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Dope
by
Sara Gran (Goodreads Author)
From the author of Come Closer comes the most highly acclaimed-and unusual-thriller of the year. Josephine, a former addict, is offered a thousand dollars to find a suburban couple's missing daughter. But the search will take her into the dark underbelly of New York she thought she'd escaped-and a web of deceit that threatens to destroy her.
Paperback, 256 pages
Published
February 6th 2007
by Berkley Trade
(first published February 2nd 2006)
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1950s, New York City, light ages before the famous ‘no tolerance’ policy of Mayor Giuliani. Josephine Flannigan, 36, tries to make her living as a former heroin addict. She is a skilled con artist, a shrewd shoplifter and, generally, whatever anybody wants her to be providing they pay cash. She doesn’t do drugs and she doesn’t sell herself, anything else is negotiable. She must be clever and flexible - in such a seedy, dangerous, crime-ridden city she is lucky she’s survived to her third decade...more
Small in stature... big on story!
A reformed "junkie" goes off the grift for a legit job of finding a missing girl and is thrown into a world (Hell's Kitchen 1950s) she had been trying to avoid in order to stay clean. I had trouble feeling very sympathetic to her situation until the plot started twisting and the tables were turning. Good storytelling!
Thanks again Bethany!
A reformed "junkie" goes off the grift for a legit job of finding a missing girl and is thrown into a world (Hell's Kitchen 1950s) she had been trying to avoid in order to stay clean. I had trouble feeling very sympathetic to her situation until the plot started twisting and the tables were turning. Good storytelling!
Thanks again Bethany!
5 likes · like · see review
This is probably the finest piece of American noir I've come across.
A glimpse into the lives of New York City junkies, mystery style. Josephine (Joey, Joe) has stayed clean for two years - but has never made it above earning her income by conning and thieving. She gets an offer to track down a daughter of a wealthy couple; the daughter is apparently doing drugs. Joe, having recently come clean, knows about the world where drug users end up. Joe turns PI and starts looking for the daughter.
The twist ending is well crafted.
e-bay purchase, book group book for Janua...more
The twist ending is well crafted.
e-bay purchase, book group book for Janua...more
The best stories are the kind that linger in your mind long after you've finished them. For me, DOPE by Sara Gran was that kind of story.
Josephine "Joe" Flannigan is just the girl next door--if you happen to live in Hell's Kitchen, that is. Joe grew up there under the not-so-watchful eye of a single mother, so it was up to Joe to look after herself and her kid sister, Shelley. Both girls end up falling in with the wrong crowd and getting addicted to heroin, but pulling themselves out of "the lif...more
Josephine "Joe" Flannigan is just the girl next door--if you happen to live in Hell's Kitchen, that is. Joe grew up there under the not-so-watchful eye of a single mother, so it was up to Joe to look after herself and her kid sister, Shelley. Both girls end up falling in with the wrong crowd and getting addicted to heroin, but pulling themselves out of "the lif...more
Just when you think you know where it's going...
...it'll throw you for a loop!
I loved every page of Gran's 'Come Closer'..I read that in several hours of straight page turning. Dope is the exact same way. It's a short read, but it's so compelling and well written that it feels like much more book than it actually is. You'll probably find yourself finishing this one in one sitting.
An ex heroine addict is approached by a wealthy family to find their daughter. She was raised with the best of everyt...more
...it'll throw you for a loop!
I loved every page of Gran's 'Come Closer'..I read that in several hours of straight page turning. Dope is the exact same way. It's a short read, but it's so compelling and well written that it feels like much more book than it actually is. You'll probably find yourself finishing this one in one sitting.
An ex heroine addict is approached by a wealthy family to find their daughter. She was raised with the best of everyt...more
DOPE is a an admirably solid and capable noir thriller. The novel is fairly literate, which I appreciate, but like many "highbrow" novels it somehow feels like it's distancing itself from its source material, which in this case it borrows from most thoroughly (especially Chandler and Cain). DOPE a fast and fun read (well, maybe not "fun"--parts are bleak and harrowing), and the conceit is an effective one: moving classic noir settings up a decade into 1950's, where the novel, since it is written...more
2 likes · like · see review
Dope By Sara Gran
Well this book does what it's title suggests and
is a great new novel by Sara Gran apparently her
third but I'd never heard of her when I impulse
bought this book on the strength of it's back
cover strapline "1950's New York: Heroin,
Streetwalkers and conmen, how can Joesphine
Flannigan stay clean?"
