Hard, Hard City

Rating:
Summary: dark urban noir
Review: After years of mourning for his wife and their son who died in a train accident, private detective Terry Orr still struggles with the fact that his spouse was locked in a passionate embrace with another man while her son was on the rail tracks. She died trying to save their child's life. Terry cares for Julie, but is unable to tell or show her how much he needs her. His daughter Bella looks after him because she understands his pain and he will do anything for her.

Bella asks her father to find Allie Powell, who has been missing for several days. Terry visits John McPorter, who shows the sleuth his open safe in which $471 and some envelopes were stolen leaving behind much more valuable items. Next Terry sees Allie's father Powell who believes the detective has the stolen items; his goons rough up Terry. He returns to John's house to find the man impaled on a fence and not long afterward the man's son is dead in a shoddy apartment building. Terry concludes that Powell seeks incriminating documents that John possessed and if he can prove this perhaps Allie can come out of hiding.

Jim Fusilli provides a dark urban noir that paints the meanness of city streets. The protagonist prefers being shot at or beaten up as less painful than his thoughts and enables him to escape from his growing unwanted feelings for Julie. The story line is action-packed filled with colorful secondary characters, but it is the sinister Manhattan skyline that makes HARD, HARD CITY a tale that fans of James Patterson will want to read.

Harriet Klausner


Rating:
Summary: A missing person's case for Terry Orr
Review: Fusilli's fourth Terry Orr novel finds the troubled PI pursuing a missing person's case brought to him by Daniel Wu, a friend of his teenage daughter, Bella. The missing person is Allie Powell, who disappeared from his Uncle's apartment coincident with the theft of some money and photos from the man's safe. Beginning his investigation, Terry quickly comes to the conclusion that there's more to the story than meets the eye. Further probes, plus the violent murder of Allie's Uncle, convinces Terry that he needs to find Allie before he too comes to harm.

That story line serves as a fine backdrop to the real story of Hard Hard City, that of the continuing personal evolution of Terry Orr. Since his wife and infant son's tragic death some three years prior, the grief stricken Terry has made it from day to day through sheer will, at first distracting himself by obsessing over his wife's killer, later finding more valid reasons to persevere in his daughter, his budding relationship with attorney Julie Giada, and in his work as a PI. All the while, he wrestles with barely restrained rage, which often manifests itself at inopportune moments.

Fusilli's exploration of Orr's complex psyche is only one of many reasons to recommend this novel, others being the book's carefully etched supporting cast and the author's loving evocation of post 9/11 New York City. Finally, there's the fact that Fusilli himself continues to mature as a fiction writer, further honing his craft with each successive effort.



Rating:
Summary: Fabulous Fusilli!
Review: I usually like to read several books at once. But I HAD to read "Hard, Hard City" in one sitting. It is sensational. I beg anyone who has not read this author to order this book immediately. It's that good.

Rating:
Summary: Cold, Cold City
Review: I would suggest to anyone reading this particular novel to put on an extra sweater because every page makes your blood a little thinner. Both the city and Terry Orr, run from numbingly cold to red hot. Orr has this one little problem, he only relates to women that can't warm up to him. Those he loves eternally, while those who dare to say that they love him he runs for cover. Usually to thugs who enjoy knocking his block off. Could that be his way of connecting? Why? Of course it's his cold, heartless mother who never tells him what he has done wrong. Maybe its the chunky he stole from the candy store. In this installment, Terry revisits his past because of a half baked assignment from his daughter's young, charmingly warm and wonderful friend. Not her boyfriend, what father could truly love his daughter's boyfriend. Anyway this little excursion leads him back in his imagination to his morose, blue collar childhood, peopled with ineffectual fathers, weird uncles and the evil, crazy mother. Probably the true villian of this little rag to riches saga. He actually travels towards Springsteen country to hook up with the villian who is also from a dismal Jersey town, but who turns to the dark side, makes good and seeks status in all the wrong places. Not like Orr who struggles to overcome his working class roots but retain his soul.
Get off it Orr, tell us about what really is ticking you off so you can get this series in gear. If you haven't already, Mr. Fusilli, read Khaled Hosseini's Kite Runner, a great book about childhood, fathers and sons and absent mothers. This narrator pieces together his past in a way that reverberates through the reader. Break your no reading rule.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best writers in the genre
Review: It is hard to believe that HARD, HARD CITY is only the fourth of Jim Fusilli's entries in the mystery novel genre. Already well-known for his insightful reviews and essays concerning the music industry for the Wall Street Journal, Fusilli has carved a separate career out of whole cloth and has done it to the extent that it is easy to think of him first as the creator of Terry Orr: writer, erstwhile private investigator, single father of Bella, and widower of the late Marina. This latest novel continues Fusilli's examination of Orr's life, his struggles with and accommodations to post-911 Manhattan.

HARD, HARD CITY finds Orr still reeling from the revelation --- possibly true, possibly not --- that his wife was involved with another man at the time of her death. Orr is not obsessed with, so much as shadowed by, the ghost of Marina and their infant son, David, who also died. There are days, however, when the memories and the uncertainty of what is true or untrue threaten to drown him.

He accordingly welcomes a request from Bella's friend, Daniel Wu, to look for a missing friend. Allie Powell has been missing from school for weeks. He has been staying with John McPorter, a friend of the family, in New York City during the week while attending school and returning home to New Jersey on the weekends. McPorter is an odd but apparently harmless soul who assures Orr that Allie is a good boy; he doesn't connect Allie's disappearance with the simultaneous burglary of a few hundred dollars from his safe. Harlan Powell, Allie's father, is a high-rolling investor who has made a number of enemies in the financial world with his questionable business practices. Powell grudgingly retains Orr to locate his son, an act that suddenly becomes the catalyst for the commencement of a cycle of senseless violence.

Fusilli has become a master at blindsiding his readers. He has few equals in this regard --- Ross Macdonald, possibly one or two others --- and his timing is so subtle, so exquisite, that one is compelled to turn the page while simultaneously being almost afraid to do so. Orr's domestic life balances nicely against the grimness of his cases, and Fusilli is wisely showing no inclination toward keeping Bella in pigtails and anklets forever; instead, he is letting her age in real-time between appearances in the novels.

HARD, HARD CITY is appropriately named, a work that further ensconces Fusilli's name and work onto the short list of the best in the genre. If you haven't read him before, start now while his backlist remains manageable. You'll want to catch up.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub