Rating: 
Summary: Great Author, Bad Book
Review: I was looking forward to Amis' novel, unfortunately this book didn't live up to its predecessors. You'd be better off not reading this novel by Amis, it my sour you from reading any of his other novels.
Rating: 
Summary: Those who live by the sword...
Review: I'll spare you a full review of this novel. Instead, I only want to draw attention to the main focus of the text. "Night Train" isn't by any means an American detective novel; it follows more closely the lines of existential philosophy and employs only a few shreds of mystery to deepen the impact. The story, characterization... none of this mattered to me. The novel is one of disastrous personal failure and tremendous universal victory. This alone places the "Night Train" in the top ten most dynamic novels of the last five years.
Rating: 
Summary: Necessary spoiler follows
Review: It seems to me that the bad reviews that readers shower upon Martin Amis, on Amazon, are written by people who get so lost in Amis' wordplay that they miss the usually uncomplicated point.
Firstly, Night Train is a beautiful novel in which our hero(?) Mike Hoolihan is forced to examine her self worth. Faced with the suicide of a "perfect" girl, Mike is forced to reconsider whether or not her own existence is worth prolonging. She points out, fairly early in the novel, that suicides are prone to leaving a vast variety of commentary for those they leave behind. These suicide notes vary in style and form.
Night Train IS Mike's suicide note. Some two hundred pages of explaination for her loved ones. In the process she manages to prove that her self image is twisted. She has admirers and friends but views herself as ultimately alone.
Anyone who didn't appreciate this novel, I'm convinced, missed the point that what they were reading was something personal intended for Mike's loved ones. A farewell that was meant, as suicide notes usually are, to comfort, explain and beg forgiveness for their author's actions.
Rating: 
Summary: A woman must walk down these mean streets.
Review: Lovers of wise-cracking gumshoe fiction (cf Lemmy Caution by British writer Peter Cheyney or Philip Marlowe by Raymond Chandler) will feel right at home with NIGHT TRAIN. The language is in the first person singular and the argot of American police, but there, similarities start to wane. The slang used by Detective Mike Hoolihan doesn't quite gell. In addition Detective Mike is a woman. Not only is she a woman, but true to the genre she tries to sleep with a suspect. Unlike, the genre she's given to confiding with the reader about her childhood. She was sexually abused by her father over a long period of time during her pre-pubescent childhood. But wait, there's more. She loves her father very much, still. She's drawn to investigate a suicide of the most beautiful naked female and thoroughly talented individual she's ever encountered. The victim is the daughter of her former boss. We are reminded a number of times that the victim has a body Venus De Milo would die for, arms or no arms. Morever, she killed herself by shooting herself in the head ...wait for it ...... THREE TIMES. Eh? That's right. Now read on ...... A book worthy of that two hour flight. Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Martin, Martin - what's up, man?
Review: Martin Amis has been bleak before but he has never given up all hope. Until now. I mean, Amis has always been good for a shock. There has been (among many others) the relief of John Self in Money when he sees his urine is yellow and not a bright, arterial red; there was the horrible indignity imposed on (the himself shocking) dwarf Keith in the (titled-to-shock) Dead Babies. In fact Amis's willingness to shock has been one of the reasons to revel in his work. He has reached out of the page, poked us in the eye, shaken us around, and then plunged us back into the rush of his breakneck narrative. And we have enjoyed the ride, partly because we knew in the midst of all the bleakness - the father's hatred for his monstrous baby in London Fields; the tears of anger wept as a central character struggles with a vacuum cleaner on a stair landing in The Information - there was always some form of rescue or salvation. The father loves the atomic weight of his baby; good triumphs (narrowly) in The Information. There has always been a faint chink of light for the figures in Amis's dark canvases. Until now. Because in Night Train Amis has travelled so far into the dark it's difficult to imagine him ever coming back to the light again. What is it Martin? The teeth? The wife? (I read these things about you fleetingly from the Antipodes). Or is advancing middle age simply a bit of a bastard? Whatever it is, something has cut all the fun out of you - and for all your perceived sins, you were always fun. The book uses a neat but entirely plausible oddity to do with guns and dead bodies, which I won't reveal because it is a plot point. It's entirely plausible for me because in a former life as a police reporter I came across (and initially disbelieved) the same phenomenon. But it's not the forensic side of the book that shocks this time. What is shocking is Amis's relentless ride into a place where there is no room for hope. On this Night Train the only responses to life are destructive and negative and self defeating. The dead central character Jennifer Rockwell would always leave you with something special, muses the busted-up detective Mike Hoolihan in the book. But the "something special" this time is all twisted and corroded and leaves a sad, sour taste in the mouth. Maybe it's just a novella. Maybe it's an elegant riff in "noir" that will be supplanted when I read Amis's living breathing autobiography. I'm thinking this because, unlike the Amis of Night Train, I can't live without hope.
Rating: 
Summary: Martins line
Review: Martin Amis has found the ideal forum to compliment his writing in Tina Browns latest attempt to prove that she has all the lterary acumen of a Beverly Hills hair dresser, Talk magazine. Lets just hope for the sake of good writing that Suicide runs in Mr. Amis's family.
