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Rating: 
Summary: A really good story!
Review: I read this book on the recommendation of some "net buddies" and I'm so glad I did. Jim Messenger, a lonely CPA going nowhere either personally or professionally, notices a woman who frequents his favorite San Francisco diner. He notices that she is always alone, always eats the same thing, and always avoids contact with other humans. Messenger tags her "Ms. Blue Lonesome." His one-time attempt to make conversation with her fails miserably, but she intrigues him. When she quits coming to the diner, Messenger finds out that she has committed suicide and his life comes totally unhinged. As he begins to unravel the mystery of Ms. Blue Lonesome's true identity, he becomes more and more obscessed with her life and her sad, blue lonesome story. The only reason I gave the book 4 stars instead of 5 is that I'm really weary of childhood sexual abuse being at the core of every book I read. I hope that doesn't give away too much, but I'm sick of being confronted with that kind of evil everywhere I turn. I liked the book, loved the writer's style and would read him again.
Rating:
Summary: Great moody novel with dark atmosphere
Review: A great mystery in which you'll never guess what's going on until the end. I'd actually give it 4 and 1/2 stars. Nice to see a protagonist who's just an ordinary schmuck rather than a FBI agent, corporate super-lawyer, or CIA hit-man. Easy to empathize and root for the main character. I finished it in two sittings.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good, not bad, can't complain
Review: I enjoyed the size (non-huge) & pace of this book, as well as the setting (the Nevada desert & ranch land, largely). But in a brief book, I suppose it's tough to have characters that don't seem one-dimensional. In this book, many of them do; after you've met them the first time, little else about them will come as a surprise. Still, the dialogue and descriptions are generally well done, and the progression of the main character from Grey Flannel Suit to His Own Man is interesting to watch. How WOULD somebody go about throwing their old life away for a new one, and what would bring that about? Fun questions, and this book explores them in an intriguing way. For those who can relate to middle-aged-male angst and like to read mysteries, Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks books will probably be at least as enjoyable as Blue Lonesome.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good, not bad, can't complain
Review: I enjoyed the size (non-huge) & pace of this book, as well as the setting (the Nevada desert & ranch land, largely). But in a brief book, I suppose it's tough to have characters that don't seem one-dimensional. In this book, many of them do; after you've met them the first time, little else about them will come as a surprise. Still, the dialogue and descriptions are generally well done, and the progression of the main character from Grey Flannel Suit to His Own Man is interesting to watch. How WOULD somebody go about throwing their old life away for a new one, and what would bring that about? Fun questions, and this book explores them in an intriguing way. For those who can relate to middle-aged-male angst and like to read mysteries, Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks books will probably be at least as enjoyable as Blue Lonesome.
Rating: 
Summary: Underrated Masterpiece
Review: Okay. Here's the set-up:
You are a lonely middle-aged CPA and you eat at the same places almost every day. You notice a sad looking woman, not a pretty one, mind you, just sad, and you identify with her because she is so obviously lonesome, just like our CPA.
You get the nerve up to try and speak with her, and it doesn't work. She doesn't tell you her name or anything about her. You follow her home one night and find out her name is Janet Mitchell. You are obsessed with why she's so lonely. Soon she stops coming to the restaurant and you're worried. You go visit her apartment complex and speak to the oriental landlady. She tells you that the lady is dead, committing suicide in her bathtub. Now, would you even imagine pursuing this any further? Well, James Messenger, our hero does.
Although I found the setup for this novel quite unbelievable, Pronzini manages to make it work with his wonderful prose and sense of characterizations. Needless to say, Messenger ends up in the lady's hometown of Beulah, Nevada, and finds out her real name, and learns that she had been accused of murdering her philandering husband AND her eight year old daughter. Messenger knows she didn't do it (how, you got me!). Soon, Messenger faces the expected town bullies and even the dead woman's sister. He takes a job on her ranch, and gets more and more involved with the lady and the townspeople.
The book is short, moves along well, and the ending is quite a surprise, at least to me.
It's not what I consider a great book, but if you can get past the ludicrous setup, you should enjoy it.
RECOMMENDED.
Rating:
Summary: OH LONESOME BLUE
Review: Okay. Here's the set-up:
You are a lonely middle-aged CPA and you eat at the same places almost every day. You notice a sad looking woman, not a pretty one, mind you, just sad, and you identify with her because she is so obviously lonesome, just like our CPA.
You get the nerve up to try and speak with her, and it doesn't work. She doesn't tell you her name or anything about her. You follow her home one night and find out her name is Janet Mitchell. You are obsessed with why she's so lonely. Soon she stops coming to the restaurant and you're worried. You go visit her apartment complex and speak to the oriental landlady. She tells you that the lady is dead, committing suicide in her bathtub. Now, would you even imagine pursuing this any further? Well, James Messenger, our hero does.
Although I found the setup for this novel quite unbelievable, Pronzini manages to make it work with his wonderful prose and sense of characterizations. Needless to say, Messenger ends up in the lady's hometown of Beulah, Nevada, and finds out her real name, and learns that she had been accused of murdering her philandering husband AND her eight year old daughter. Messenger knows she didn't do it (how, you got me!). Soon, Messenger faces the expected town bullies and even the dead woman's sister. He takes a job on her ranch, and gets more and more involved with the lady and the townspeople.
The book is short, moves along well, and the ending is quite a surprise, at least to me.
It's not what I consider a great book, but if you can get past the ludicrous setup, you should enjoy it.
RECOMMENDED.
Rating:
Summary: A compelling, well-told, wonderfully charactered story.
