Customer Reviews

Black River: A Novel

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I read a lot of books. I wish there were more writers like G. M. Ford, who take real people and put them into ambiguous situations and let them struggle with the consequences of their decisions and behavior.

Frank Corso is one of those flawed characters who finds himself in the middle of a huge jigsaw puzzle involving corrupt contractors, inspectors, jurors and more than enough bad guys to fill out the mix.

Corso's a Seattle-based writer with some mistakes in his past, a huge financial settlement in his bank account, and a reclusive lifestyle.

Corso is the only invited guest to the murder trial of Nicholas Balagula, a bad-to-the-bone mobster who is responsible for the deaths of 63 people when the hospital he built collapses. This is Balagula's third trial and the prosecution is looking pretty secure. Corso is taking notes and gathering material for his new book when his world is rocked by the savage attack on his former girlfriend, a photojournalist who believes there's a link between the seemingly insignificant death of a school district's maintenance man and the Balagula trial.

After the assault, Corso's thrown into a whirlwind of plot twists, bad guys, and paper trails. There's even some Cambodian culture thrown in for good measure (maybe the beginnings of a new book?).

I like Frank Corso and found myself drawn into the plot lines, even though the tidy Hollywood-like ending was a bit too predictable.

Enjoy!

One of the pleasures of reading Ford's books is the sheer strength of his writing. This is true whether he is being deadly serious or wryly humorous, as he was in his previous series. While he is a 'no frills' writer, he accomplishes his goal by having an unerring sense of the proper word or construct.

In this story, the sequel to Fury, we again meet up with Frank Corso, a journalist who lost his cachet when he wrote a story based on falsified evidence. Since that time he has moved to Seattle where his determination has found him a new job and let him reestablish himself as a newsman and a writer. He has been allowed to sit in on the trial of Nicholas Balagula, a ruthless crime boss who has never been brought to justice. But when photojournalist Meg Dougherty, Corso's closest friend is suddenly attacked and very nearly killed a different kind of trial emerges, with Corso sitting in the judge's seat.

A tangled web of loose connections sends Corso down the dark side of the city, tracking down hired killers, builders, and janitors to find what Meg saw that put her in a hospital. Corso isn't a genius, but a determined seeker who can eventually work his was through the toughest knot. Although this time what he doesn't know very nearly kills him.

As always, Ford's characters a gem-like. While the bad guys are 'bad,' the good guys aren't angels, and individual idiosyncrasies bring them all to life. The main characters do develop, but slowly. It has taken Corso two novels to move from his initial bitterness to a dark cynicism. For all that Meg is unconscious for most of the book, she has changed the most, which brings out the best and the worst of Corso's character.

Like a typical shallow fan, I wasn't all that comfortable when Ford switched from Leo Waterman. I had gotten used to the humorous antics of the alcoholic bums who made up Waterman's investigatory team. But Corso is a compelling character, and this new series may very well be closer to what Ford really wanted to accomplish. In any case, I think you will find Black River great entertainment.

While better known for his Leo Waterman series, G. M. Ford has begun an interesting new series featuring the reclusive Frank Corso. First seen in Fury, Frank Corso is back and as dark as ever. Since this novel picks up approximately seven months after events depicted in Fury and refers to those events repeatedly throughout this novel, I would strongly urge prospective readers to read Fury first before reading this novel. It simply isn't possible to review this novel without giving away a few details, which would be better covered in their entirety in Fury. Having said that, I am simplifying greatly the plot and storyline to keep out as much as possible for those unfamiliar with the previous novel.

For years, the government has chased the Russian mobster Nicholas Balagula through one trial after another with no success. Balagula sees United States justice as a game-a game where he has always won by jury tampering, violent intimidation and the murder of witnesses. Now, he is on trial once again. This time, he is being tried for the deaths of 63 people who lost their lives in a hospital building collapse. The trail has been moved from California up to Seattle and extraordinary measures are being taken to protect the safety and integrity of the jury and the case.

Frank Corso is the only non-participant allowed to attend the murder trial of Balagula. His well-publicized notoriety and connections gets him unlimited access and he hopes to turn the project into another one of his true crime books. While he wants another success on his hands, he also wants the government to win. At the same time, with a grandstanding golden boy of the United States Attorney's Office in charge, Warren Klein, he has his doubts whether they can do the job. It looks like his suspicions are correct as from the beginning the trial things begin to go wrong and like most golden boys of one stripe or another, Klein blames everyone else for his mistakes.

