East of A

Rating:
Summary: Excellent modern noir (in spite of some self-indulgence)
Review: Atwood's first novel is delicious, if occasionally overripe: he allows himself too many deliberately purple passages, as well as gimmicks such as text laid out vertically to reflect a character's fall out of a window and random words spelled in dialect (i.e., "wire" for "why are"). But the patches of questionable prose will improve with age -- what Atwood already has going for him is a fabulous sense of place (you can see and smell the Village as you read) and a knack for suspense. A scene with Payton trapped in a subway tunnel as a train approaches is a fabulous nail-biter, even if it's not entirely clear to the reader just how Payton manages to survive. On the whole, a good read and an auspicious debut.

Rating:
Summary: Middling First Detective Novel
Review: Russel Atwood's "East of A," in which the author introduces us to New York City private detective Payton Sherwood, is a well written book that has many of the elements (lonilesness, cynicism, street-wise attitude) that make for great private detective fiction. Unfortunately, it is all put into service of a story that is just not terribly compelling, particularly if it is meant to be the first in a series starring Sherwood.

The plot is fairly straightforward. Sherwood is beaten up by a trio of street thugs when he attempts to stop them from attacking a runaway teenage girl. No good deed goes unpunished, and while he's lying in the street the girl steals his Rolex watch, the only valuable thing he owns. After cleaning himself up, Sherwood goes in search of the watch. That premise doesn't exactly compell one to keep reading, and it was only Atwood's light and easy prose that kept me interested.

The case takes some unexpected turns when Sherwood discovers that the thugs are after the girl because they believe the girl stole a new designer drug from their boss, a wealthy eccentric dance club owner. From there Sherwood encounters a trail of murder and deceit. The New York street scenes are well described and the characters that inhabit them are fairly well drawn (except, curiously, for the girl, who the reader never really gets to know). Unltimately, the story just doesn't amount to all that much, though there is one grisly scene in which two men fall out a high window that is quite shocking and shows that Atwood has potential as a storyteller. He just needs more scenes like that one.

Overall, "East of A" is not a bad novel, just not a terribly memorable one.

Rating:
Summary: Above average, but not breaking any new ground
Review: There's a lot of neo-noir novels out there pretending to expand the throne left them by Hammett and Cain. Most don't realize how closely they're walking in the path of their betters. Only folks like Auster and Lethem are really taking chances and showing things we haven't seen before.

That said, East of A is a good solid read. Despite one horrid, "Got milk"-one-liner, Payton Sherwood comes across an accessible, if not ambiguous crime-solver. Still the relationships Atwood manages to develop between his PI and the swirling group of characters around him builds well.

If you're a big reader always on the lookout for your next book, this is probably one to check out. If you're dipping your toe into this genre I'd go for a heavier hitter--something like Motherless Brooklyn. Otherwise we'll wait for Atwood's next book and hope its even better.