Review: One of the things I really like about the internet is that I'm in touch with other avid readers who are on a quest for new authors. One of my "net buddies" suggested I try Blue Lonesome, a book published in 1995 by a new author named Bill Pronzini. I looked it up at amazon.com. The reviews were favorable, so I ordered it. The book is not long, only 207 pages, but the author manages to tell a compelling story that pulled me right in and didn't let me go until I'd finished the last page. The main character in Blue Lonesome is Jim Messenger. Messenger describes himself: Name: James Warren Messenger Age: 37 Height: 6 feet Weight: 172 pounds Eyes: Brown Hair: Brown Distinguishing features: None Distinguishing physical characteristics: None Employment: Certified public accountant Length of employment: 14 years Annual salary: $42,500 Possibility for advancement: Nil Interests: Jazz . . . Special skills: None Future prospects: None Mr. Average. Mr. Below Average. Mr. Blue Lonesome Messenger's life is bland, boring and going nowhere. He's been married once, but that was 17 years prior to the story and the union lasted a mere seven months. It ended when his ex-wife announced, "It just isn't working, Jimmy, . . . I think we'd better end it right now, before things get any worse between us." Messenger's activities are pretty much limited to work, running (sporadically), listening to his vast jazz collection, and eating his evening meal at a near-by neighborhood diner, the Harmony Café. It's at the Harmony Café that Messenger first notices a fellow diner. She's always alone and seems so sad that . . . "(I)f this were the thirties and he had the talent of Jelly Roll Morton or Duke Ellington... he would write a ballad about her. And he would call it 'Blue Lonesome.'" This was the name he gave her, how he thought of her from the beginning. But it was more than just a name because she was more than just a woman alone. She was the saddest, loneliest person he'd ever encountered: pure blue, pure lonesome. . . . The naked loneliness shocked him at first. He could not take his eyes off her. She didn't notice; she saw nothing of her surroundings. . . She came, she ate, she went. But she was never really there, in a café filled with other people. She was somewhere else -- a bleak place all her own. It takes Messenger three weeks to "screw up enough courage" to speak to Ms. Blue Lonesome. She makes it perfectly clear she wants nothing to do with Messenger...or any other human, for that matter. She never even looks at him as she rebuffs his advance. The rebuff does nothing to quench Messenger's interest in the lonely woman. In fact, he becomes obsessed with her and conjures up reasons for her isolation. He even follows her home one night after dinner. "So now he knew her name and where she lived. Janet Mitchell, 2391 48th Avenue, Apartment 2-B, San Francisco. And what good was this information? What could he do with it? It was irrelevant, really. The questions that mattered to him were inaccessible, closely guarded inside her glass shell." Messenger begins to worry about his interest in Ms. Blue Lonesome: "His was not an obsessive-compulsive personality; nothing like this had ever happened to him before. It was even more frustrating because he couldn't understand what it was inside him that made him react to a stranger in this fashion. Their only common bond was loneliness, and yet hers, so acute and evidently self-destructive, repelled him as much as it fascinated him." When Janet Mitchell quits coming to the café, Messenger begins to worry. He goes to her apartment house and finds out from Mrs. Fong, the very agitated landlady that Ms. Blue Lonesome is dead. "Sunday night. Sit in bathtub, cut her wrists with a razor blade. . . My building -- killed herself in my building. Terrible. You know how terrible it is to clean up so much blood?" It is at this point that dull, boring and predictable Jim Messenger becomes unhinged. He talks to the police about Ms. Mitchell and finds that she's very possible a "Jane Doe," as there is no record of a Janet Mitchell anywhere to be found, except a safe deposit box at the local Wells Fargo bank. ". . . (s)tuffed full of cash -- better than fourteen thousand in hundred-dollar bills." Messenger re-visits the landlady, slips her forty dollars, and rummages through Ms. Blue Lonesome's meager belongings. He finds nothing to lead him to her true identity, save a pocket watch engraved with "To Davey from Pop" and a long overdue book from the Beulah Public Library. It's at this point that the book becomes a mystery, complete with a double murder, small town politics and a cast of characters that do not want Messenger poking around in their business. How Messenger gets to the truth about Ms. Blue Lonesome's past makes up the remainder of the novel, and his devotion to this woman and her memory is commendable. The only negative thing I have to say about this -- and most modern murder mysteries -- is that I wish childhood sexual abuse was not at the core of the story. I hope I'm not giving too much away, but I'm weary of being confronted with this kind of evil. I'm not putting my head in the sand like an ostrich. I just wish authors could find something else to motivate their characters to commit murder. Blue Lonesome is a compelling story, well-told and peopled with a vast array of wonderful characters. I especially liked Jim Messenger and admired his dogged determination to "get to the truth" of Ms. Blue Lonesome's story. Like Messenger, I cared about her and wanted her to rest in peace. Enjoy! Terry H. Mathews Reviewer
Rating:
Summary: Underrated Masterpiece
Review: This is a novel with the depth of Horton Footes classic "Tender Mercies," and although noir in tone it is not quite like anything else Pronzini has written. A wonderfully understated novel written by an author at the height of his powers.
Rating:
Summary: Bill Pronzini's best book
Review: When an accomplished, experienced author tackles loneliness, frustration, chicanery and murder, you get something like Blue Lonesome. Jim Messenger is a lonely, bored San Francisco CPA, drifting through life. He observes a woman called Janet Mitchell at a cafe where he eats dinner every night. Messenger wonders about her and when she stops coming, he is idly moved to learn why. What Messenger discovers is that she has committed suicide. Gradually, he becomes more and more obsessed with learning her story. His physical journey takes him several hundred miles east to the dried-up desert town of Beulah, Nevada. His emotional journey takes him much farther, and is not finished when the book ends. Beulah is a town of simmering desires, dusty secrets and vicious attitudes. It is also a town peopled with good citizens. Part of Pronzini's strength is his ability to create a place and characters that are in everyone's sight. Beulah could be any town. It could be yours.
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