While his suspicions concerning the case have been initially confirmed, Corso isn't really paying attention. His old flame and very special friend, Meg Dougherty, is in intensive care in the hospital. Apparently in her occupation as a photojournalist, she witnessed something so horrendous that she drove her car under a parked semi in a desperate attempt to get away that nearly resulted in her death. Corso wants to find out what she saw as well as clearing himself from the suspect list as the police seemed convinced that he had some hand in her near death.

Frank Corso is an interesting and hard to define character. This novel reveals a little more about his personality and what drives him while at the same time managing to hide a tremendous amount behind his darkly complex personae. As in his other books, a certain sense of darkness and moral decay pervades the work. Full of interesting complex characters, tight writing and multiple themes make this another good read. Once again, he provides a journey where justice is not an absolute black and white stereotype, but shades of gray. G. M. Ford's books are never simplistic stories with two-dimensional characters but complicated stories featuring multidimensional characters and shades of moral nuance. As always, this is another one of his books well worth reading.

The protagonist in G.M. Fords Seattle based Black River is Frank Corso, a hard boiled, paradoxical true crime writer. He has a strong sense of right and wrong in the Sam Spade manner.

In Black River the government is trying for the third time to nail known criminal and pedophile Nicholas Belagula for bribery. Witnesses and inspectors keep turning up dead.

After Corso connects seemingly unrelated events (murders) including one that strikes close to home---everything circumstantially points to Belagula.

Corso unearths a paper trail that verifies the connection. Turning an insider is all thats needed to convict Belagula.

G.M. Ford, an excellent storyteller, gives you a nonstop, rapidly moving plot with well-developed characters. Once I got all the players clearly identified, it was impossible to put the book down.

A couple of the bad guys are Elmore Leonardish, and the primary villains are absolutely loathsome.

The appearance of the US Attorney General was a bit much and the ending too neat and tidy---but the ride to the conclusion was thrilling. Do not miss this one.

The nefarious business practices of crime boss Nicholas Balagula: fraud, extortion, and falsified bids, caused the death of 63 people including 41 children when a minor seismic disturbance collapsed the wall of the Fairmont Hospital. Possible jury tampering, intimidation, and the fortuitous deaths of witnesses have kept Balagula from spending the rest of his notoriously immoral life in prison. But federal prosecutors may have a turned a witness, someone who can testify to Balagula's direct involvement in the disaster. Granted status as the only nonparticipant allowed at the trial, Frank Corso, reclusive author of popular true-crime novels is forced back into the public eye amid media speculation that he is consulting for the prosecution. Then Corso's insulated life is thrown into chaos when his ex-lover Meg Dougherty, while pursuing an investigation of her own, is involved in a car accident that leaves her battered and bloody body hanging to life by a thread. Pursuing justice for his one, best friend while following the course of the trial Corso is pulled into the muck of a black river of deceit, corruption, and murder.
Ford's latest bad guy isn't as reprehensible as Corso's previous foe, the Trashman, but perhaps he just seems less disgusting because we're exposed to reports of unethical business practices in the news so often. Hospitals and homes are lined up along the San Andreas Fault as we read. Balagula's method to find the members of an anonymous, sequestered jury would make a market researcher proud. And even the most competent of employees will have bad days: finding the guy you're to hit already dead, buried bodies floating to the river's surface, taking out the wrong people. I almost felt sorry for these two killers. The flow of the Black River of the title is disrupted by progress, but "it's a river's nature to remain a river." As Balagula proclaims his innocence the progress of his criminal empire continues to flow. But even a criminal empire runs into obstacles now and then.
G. M. Ford has once again provided a compelling journey into the world of crime and fascinating look into the complex personality of one of fiction's newest heroes.

As a visual artist, I know about the frustration when your fans don't want you to change...but.
I just couldn't get into the amoral guy pictured here. I prefer an outright crook, with a little humanity. The real world has enough unthinking violence; from G. M. Ford, I expect a little entertainment.

G.M. Ford is a Seattleite and, thereby, a homie of mine. I got glowing recommendations from J.P. Dickey and Bill Farley at Seattle Mystery Bookshop just after his first novel was released and immediately picked it up to read. It bounced off me like Happy Fun Ball; didn't like the characters, didn't like the plot, just...didn't. So, I wrote off G.M. Ford and never bothered again.

Last week, a friend gave me a copy of "Black River". This is a good - and very literate - friend, so I stifled the groans and decided to read it, just so I'd sound credible if the guy asked about it. Sure enough, there were the labored analogies, the weird and disconcerting turns of phrase that broke up the velocity of the read like tiny speed bumps as I tried to figure out WTF G. Ford was thinking, and the somewhat desultory tone that I found a drag on the proceedings in the first novel.