Considering it was published in 2006 the book
reads like it was written by a contemporary of
Jim Thompson and William Burroughs with a helping
of Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines.
The b...more
Well this book does what it's title suggests and
is a great new novel by Sara Gran apparently her
third but I'd never heard of her when I impulse
bought this book on the strength of it's back
cover strapline "1950's New York: Heroin,
Streetwalkers and conmen, how can Joesphine
Flannigan stay clean?"
Considering it was published in 2006 the book
reads like it was written by a contemporary of
Jim Thompson and William Burroughs with a helping
of Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines.
The b...more
This starts out reading like a docudrama and ends up mystery--which is actually what saves it from being trite and, ultimately, boring. Gran does little to make her protagonist stand out from other drug addict-thief characters we have read about before, those who have come clean, those who doubt their ability to stay clean, those who crave the drug and those determined not to go back. In this way, Josephine's character fails to stimulate the mind or imagination. The characters she meets are what...more
I liked this book more than I had anticipated. Sara Gran is an author I had not heard of but one that I can appreciate. Josephine is a strong leading character in that her addiction, her desire for more junk after two years of "clean living," as well as the toxic relationships with acquaintances from the underground of the dope world ring true and are believable.
However, the descriptions of her shoplifting sprees and her relationship with her model sister seem undeveloped. These are key to Jose...more
However, the descriptions of her shoplifting sprees and her relationship with her model sister seem undeveloped. These are key to Jose...more
Given the title, this novel was not quite what I expected. I knew it was about a former drug addict (Josephine) who while struggling to keep clean finds herself enveloped in a mystery that takes her to the seedy back alleys of her past. I thought it was going to be along the lines of Frey's A Million Little Pieces. I did not realize that the book takes place in the 1950s and that it is crime noir, written just several years ago, with a female protagonist. Hard-boiled detective writing has a cert...more
Sure as shit ain't like Pleasantville around these parts.
Sara Gran's look at the seedy flipside of 1950's America is a fantastic slice of noir that calls to mind greats like James M. Cain and early Lawrence Block. Joesephine Flannigan is paid to find a college girl slumming it as a dope fiend and using the contacts she built up through a lifetime of stealing and whoring and scoring dope gets hooked on solving a mystery much darker than she ever anticipated. This is everything the good clean hous...more
Sara Gran's look at the seedy flipside of 1950's America is a fantastic slice of noir that calls to mind greats like James M. Cain and early Lawrence Block. Joesephine Flannigan is paid to find a college girl slumming it as a dope fiend and using the contacts she built up through a lifetime of stealing and whoring and scoring dope gets hooked on solving a mystery much darker than she ever anticipated. This is everything the good clean hous...more
4 likes · like · see review
Pretty good, man. I think I liked the Claire DeWitt one better, but maybe I would have liked this one better had I read it first. It's definitely a little tighter. We need more noir books with women as the main character.
I also thought this quote was a really perceptive description of drug use:
"It wasn't that being high felt so good, especially when you'd been shooting as long as Yonah had. You could hardly even call it being high. It was that nothing else felt bad. There were no aches, no pains...more
I also thought this quote was a really perceptive description of drug use:
"It wasn't that being high felt so good, especially when you'd been shooting as long as Yonah had. You could hardly even call it being high. It was that nothing else felt bad. There were no aches, no pains...more
After reading Sara Gran’s Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead--a smart, alternative noir mystery--I was left craving for more. Dope, an earlier novel with some of the same gritty vibe, is set in the petty thieving underworld of 1950’s New York, a place that in no way resembles anything from Happy Days. Josephine, a former addict, straight for two years, is just getting by picking pockets and shoplifting jewelry when she is paid a colossal pile of cash by a distraught couple who wants her to l...more
a walk on the wild side in early 50's new york
the dope in the title refers to drugs and also to the fact that the heroine is made to be a dope or a patsy . she thinks she is street wise but has a vestige of humanity left which proves to be her undoing .
