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Scorch City
by
Toby Ball (Goodreads Author)
The dazzling follow-up to Toby Ball's acclaimed period thriller, The Vaults, takes us back tohis dystopianCity, fifteen years later...
Journalist Frank Frings rouses Lieutenant Piet Westermann in the middle of the night with an unusual request: move the body of a deadblonde from whereshe was found on the bank of a river near the utopian Uhuru Community, a Negro shantytownu...more
Journalist Frank Frings rouses Lieutenant Piet Westermann in the middle of the night with an unusual request: move the body of a deadblonde from whereshe was found on the bank of a river near the utopian Uhuru Community, a Negro shantytownu...more
ebook, 384 pages
Published
August 30th 2011
by St. Martin's Press
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Ball returns to the world of The Vaults, several years later, but there really isn't any need to read one book before the other. The main recurring character is journalist Frank Frings. This novel also uses points of view of an analytical cop named Piet Westermann and a slide guitar player named Moses Winston. It's set in an unnamed city, just after an unnamed war that seems to be an analog for WWII.
Ball's strength is his creation of atmosphere, at which he is brilliant. Corruption, illegal subs...more
Ball's strength is his creation of atmosphere, at which he is brilliant. Corruption, illegal subs...more
Fifteen years after the events in The Vaults, Toby Ball's brilliant noirish debut, his Scorch City follow-up takes an even darker turn. War veterans have returned, broken in spirit and body, while a more menacing threat worries some. A Red menace, that is.
Hovering over Scorch City's strands of a burgeoning civil rights movement, religious leaders and police corruption is the paranoia of people scared by the idea of communism and, even worse, the idea that someone might be a Commie in secret.
And...more
Hovering over Scorch City's strands of a burgeoning civil rights movement, religious leaders and police corruption is the paranoia of people scared by the idea of communism and, even worse, the idea that someone might be a Commie in secret.
And...more
I really wish that there was a 2.5 star option. I was eager to get to the "aha" moment, but then somehow there was no one "a-ha" moment! There was more of a "oh" and then a "huh?" and then a "wait, didn't we already know that?" and then the book was over. But getting to the end was pretty entertaining.
Curious.
Not what I'd expected.
Fascinating, depressing, unsettling.
Not really sure what I think, yet.
Not what I'd expected.
Fascinating, depressing, unsettling.
Not really sure what I think, yet.
I rarely put a book down, unfinished... but I just couldn't get through this one. The idea was interesting... but something about it.. I'd read (and enjoy) a chapter.. but when I next would go to pick the book up, it just didn't hold my interest -- there was always something else I'd prefer to read.. and I ran out of renewal time at the library.
I didn't dislike the book, but didn't like it well enough to finish.
I didn't dislike the book, but didn't like it well enough to finish.
Oct 24, 2011
Stephanie
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
goodreads-giveaway,
september-2011
This is a really interesting story of crime. It's about a blond discovered dead near a Negro Shantytown and things start to stir up. It's a little sad and dark but I really liked the story. Frank Frings is my favorite character in this story. I would recommend this to my friends to read.
This is a Goodreads-giveaway.
This is a Goodreads-giveaway.
view all 3 comments
Jan 11, 2012
Vestal Public Library
marked it as to-read
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
new-fiction-books-for-adults
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Toby Ball has worked at a magazine, taught high school, worked at several non-profits, done community organizing, and now works at a university research center. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and two children.
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