Rating: 
Summary: night train by martin amis
Review: This was the worst book I have read in as long as I can remember. I finished it only because I couldn't believe that it could continue at it's painful pase all the way to the end. I had read other reviews before I bought it and felt it must have some value. I was going to toss is out on the train when I finished it, but felt it was my duty to write this review to save someone else from the fate of wasting their time reading it.
The only word that discribes the process of reading this book is 'painful' If there was less than 1 star, I would have given it that!
Rating: 
Summary: This fine horse fell at the last !
Review: Well for much of this book I was enraptured. Usually Martin Amis' novels don't need unpredictable, intriguing endings due to their shear wealth of literature, but do any-who (read 'Money' or 'London Fields'). However, this one did but didn't due to the fact that it seemed to build up to something which it didn't produce. Mr Amis if you read this do you not agree ? Did you churn this out unwillingly ? However, apart from that it contains for the most part an Amis story which any Amis enthustiast will enjoy to some degree.
Rating:
Summary: Leave it to the masters
Review: What Martin Amis is best known as: A satirist of some reknown. A wizard with wordplay. An accute observer of mounting insanity. A man with a gift for the unusual. What Martin Amis is NOT known as: Crime novelist. Now, that may not be a completely fair assessment. Amis has proved that he's not above trying new things. And considering his often remarkable talent for vivid and offbeat dialogue, a crime novel seems like a good bet. Something in the Dashiell Hammett genre, with tough private investigators and beautiful molls. Amis does something along these lines, but give him his due, he's not afraid to bend the rules. NIGHT TRAIN follows a particularly puzzling case being investigated by Mike Hoolihan. Mike is not the usual jaded police officer. For starters, Mike is a woman, although not nearly the most feminine woman around; a chain-smoking alcoholic with a penchant for melancholy. The case is the apparent suicide of the daughter of Colonel Tom Rockwell, Mike's mentor. The Colonel is convinced it was not a suicide. Mike can't belive it is, but can't find reason to believe it isn't, either. Amis displays a ready wit, and a clear appreciation for the intense prose of the giants (Thompson, Ellroy, Goodis). Mike is a cleverly drawn figure, a compelling and solid centre around which to build a plot. And the plot itself, while unusual, is eminently readable, with several sub-themes running throughout. Amis seems to be attempting a co-mingling of a simple pulp novel with dashes of philosophy, existentialism, and pathos. But too often, NIGHT TRAIN reads as a parody of the crime novel. Amis has the form right, but his heart isn't in the right place. He tries too hard to be hard-boiled, coming across as the little brother to Elmore Leonard; eager to please, emulating his big brother, but just can't compare. Too clever for his own good. Why did Amis write NIGHT TRAIN? Was it simply to exercise his creative muscles? Or was he attempting to subvert the genre, finding evil in the banal, and determined to prove that not every resolution is a satisfactory one? Point taken, but Amis may have failed to realize that the great pulp stories are always more sophisticated and literate than they let on. What Amis attempts has already been done, especially in the Jim Thompson novels. And unlike portions of NIGHT TRAIN, Thompson didn't appear to be condescending to the masses.
Rating: 
Summary: Night Train - A dark and gritty suicide mystery
Review: Wow, what a gem! I expected a routine detective read, but instead got a dark and gritty police story that was anything, but routine. Mike Hoolihan is a tough, chain smoking, no nonsense detective with a dark history of family issues and alcoholism. The style is very much in the Marlowe tradition except this detective is a beefy, street wise woman. Amis, who resides in London, writes this American police story from an outside perspective and the result is very effective. Hoolihan is called on to investigate an apparent suicide by the father, who for obvious reasons, cannot accept the possibilty that his near perfect daughter did this. There are plenty of suspects that make this a classic whodonit, but it's the dark and realistic style that make this night train a ride worth taking.
Rating:
Summary: Night Train - A dark and gritty suicide mystery
Review: Wow, what a gem! I expected a routine detective read, but instead got a dark and gritty police story that was anything, but routine. Mike Hoolihan is a tough, chain smoking, no nonsense detective with a dark history of family issues and alcoholism. The style is very much in the Marlowe tradition except this detective is a beefy, street wise woman. Amis, who resides in London, writes this American police story from an outside perspective and the result is very effective. Hoolihan is called on to investigate an apparent suicide by the father, who for obvious reasons, cannot accept the possibilty that his near perfect daughter did this. There are plenty of suspects that make this a classic whodonit, but it's the dark and realistic style that make this night train a ride worth taking.