i read this in a couple of sittings and it is certainly a good read . however all the drug characters seem lifted from central casting and although the twists and turns of the story are gripping , the inevitable comparisons to Raymond Chandler be...more
the dope in the title refers to drugs and also to the fact that the heroine is made to be a dope or a patsy . she thinks she is street wise but has a vestige of humanity left which proves to be her undoing .
i read this in a couple of sittings and it is certainly a good read . however all the drug characters seem lifted from central casting and although the twists and turns of the story are gripping , the inevitable comparisons to Raymond Chandler be...more
I couldn't put this book down. Sara Gran writes a great noir mystery with none of the usual male BS. Instead, like City of the Dead, she burrows into the underbelly of a city (this time 1950s New York), and portrays each character with a clear-eyed humanizing portrait. Not that it makes them likable characters, necessarily, but understandable and real.
Her dialogue is sharp and her handling of situations is equally sharp. While I would never use adjectives like "elegiac" "lush" or "evocative" (w...more
Her dialogue is sharp and her handling of situations is equally sharp. While I would never use adjectives like "elegiac" "lush" or "evocative" (w...more
Dope is set in 1950 in the sleazier parts of New York. Its heroine, Josephine Flannigan, is an ex-junkie-whore. Its plot involves Josephine searching for a young woman who has disappeared into the New York underworld. The setting and the characters never rise above the generic—indeed, they seem intentionally generic, a sort of homage to noir gone by. I suspect that the newspaper raves quoted on the paperback’s cover were sparked by the twists and turns of the plot, but these left me flat. I do n...more
Worth reading, I picked it up because I was bored and it looked intriguing. The inner-atmosphere of a dark and gritty world of the 1950s was fascinating to me, and so I could easily immerse myself in it. Nothing complex or sophisticated, it is stark and realistic, but it proves compelling with the simple, straightforward boldness of a reality where normality is never knowing someone you can trust. You get sucked into Josephine's world, where everyone is a junkie, and all their aspirations for an...more
Was thinking of giving this a higher rating but I've been giving mostly 4's and 5's lately and this book was not quite up to their level. It was very well written and atmospheric. I also read the last 200 pages all today whenever I could get 5 minutes to read it as I traveled around by train and waited for a play to start. That just shows how addicting it is and how much you want to see what's going on.
*Spoilers* I hated the ending. It miserable and sad. I'm ok with unhappy endings, really I am!...more
*Spoilers* I hated the ending. It miserable and sad. I'm ok with unhappy endings, really I am!...more
http://tinyurl.com/4o5zyc
Talk about minimalist writing. This book is written in the best hard-as-nails, noir style. And for that reason alone it's engaging. You can't quite tell whether you should like the protagonist too much, much the same way Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder is an enigmatic protagonist. (Goodness, don't they get bored going to bars and sitting in their rooms, smoking?)
I did figure out the denouement early on. It's very hard to write mysteries without giving away the bad guy (...more
Talk about minimalist writing. This book is written in the best hard-as-nails, noir style. And for that reason alone it's engaging. You can't quite tell whether you should like the protagonist too much, much the same way Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder is an enigmatic protagonist. (Goodness, don't they get bored going to bars and sitting in their rooms, smoking?)
