The Smack: Gritty and gripping LA noir - Softcover

Lange, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1444790064 ISBN 13: 9781444790061

Verlag: Mulholland Books, 2018

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Críticas

The Smack is an exercise in finely pitched writing, and the kind of noirish tale you relish even as you dread turning the page to get closer to its conclusion. * Crimetime * The Smack is much more than a crime novel. It is a novel about life itself. The secret to great writing isn't just to observe. It's to create a world that readers understand at least as well as they do their own. Richard Lange has accomplished this, and more. His sensitivity and pacing are reminiscent of Raymond Carver, Charles Willeford, and Jim Thompson. -- Gerald Petievich, author of To Live and Die in L.A. and The Sentinel It's hard to imagine Richard Lange wasn't, in some previous life, a hustler from Reno with a girlfriend named Tinafey he met on a professional date who goes to LA to steal a fortune from a one-legged soldier home from Afghanistan and a host of other terrifying individuals. The characters are real and satisfying, the relationships will warm your heart and break it at the same time. The Smack is convincing, hectic and terrific fun. -- Joe Ide, author of IQ The Smack just might be Mr. Lange's best yet, and that's saying something. His Los Angeles tableau of concrete and graffiti and neon is as sharp as razor wire. The characters are authentic down to the bone, the dialogue pitch-perfect believable, the desperation palpable, the situation urgent, the story riveting. Simply put, The Smack wallops you upside the head with its bad-ass-ness. -- Tom Cooper, author of The Marauders Lange is a master at writing about characters on the margins of society and humanizing outcasts and misfits, and he manages to capture the surreal culture of Los Angeles in all its contradictory glory. * Publishers Weekly * The man just keeps getting better. The stories in Sweet Nothing traffic in the vagaries of the human heart, those wants and needs that push us down dark paths. His vision is steely-eyed, yet you sense that Lange loves his characters - even the worst of them - and that compassion sharpens your own emotional investment. -- Craig Davidson Like his protagonist, Dashiell Hammett Award winner Lange knows how to reel in his audience with a seductive story and plenty of misdirection. There's nothing criminal, however, about this rollicking, diamond-cut thriller shot through with elegance and heart. * Library Journal, starred review * In this breezy page-turner, Lange shows off his uncommon ability to combine toughness and tenderness. * Kirkus * What makes this collection a wonderful read is it's only marginally akin to anything else. Swift, gut wrenching, and sometimes cleverly disarming fiction by a master -- Joe R. Lansdale A natural-born storyteller -- Ron Rash If Elmore Leonard and Dennis Cooper collaborated on a novel, they might produce something as exciting, harrowing and emotionally powerful as The Smack. Call it a literary thriller or call it thrilling literature - Richard Lange is emerging as the master of a new kind of novel: One that delivers breathless, gripping action while anchored in the authentic troubles of the real world. The Smack arrives like a genuine miracle - that rare thriller that will jack your pulse even as it breaks your heart. -- Adam Sternbergh, author of Shovel Ready With all the dexterity of Thomas Perry, Lange walks the thin line between caper novel and blood-splattered noir, leading up to a rip-roaring finale. This fine piece of tragicomic crime fiction sets up like a stand-alone, but we'd sure like to see more. * Booklist * The kind of book you'll want to savour * Pittsburgh Post Gazette * [A] riveting, violent caper * Wall Street Journal * Richard Lange's stories are a revelation. He writes of the disaffections and bewilderments of ordinary lives with as keen an anger and searing lyricism as anybody out there today. He is Raymond Carver reborn in a hard cityscape. Read him and be amazed. -- T.C. Boyle Lange's morality tales are not that far removed from the classic stories of O. Henry and Guy de Maupassant. With a distinctive style, Lange makes his downbeat tales of the underclass quirkily entertaining. * Kirkus * Lange is a writer of clean and easy prose, and he's strong at structuring a narrative that builds toward an ever tightening climax. The Smack adds up to one of the nicer surprises of the season * Toronto Star * Lange is an expert writer, his prose exact, his narrative tightly controlled...Petty may be a world-weary 40-year-old con man, but his character brings a fresh point of view to the world of noir L.A. Whatever he's selling, it's worth buying. * LA Times * Lange's stories are knockouts. Gritty, humane, and utterly urban. -- Alice Sebold

Reseña del editor

'[A] riveting, violent caper' Wall Street Journal Rowan Petty is a conman down on his luck. Tinafey is a hooker who's tired of the streets. Their paths cross one snowy night in Reno, and sparks fly. When an old friend of Petty's shares a rumour about two million dollars stashed in an apartment in Los Angeles, it seems like a chance at the score of a lifetime. Petty and Tinafey head south, and soon a wounded vet, a washed-up actor, and Petty's estranged daughter all get dragged into the dangerous game they find themselves playing. For the winner: a fortune. For the loser: a bullet in the head.

Über diese Auflage

• Verlag: Mulholland Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1444790064
• ISBN 13: 9781444790061
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Anzahl der Seiten: 368