San Francisco International and disappears into the heart of the country. Freddy Ferguson, a troubled detective with a violent past, believes she’s the last living witness to a crime that has captivated the nation.
Sifting through the wreckage of her past, he begins to understand who she’s running from, and why. Now he must track her down before her pursuers can silence her for good.
I read a lot of classic crime fiction, and when I go back to the best writers in the genre, I consistently find that they pack more substance, insight, and emotional weight into 200 pages than today’s bestselling authors can get into 500 pages. And yet, a handful of authors manage to consistently sell millions of copies of books about uninteresting characters doing far-fetched things described in prose that is not compelling and sometimes not even convincing. Why is this?
Charles Williams’ The Big Bite is very good crime/noir thriller, though it’s not quite up there with his brilliant 1953 noir The Hot Spot .