BUT...as I plowed on through, something emerged that didn't in that first novel: a plot. The semi-moribund Leo Waterman has been replaced by Frank Corso, tough guy, writer (you KNOW this is fiction. Spillane was the last tough guy who worked as a writer and he's long gone) and dancer upon the knife-edge of legality; a man perfectly willing to ignore or subvert the law if it suits his Higher Purpose. Corso is interesting, enigmatic, and has History - major, dark, sinister history. The only drag upon Frank is his idiotic ex-girlfriend, Meg Dougherty, an irrationally-drawn thumbnail sketch of a Seattle-style goth chick whose histrionics frequently emit loud clunking noises like a wrench tossed into the ship's gearbox. After three books with ol' Meg, I'm thinking that Corso would be much better alone and that Ford's goodbye note at the end of the last one I read should be enforced by either guns or a court order or both.

G.M. Ford, in technical terms, may just be as good as Dennis Lehane's liner blurb repeatedly insists. His plotting has become as relentless and efficient as a nail gun; the "thwack-thwack-thwack" of plot points being nailed to the wall with speed and uncanny accuracy creating a speed-freak's wet dream of mystery crafting. Stuff Happens in Ford's stories - a LOT of stuff, and not just the predictable. His plot twists are genuinely creative and he has a real gift for that rear-view logic that clarifies seeming incongruities in the plot. In the end, Ford's books - especially "Black River" - get zipped in and tucked neatly away in those final pages, with damned few of those nagging, Spike Lee-ish, unresolved issues and moral ambiguities that bug readers everywhere. The summations may not always be neat but they're damnably effective.

Learning to appreciate someone whose work you've written off is, in many ways, far more satisfying that digging in right off the bat. And I'm glad to finally be able to give a Seattle Brotha props that he richly deserves.

This is the second in the new Frank Corso series. I have to allow for the fact that I liked the absence of Meg Dougherty for awhile. She just seems to COMPLAIN SO DAMN MUCH. This could be me. I feel the same about a Parker book when Susan Siverman has to take an extended vacation. I am kind of relieved.

In Black River, we meet the Russian mobster Nico Balagula. Brrrr. Nasty man. Reminds me of the hit man-drug marketer 'Vassily' in Michael Crow's Luther Ewing novels.

Well you know the plot. Frank gets to attend the third trial of Balaguls, who faked samples of concrete strength on the building of a hospital which collapses, killing dozens.

With the earlier trials witnesses kept disappearing, their corpses discovered later. Hmmmm. This is a bit of a stretch. Nonetheless, Mr. Ford puts together a rivering story of revenge and retribution, always a sure fire page turner.

I like Corso. He's a tough hombre, a writer making a lot of dinero from the sale of his crime novels. We don't know a lot about him which I imagine is part of his cachet but for the reader, it becomes a little irritating. We know a lot about John Rain (Barry Eisler) and the aforementioned Ewing. There, it makes us understand why they do the things they do.

Still a highly recommended crime novel. Why the 4 stars then? The ending shows a relationship between Corso and the State which is so improbable it makes you wonder what was Mr. Ford thinking. I firmly believe that the reader will accept any ending a good writer gives them, as long as the characters act in their own context. It doesn't work here. 4 stars. Larry Scantlebury

Frank Corso, a true crime writer in Seattle, is following the case of Nicholas Balagula, a mobster who finally cut one corner too many. A hospital in California has collapsed, killing 63 people, 41 of them children. Balagula's sticky fingerprints are all over the tragedy, and Corso wants to see justice finally visited on this "Teflon Don." But the paths that lead back to Balagula are many - and unraveling them will take all the talent and courage Corso has. What does truck found with a body that is riddled with bullets from three different guns have to do with a vicious attack on a former girlfriend, Meg Doughtery, that leaves her life hanging by a thread? And how do the bodies of two previous witnesses against Balagula that were found floating in the river connect to the disappearance of a man Meg had gone to interview before her car was forced into a devastating accident? What picture are all these seemingly unconnected pieces forming? Are they actually connected? And, can Corso find the truth before the mobster walks away from all the voices of pain and death that cry out for justice?

Frank Corso sees himself as a flawed human being. He is flawed more than some - but much more human than many. He is likable without wanting you to like him - and appealing without trying to appeal to anyone except himself and his own conscience.

BLACK RIVER is an edge-of-your seat thriller. The action never stops, and the plot moves quickly, pulling you along with it. This is a hard-boiled detective mystery with a heart. Frank Corso is someone I will have to visit again. I cared about this case and I cared about Corso.

I highly recommend BLACK RIVER.

If you are looking for a writer who churns out well-crafted mystery novels with believable characters, G. M. Ford is one of the best. "Black River" is the second in a nw series with Frank Corso. I just finished it last night and am anxious to read the next. Ford's Leo Waterman series is equally good.