Rating:
Summary: Amis in Wonderland
Review: Martin Amis' novel Night Train is a short (about two hundred pages) novel purporting to be his version of the hard-boiled novel. Indeed, and I think rather facetiously, it is referred to on the cover as a cross between Nabakov and Hammett and while the Nabakov comparison is not so entirely out of the question, the Hammett and any other references to the hard-boiled genre must really be stricken from one's mind immediately if one wishes to enjoy the true charms of Night Train. Indeed, the true basis for the plot is a police officer, who in a quaint turn of the phrase from Amis, refers to herself and other officers with the sobriquet of "a police" -- as in I am a police, you know that we are in the land beyond beyond. Taken along with the grain of salt that the full and complete first name of our over-weight, hulking, female detective is Mike and that the major suspect is one Professor Trader Faulkner, we realize quickly this is indeed more the land of Nabakov and less the realm of Chandler. From the police narrator to the delicate processes of the autopsy we are thrown directly into the world of the police procedural novel popularized by such as Ed McBain, but with the caveat that things are very much different in this unnamed American city where crime is closer to Sartre than Spillane. The voice we hear, even as we are asked to imagine this female hulking senseless officer is the English, very English, wit of Mr. Amis. Indeed, that is the major conceit of this novel -- the suspension of disbelief to enter this world, full of self-referential stereotypes and English colloquialisms from an ex-barfly cop. Doing a reverse play upon Camus' The Stranger, as we watch the investigator rather than the perpetrator. Sound intriguing? Or simply sound annoying? It is intriguing, and it defies being annoying primarily because of its slight and breezy tone. Even as death closes in and weighty questions are put forth and pondered, a froth of Amis winking and nodding runs to the surface. It is these ephemeral glimpses from the real to the surreal to the literary to the unreal to the pulp the pulp the pulp that make these works worthwhile. And what makes Night Train worthwhile. And like the best existential novels and the best hardboiled smash you can roll through Amis in a day, just run free with Detective Mike and solve the case of the ages. And leave the audience wanting some more.
Rating:
Summary: As usual Amis is misunderstood
Review: Much has been written below about Amis's Night Train, and it's interesting to see so many divergent opinions about a single book. I wish only to broach a couple of subjects, rather than give my overall impression of the book (I've reviewed it elsewhere). First, to address the complaint that NT isn't good detective fiction. One writer complained that Amis has failed at detective fiction and should go back to writing modern fiction. Night Train *is* modern fiction. Amis has adopted the voice of noir fiction to tell another of his typically post-modern stories. The bulk of Amis's work is both satirical and thought-provoking. Night Train doesn't stray from this pre-established territory. If the reader is angered because NT's ending is something other than concrete, because things unraveled instead of being compartmentalized and shunted into pretty, neat, explainable bundles, then he or she has simply chosen the wrong book to read and should probably have picked up Elmore Leonard's latest instead. That doesn't mean Amis was unsuccessful in his endeavor. Second, as to the complaint that the crime remains unsolved: bollocks. I think a close reading (you cannot successfully read this book thinking it to be a simple detective story)reveals that Amis is again satirizing modern society. I don't have the book in front of me, but I remember the essence of parts which discuss the following idea: in an are where motiveless murder is so common as to be mundane, what (area of crime, if you will) does that leave unexplored? Motiveless suicide. I'm oversimplifying what Amis wrote for the sake of brevity, but the seadlings for your own thought are certainly planted within those pages. I'll agree that the ending is somewhat nebulous. Many of Amis's are, I believe because he makes great efforts to avoid hackneyed, cliched writing, and so many endings are typically hackneyed, cliched; try appreciating his ending to his latest short story in the NYer, "The Janitor on Mars," what a bizarre, but similarly provocative little piece of work that is. Having said all this, I can only give the book three stars for the simple reason that if I gave it more, what would I give to London Fields or the Rachel Papers? Cheers!
Rating:
Summary: Stylish but lacks depth
Review: Night Train begins like a police procedural but quickly lifts readers beyond the genre into an exploration of the moral territory of suicide. If you want something different from the run-of-the-mill blockbuster novel that provokes thought and can be read in one or two sittings, then Night Train is a good choice. Stylistically, the novel follows the spare police procedural style. The narrator, Mike, is cut from that cloth: a hard-boiled female officer back on the wagon, rolling towards retirement after one too many alcoholic wipe-outs. She is called in to investigate the apparent suicide of Colonel Tom's (the police commander's) daughter, ostensibly because Mike knows the "victim" and her father, but more because "Colonel Tom was down to his last marble" and Mike is the only straight shooter in the department. Such strong roots in the police procedural form are used to good effect to explore suicide from several angles by setting a framework for the examination -- also driving the pace and pulling the reader deeper into the novel. Ultimately, though, the tension and expectation that Amis builds is rather wasted on the weak ending. The book is a short read -- I finished it in under 4 hours on a cross-country flight -- leaving the reader hungering for a longer book more depth and a more satisfactory ending. In addition, the narrator's voice reads like a man's -- I'm not sure Amis is able to adequately imagine the female point of view. To summarise: intriguing because of its radically different approach to story telling, good pacing and style. Let down by its lack of depth and weak ending.
Rating:
Summary: I'm sorry I got on this train.
Review: Night Train just didn't work for me. The character of Mike Hoolihan just never became a real cop to me. In one sentence she's talking tough, "a bass player chokes to death on his own ralph," the next paragraph "a shoah of suicides" is mentioned. Is she a tough cop, or an intellectual one? If she's supposed to be both, it didn't convince me. These inconsistencies are found throughout the book. At first the odd feel of the character intrigued me, but then I just started to be annoyed by her. The plot, dealing with a suicide investigation that Mike has a personal connection to,leads to an unsatisfactory conclusion. The last chapter is titled "The Seeing." The sights within are very disappointing, and seem to make the whole book up to that point rather "pointless." Maybe that was the author's intent, but I'm sorry I found out the hard way.
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