Rating:
Summary: Hmmmmm
Review: Yes, I'm a big fan of Martin Amis, but with several qualifications, and this book shows him at his best and his worst. Since "Time's Arrow" I think Amis has been trying too hard to be a master of style AND content, when we all knew he was a master of style, and that the lack of anything remotely like a "plot" in such books as "Dead Babies" and "Money" was not a problem, because reading them was such great fun you didn't notice anything was missing. With "The Information" he showed just how hopeless he is at plotting and characterisation, peppering that novel with implausible and stupid incidents that made no sense and insulted the reader's intelligence. "Time's Arrow" was a woefully misguided attempt to be "serious" that ended up being patronising and in very poor taste (not necessarily a problem, but in this case...). "Night Train" is not bad, but it features Amis's worst ever dialogue - "You lost your daughter on this day"; "I am a police"; "Yes she did. Yes she did". The author's love of repetition is profoundly irritating in this novel, whereas in earlier work he got away with it somehow. The author's love of lists is also pretty irritating. His refusal to describe much of anything around the characters makes the whole thing seem to be taking place in a void that renders all the action uninvolving and anonymous. Perhaps that's the point? Maybe, but if Amis is trying to "pay homage" to the noir/pulp heroes of old, then he's failing dismally. If he's trying to do a "pastiche" of same, he's failing too. Yet, for all that, I couldn't stop reading it. Yes, there were times when I wanted to throw it out of the window. There were times when I thought, "How does he get away with this?" There were many, many times when I thought, "Why didn't an editor sort all this crap out before it was ever published?" But somehow I read on. What Amis desperately needs is a good editor. "The Information" was a brilliant short story trapped inside a bloated, boring novel. Likewise, within "Night Train" are the details of an excellent story, but tricked out with all the trappings of the author's recent work - it's a shame, because I'd defend Amis against his detractors any time, but even I have to admit he's not been doing himself any favours with his recent work. Peter Higgins
Rating:
Summary: Hmmmmm
Review: Yes, I'm a big fan of Martin Amis, but with several qualifications, and this book shows him at his best and his worst. Since "Time's Arrow" I think Amis has been trying too hard to be a master of style AND content, when we all knew he was a master of style, and that the lack of anything remotely like a "plot" in such books as "Dead Babies" and "Money" was not a problem, because reading them was such great fun you didn't notice anything was missing. With "The Information" he showed just how hopeless he is at plotting and characterisation, peppering that novel with implausible and stupid incidents that made no sense and insulted the reader's intelligence. "Time's Arrow" was a woefully misguided attempt to be "serious" that ended up being patronising and in very poor taste (not necessarily a problem, but in this case...). "Night Train" is not bad, but it features Amis's worst ever dialogue - "You lost your daughter on this day"; "I am a police"; "Yes she did. Yes she did". The author's love of repetition is profoundly irritating in this novel, whereas in earlier work he got away with it somehow. The author's love of lists is also pretty irritating. His refusal to describe much of anything around the characters makes the whole thing seem to be taking place in a void that renders all the action uninvolving and anonymous. Perhaps that's the point? Maybe, but if Amis is trying to "pay homage" to the noir/pulp heroes of old, then he's failing dismally. If he's trying to do a "pastiche" of same, he's failing too. Yet, for all that, I couldn't stop reading it. Yes, there were times when I wanted to throw it out of the window. There were times when I thought, "How does he get away with this?" There were many, many times when I thought, "Why didn't an editor sort all this crap out before it was ever published?" But somehow I read on. What Amis desperately needs is a good editor. "The Information" was a brilliant short story trapped inside a bloated, boring novel. Likewise, within "Night Train" are the details of an excellent story, but tricked out with all the trappings of the author's recent work - it's a shame, because I'd defend Amis against his detractors any time, but even I have to admit he's not been doing himself any favours with his recent work. Peter Higgins
Rating: 
Summary: The ending leaves you feeling cheated
Review: You're set up for a "classic whodunit" mystery type of conclusion, but the ending leaves you feeling cheated. Fortunately, not at a great investment of time (175 pages, large print).
Rating:
Summary: Dark examination of suicide
Review: _Night Train_ is a very short novel (some 40,000 words). It's set in an unnamed U. S. city which seemed possibly to be vaguely based on Portland, Oregon, to me, though I actually think Amis intended it to be set just "anywhere" in the U. S. It's narrated by a veteran policewoman named Mike Hoolihan. As a favor to her former boss she agrees to investigate the suicide of his daughter. The mystery is that his daughter seemed perfectly happy: she was a very beautiful woman, a successful astrophysicist, happily involved in a long term relationship with a nice man, on good terms with her family -- there is no hint of a reason for suicide. Her father wants Mike (an unlovely alcoholic orphan, with a history of trouble with men -- contrasts not an accident) to find a reason to call the suicide murder, and to pin it on someone, maybe the boyfriend. Mike loyally makes an effort to do just that, then she begins to dig more deeply into the secrets of the dead woman's life -- and hints of problems start to appear. Was she having an affair? in trouble at work? undergoing treatment for depression? All are hinted at, but nothing hangs together -- until finally Mike comes to a realization of the real truth, which is rather existential and dark and a bit scary, if maybe also a bit unconvincing. Amis is a good writer, and the novel is an interesting book to read, but it's not really successful. The philosophical point he strives toward seems worthwhile and at least worth positing. So the resolution of the novel, if as I said perhaps a bit unconvincing (particularly the way Mike reaches her conclusions) is acceptable. Where the book really fails is in Hoolihan's voice, which is a wildly offbase sort of faux-Americanese. The most obvious illustration is right at the beginning, when Mike Hoolihan announces that "I am a police" and asserts that that is what American cops call themselves. Not that I ever heard. I'm not sure why Amis chose this voice to tell his story -- but I found it distracting.
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