- Paperback: 208 pages
- Publisher: The Do-Not Press; paperback / softback edition (16 Sep 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1899344535
- ISBN-13: 978-1899344536
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 12.8 x 1.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,121,640 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Synopsis
Musician Nick Chance does an old flame a favour and finds himself sucked into a dangerous world of corporate gangsterism, animal rights terrorism and sudden, brutal death.'
From the Publisher
One of the few books concerned with live music that works.
Russell James's latest noir thriller struck me as one of the very few thrillers that concerns itself with a band engaged in live music and festivals and with animal rights issues that works without it sounding pat or compromising.
Russell James's latest noir thriller struck me as one of the very few thrillers that concerns itself with a band engaged in live music and festivals and with animal rights issues that works without it sounding pat or compromising.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
Russell James is an excellent writer of atmospheric thrillers - no darker in tone than Lee Child - but he is lumbered with the label 'noir' for some reason. Like all his books, this one grips from the start. A jazz musician, playing at Glastonbury becomes involved with the Animal Rights Activists in the West Country when an old girlfriend - he recently re-met - is killed visiting a meat factory undercover. Unable to sort protesters from the killers, he doesn't know where the threats are coming from, his life is in danger but he doesn't know why. It's a smashing book. All his books are smashing books.
Format:Paperback
A strange but very topical mix of characters and themes make this a fast and absorbing read: rock music (the hero is a jazz/rock saxophonist), animal rights (but not the usual holier than thou approach), meat processing (with BSE certainly, but again not the usual formulaic approach) and the Glastonbury Festival (for an exciting climax). The story hits home from its quiet but shocking beginning, when the hero's newly discovered girlfriend dies mysteriously inside a meat processing factory, and continues through a revealing and sharp investigation both of the crime itself and of modern Britain. Russell James is always good value and this, a departure from his normal hard hitting noir material, is another hit.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
Too Obvious
4 Sep 2002
Format:Paperback
One of the staple themes of noir is the average man thrown in the midst of a large crime, usually thanks to some yummy woman who comes out of nowhere. James hits all of these right on the head as Nick, a struggling saxophone player, is drawn into the schemes of his schoolboy crush, who shows up out of the blue one day. When she is apparently killed while sneaking around a meat-processing plant taking photos, her getaway driver Nick comes under the heavy attention of the police, as well as that of some very sinister folks who refuse to identify themselves.
As he pokes into the matter a little bit-not convinced that she fell accidentally into a meat grinder-he starts encountering some very nasty animal rights ..., as well as a bizarre semi-cult of all-natural beauty product saleswomen. It becomes clear that someone doesn't like his poking around and the apathetic musician must now tread very lightly in his new role as amateur detective. Meanwhile, he's also dealing with the ups and downs of his band's fortunes, which strike an rather off-key note in most of their chapters. It's still pretty decent attempt to write a modern noir, with all the ecoterrorist and ... multinational corporation activity at the center of the book and Glastonbury as a climactic setting.
The crime, once revealed, is also classic noir, and so is the ending-unfortunately, the clues are rather too obvious for any reader to be surprised by the "shocking" twist at the end. ...Instead of this creating suspense (as in a Hitchcock film, for example), it merely makes the proceedings seem a bit tedious as one keeps waiting for Nick to figure it out.
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