The Bric-a-Brac Man

by Russell H. Greenan

À Boston, Arnold Hopkins est antiquaire. Très regardant sur la qualité des objets qu'il négocie, il l'est moins sur les moyens de se les procurer, quitte à passer des accords avec le diable...

Genres: Mystery

212 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Greenan grew up in the Bronx, had a tour of duty in the US Navy, and after attending Long Island University on the G.I. Bill, went to live in Boston in the early 1950s. For several years he worked as a traveling salesman selling industrial machine parts in remote corners of New England. His savings enabled him to travel to Nice, France where he stayed for a year to write. On his return to Boston he married Flora Bratko and opened an antique shop in Harvard Square. The business was short-lived but the experience provided an abundance of material for his subsequent career as a writer. In 1966, by then aged 40, he left his job as a ball bearing sales manager and traveled with his wife and three children to return to Nice with the intention of taking a year to finish a novel. This work was eventually published by Random House in 1968 titled It Happened in Boston? to significant acclaim.

Greenan maintained his career as an author by dividing his time between Europe and the U.S.A. and concentrating exclusively on writing novel-length works. To date ten novels by Russell H. Greenan have been published in the U.S.A. and France. Over 40 different editions of these novels have appeared in five languages.

Reviews

[Jack Strange · Rating 5 out of 5]

As usual with a Greenan novel, the first page grabs you and pulls you in.

After that it's a dizzying spectacle of knavery, thievery, skulduggery and burglary.

Then there is the devil....

Why isn't Greenan widely regarded as a literary giant? He deserves to be. Read this book (an a few of his others!) And find out for yourself!!

[🐴 🍖]

subtitled "an extravaganza," & what with the midnight burglaries, the rooftop escapes, the deal w/ the devil, the subsequent contract negotiations w/ the devil, not to mention death by xmas tree, he's not joking folks! what could have made the extravaganzer more extrava...ganzant in this reader's opinion would be more carefully calibrated levels of suspense; it wouldn't take much tweaking to keep it at a full simmer throughout, vs an ebb & flow that saps momentum in spots. nevertheless reads like a nightmare the safdie bros had after a long day of antiquing, which is content i think we can all be grateful for

[Angel Catharian]

I really liked this, though it isn't as good as It Happened in Boston?, it's well written and interesting story with good plot twists.

[Hakim · Rating 5 out of 5]

In pure Greenan fashion, this story grabs you by the neck and never lets go. The best adjective I can think of to describe The Bric-a-Brac Man is "quirky". Parts of the book feel like a fever dream, in the best way possible, while others may feel a tad mundane for some readers, though I found them very funny and immersive. None of the characters are truly lovable, as one may refer to them as a bunch of greedy jerks, but this never affected my enjoyment of the novel. The twists and turns kept me on the edge of my seat, as all of Greenan's books do. He undoubtedly is a hidden gem of modern literature.