Calumet City [Large Print]

by Charlie Newton

Book Overview

Among the most self-assured and sharply crafted debuts in recent years, Calumet City detonates a hardnosed cocktail of character-driven suspense and Chicago-ghetto intrigue. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Large Print: Yes
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1410408442
• ISBN13: 9781410408440
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Thorndike Press
• Length: 563 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Noir Thriller

Calumet City (2008) is the story of Patti Black, Chicago's most decorated cop. Though Patti lives alone with her two goldfish in the same ghetto she grew up in, she is content with rugby and her job to fill her time. During a routine drug bust that turns violent, the cops discover the body of a woman manacled inside a basement room. When the woman is identified as Patti's former foster mother, she fears that the horrors of her past will come to light. With the help of a newspaper reporter friend, Patti searches for her abusive former foster father who she knows is responsible for the new murders, and whose very existence threatens the relative peace and safety she has built for herself since running away 18 years ago. Narrated in Patti's voice, this powerful novel creates an unforgettable character. A finalist for the 2009 Edgar Award for Best First Mystery, this noir thriller moves at an unrelenting pace from one shocking event to the next. http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/N_Authors/Newton_Charlie.html

Joe Klein review

If you are afflicted with hypertension be sure to take your medications before you read this novel. This author builds up suspense and tension in a manner that 'out McBains' Evan Hunter. He really knows his territory and the action he presents is guaranteed to make your heart palpitate.

CALUMET CITY

Chicago has always been a violent city, a home to syndicated organized crime. Now explore its all-time base level. TAC officer Patti Black lives media's squalid daily headlines. You'll perceive the political law and order machine in an altered light. This is the one that will haunt you. The one that will make you question...

Something different this way comes

It usually happens somewhere in the first hundred pages: I, reader, get the idea that I trust the author. I relinquish some measure of control and let him/her take me along on the river of plot, wherever it leads. I don't care, because I trust the author to treat me right. It's usually a comfortable trust, an old worn armchair of a thing, molded to my butt and unwilling to part company easily. It's casual, sometimes friendly, sometimes with a twinge or two of excitement, but nothing - ever - to betray that trust. That's the mark of good writing, imo. Reading Calumet City was different. Oh, I trusted the writer of course, but it was the kind of trust that you hold for someone who's got you suspended by one ankle over an abyss so deep that you can only remember the jagged, hungry rocks at the far bottom. Now I can only hope that I'll be able to return to my old, relaxed ways, sitting in my easy chair, trusting the author with his story.

The New Kid on the Block

Approximately seven years ago, Charlie Newton contacted me and asked for a little technical advice on a manuscript he had just written about a series of murders occurring in Chicago's Rush Street area. Now, on several previous occasions, other aspiring writers had asked me to review their manuscripts and, quite honestly, some of them were harder to choke down than a large bowl of undercooked chitterlings. But I couldn't put Charlie Newton's manuscript down. And, here's the good news, that manuscript was NOT "Calument City". In fact, Charlie Newton has written six novels in between that first novel and "Calumet City", one better than the other. I'd be hard pressed to say which one I like best. Nobody in the business, bar none, writes an action scene like Charlie Newton. If you like police fiction, you'll love "Calumet City", and when you're done reading it, you'll be clamoring for the release of one of the other seven novels Charlie Newton has in the oven. Lt. Dennis Banahan (retired) Chicago Police Department Author of "Threshold of Pain"