I did figure out the denouement early on. It's very hard to write mysteries without giving away the bad guy (...more
Sara Gran is becoming one of my favorite writers, and this little gem is my favorite of her books so far. It was close enough to perfect that I rounded it up to 5 stars despite finding the ending a little abrupt and confusing. I think I sorted out the details, but I had to stop and think it through for a while. This isn't really a problem with the book. It's common in noir for the protagonist to give you slightly less information than you need, and the circumspection of the narrator adds to the...more
May 22, 2011
Willem van den Oever
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
in-dutch,
thriller-mystery
Two years ago, Josephine Flannigan left the streets and the drugs behind and has since tried to pull her life together by living an honest life and stealing from jewelry store to finance all that. Then a rich couple asks her to find their missing daughter, who has probably dropped into the scene that Flannigan has said goodbye all those years ago. And they’re willing to pay her a grand to boot. So it's back to the streets for Joey, back to the backstabbers, back the addicts and back to the dope....more
Aug 26, 2008
NYLSpublishing
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommended to NYLSpublishing by:
NYLS Book Review
My dentist is a peculiar sort of fellow. He invariably ends each examination with the same maddening question: “Which do you want first? The good news? Or, the disappointing news?” I always choose the good news – first; since it seems a polite enough place to begin. I now understand why he uses this technique. Simply put, it’s easier.
In Gran’s latest novel, Dope, the protagonist, Josephine Flannigan, a former dope addict, is hired by a wealthy suburban couple to find Nadine, their youngest daugh...more
In Gran’s latest novel, Dope, the protagonist, Josephine Flannigan, a former dope addict, is hired by a wealthy suburban couple to find Nadine, their youngest daugh...more
A classic mystery novel--classic in that it is your mystery with multiple twists and unexpected (or perhaps expected) betrayals. Set in NYC in the 1950s, our narrator Josephine is a recovering heroin addict still hustling, but straight this time around, who is approached by a rich couple looking for her daughter. The daughter is a college student who became an addict, dropped out of school and is now probably ones of the many whores of a particularly lowlife pimp. We see a little different slice...more
In her previous novel, Come Closer, Sara Gran puts an unusual spin on the horror genre, transcending the usual demon possession story with beautifully efficient sentences, complex characters, and a dash of feminist criticism. The result, described by one critic as a cross between Rosemary's Baby and "The Yellow Wallpaper," is genuinely scary and resonant. For her next book, Dope, she tries the same thing, with less successful results, this time with the familiar tropes of the hard-boiled detecti...more
This is your garden variety thriller with a few twists: the private eye is a woman, she is a small time con artist and above all an ex-junkie ex-whore, struggling to stay clean in the post WWII New York City. Of course, she is not a professional private eye, just a woman trying to make a buck... The plot is a little thin, but the journey through Manhattan's underworld of pimps, dealers, prostitutes, con men and rotten cops is fascinating and very well done. There is also a changing landscape to...more
Jan 26, 2011
Mely
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
fans of Dashiell Hammett
Hammett-style hardboiled noir about a former dope fiend trying to go straight, looking for a Barnard co-ed (it's set in the 50s, Gran can call her a co-ed) whose parents say she got lost in the drug underworld. Female take on classic noir tropes (female heroine; twists on the femmes who are fatale), and downright brutal.
Gran may be a little too blunt and brutal for me, in general, but you can't accuse her of not following through on the consequences of her plots.
Gran may be a little too blunt and brutal for me, in general, but you can't accuse her of not following through on the consequences of her plots.
This is a really quick read and I love Sara Gran's style. The book itself explores addiction, temptation, love, loss, relationships, and will. The sometimes androgenous main character Josephine (Joe to those close to her) is dynamic. The hard life with that touch of either class or feminity is something that gives us hope. The relationships with the sister, the boyfriend, and the friends she has encountered in her past life are simultaneously simple and complex.
This was an odd interpretation of a former drug addict who is trying to survive without drugs in the city of New York during the 50’s. She is asked by a lawyer and his wife to find their daughter. Since she is familiar with the local drug scene and the people within it, they were hoping she could find her before it was too late. So, Josephine starts to look by going back to the places she would go when she was using. The writing style is different. I didn’t think the character development went v...more
This is the third Sara Gran book that I have read this year. She is so talented. Each novel is so different, so unique, so well-written. My favorite is still Come Closer but probably due to the supernatural subject matter of the novel.
I hope she has a long career ahead of her as I intend to read every word she ever publishes.
I hope she has a long career ahead of her as I intend to read every word she ever publishes.
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“I never met an addict who came from a nice home . I've met addicts that came from families that had money and nice houses. But never from a nice home.”
—
7 people liked it
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