false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1167388963m/23040.jpg 23040 19 On a beautiful night in a second-tier American city, a beautiful astrophysicist with the clichéd everything to live for shoots herself dead with a .22. Tough-talking detective Mike Hoolihan, quickly summoned to the scene, has witnessed every sort of victim: "Jumpers, stumpers, dumpers, dunkers, bleeders, floaters, poppers, bursters." But this case is different. Mike has known the young woman for years--she's the daughter, it turns out, of Mike's mentor, Colonel Tom Rockwell. And the colonel is desperate to find a perp, despite massive evidence to the contrary. <P> In <I>Night Train</I>, Martin Amis has fixed his sights on the American female--with a difference. Mike is in fact a woman--a hulking, chain-smoking, deep-voiced alcoholic who comes complete with a squalid family background and a none-too-happy foreground. She even lives in a building next to the proverbial night train and can't survive without her tape with eight different versions of the R & B "hymn to the low rent." <P> Did this novel begin as narrative flexing, yet another test the hypertalented author--and number-one Elmore Leonard fan--wanted to pose to himself? If so, he has passed with flying colors. True, Mike's search occasionally pushes her up against pulp pathos, but mostly the genre keeps Amis true. "Police are pretty blasé about ballistics. Remember the Kennedy assassination and 'the magic bullet'? We know that every bullet is a magic bullet. Particularly the .22 roundnose. When a bullet enters a human being, it has hysterics. As if it knows it shouldn't be there." <P> Mike spends her time weighing the evidence, wishing it would point to murder, and letting us in on some current police realities. Whatever television tells us, in real life (not to mention postmodern crime fiction), there's no neat solution. Even that old standard, the good cop-bad cop approach, no longer works: "It's not just that Joe Perp is on to it, having seen good cop-bad cop a million times on reruns of <I>Hawaii Five-O</I>. The only time bad cop was any good was in the old days, when he used to come into the interrogation room every ten minutes and smash your suspect over the head with the yellow pages." With such discourses, Amis is stretching the rubber band of his book's realism. But in the end, all his fancy footwork doesn't stop us from admiring and pitying his heroine, and hoping she won't board the ultimate night train: suicide. 906450 1997 Night Train total:650|5:69|4:177|3:250|2:121|1:33| 650 2078 780 61 5 2 false false Thu Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Tue May 01 17:07:38 -0700 2007 Mon May 21 16:06:36 -0700 2007
here's a take courtesy of Amazon:
(2 stars)Not the greatest thing, May 19, 2006
A Kid's Review
Well when i got this book i thought that there was going to be more action in it. But it is just a story about a girl who did suicide (i am ...more...]]> 1 2 false false Fri Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1999 Sat May 19 08:24:22 -0700 2007 Sat May 19 08:24:22 -0700 2007 3 0 false false Wed Jul 23 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 22 18:57:06 -0700 2008 Wed Jul 23 15:10:31 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 0 true false Tue Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Mar 27 07:07:49 -0700 2008 Thu Jun 05 07:03:33 -0700 2008 The Rachel Papers, which comes highly recommended by a friend of mine. They didn't have a copy of that one, so instead I chose two other Amis books - Einstein's Monsters and this one, Ni...more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu Aug 27 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Aug 21 12:47:55 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 27 14:09:31 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Aug 24 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Aug 26 07:23:18 -0700 2009 Wed Aug 26 07:27:20 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Dec 16 10:41:37 -0800 2008 Tue Dec 16 10:45:19 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1999 Thu Nov 27 15:58:03 -0800 2008 Thu Nov 27 16:01:38 -0800 2008 2 Starts off pretending to be a police procedural, but in the end reveals itself to be aiming rather higher. Why did she kill herself? The answer that Amis's detective uncovers is deeply disturbing, and certainly made me think a fair amount. Not a typical Amis novel, but a good one.]]> 5 0 false false Fri Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2005 Sun Feb 11 02:24:21 -0800 2007 Sun Feb 11 02:24:59 -0800 2007 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2002 Thu Jul 09 07:08:20 -0700 2009 Thu Jul 09 07:11:33 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2000 Thu Feb 05 20:31:15 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 05 20:34:00 -0800 2009 1 4 0 false false Thu Jun 04 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Jun 05 07:48:40 -0700 2009 Fri Jun 05 07:49:47 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2000 Tue Nov 13 16:30:41 -0800 2007 Mon May 26 22:40:27 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Fri Mar 13 06:43:14 -0700 2009 Fri Mar 13 06:43:14 -0700 2009 2 0 false false Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sun Feb 22 21:26:16 -0800 2009 Sun Feb 22 21:39:27 -0800 2009 4 1 false false Fri Feb 20 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Feb 20 14:46:02 -0800 2009 Fri Feb 20 14:46:02 -0800 2009 3 0 false false Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Thu Mar 13 10:09:47 -0700 2008 Thu Mar 13 10:09:47 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Feb 01 16:21:53 -0800 2008 Fri Feb 01 16:25:39 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2000 Sun Sep 06 17:29:47 -0700 2009 Sun Sep 06 17:33:22 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Fri Aug 28 18:19:30 -0700 2009 Fri Aug 28 18:19:44 -0700 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=23040