Customer Reviews

Calumet City: A Novel

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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"

People I respect such as Lee Child and Jeff Abbott gave this book high praise. When I concentrate on Charlie Newton's writing alone, I can agree with them. Newton is a solid writer, though his faux noir style becomes grating over time. The talent is there, but it clearly needs to be polished.

Evaluating the plot and characters, though, leads me to a different place. I didn't find the plot compelling or persuasive and the characters struck me as lacking depth and credibility.

Patti Black is supposedly Chicago's most decorated police officer. Too much is made of the character's being a woman. She spends way too much time engaging in machismo posturing that adds nothing to the story.

A career officer, Black is hiding a horrible story of being orphaned when her alcoholic parents die in a car wreck and being abused by foster parents, carrying the child of her foster father. The child is taken from her. Supposedly the foster father died a couple of decades back - supposedly. A raid on a gang turns deadly and Patti learns that a skeleton in the wall of a neighboring building is that of her foster mother. Than an assistant State's Attorney is kidnapped. Just happens that the guy is Patti's foster brother. Next an imprisoned murderer asks for Patti to visit him. Gee golly, it's a reunion. He too is from the foster home.

All of it is more than too much. Patti is frightened of being found out for her youthful sins, wants to reclaim her long lost son, has an aggressive and utterly unconvincing FBI agent on her case and so on.

If Charlie Newton had left out about half his plot, he would have produced a novel four times better, in my opinion. Newton's writing is strong, but not strong enough to carry the Byzantine plot.

Still, there are repeated flashes of brilliance and near-brillance throughout the book. As I mentioned, Newton tries too hard for a noir style, his imitation noir simply coming off as imitation. His characters are painted too broadly and lack depth, a couple of them approaching the ludicrous.

I caution that all this is simply my opinion of this particularly story: from the outset I was uncomfortable with it and quickly grew bored with the plot. But I suspect that many will find the story a compelling read and the characters more believable than I did.

It's that kind of book. My suggestion is that you browse it before you buy. Although it wasn't mine, it may be your cup of tea.

Jerry

Charlie Newton's debut novel CALUMET CITY left me one satisfied reader - happy, exhausted and ready for more! Lee Child summed it up in his review - "the best cop noir in years". Patti Black is my new favorite heroine - tough, vulnerable, complicated. Just the way I like them, only better. The other characters are equally unforgettable (especially Sonny - be still my heart - how can you not fall for a stand-up guy like that?).

Beware, CALUMET CITY is not a gentle ride. It's "E-ticket" thrills all the way - definitely worth the price of admission - and I'm ready to go again! Charlie Newton, if you're reading this - are you sure we can't get more of Patti, Sonny and company before 2010?! That's a long wait for a devoted fan and eager reader...

A previous review on Amazon u.k. encouraged me to buy this book and I did. What joy and a lovely surprise, a book I had to finish and which left withdrawal symptoms until Charlie manages to get another publisher to take on his works. I have contacted Charlie and he assures me he has State of Grace and Paradise City on the way.
This is an exciting story about a woman who suffered dreadful abuse as a child and blotted it out but working as a policewoman years later memories surface and she races against time to save a loved one. I really couldn't work out who did what and Charlie kept up the pace right to the last page..... It would make a good film. I notice Lee Child has commented "the best cop noir for years." I endorse his sentiments. I am not going to tell the story but leave it to the reader, suffice it is disturbing in places but life in the raw.
For more information on him and his interesting life I urge you to view Charlie Newton's website at
(...)

Patti Black is a hard nosed Chicago cop. She is part of a unit assigned to raid a home to recover stolen merchandise. The home is located in a seedy section of the city and when the cops order the inhabitants to open the door, the police are met with machine gun fire and two police officers are wounded. Patti returns fire and kills two shooters who were teenagers.

In the basement of the building they find a body buried long ago. From this we learn the story of a foster home where children were abused and Patti had been a foster child who had been abused until she ran away at age 16.

After the shooting, Patti goes to the station and makes her report, unfased by the shooting, she then goes home, changes clothes and goes to practice with her rugby team "Go ahead...make my day."

When someone tries to shoot mayor Quinn and his wife, the police commissioner knows that the next person in line for the mayor's job is Alderman Leslie Gibbons, who is black. The commissioner asks Patti to try to get a feel for what the black community is thinking which she does but gets in trouble when she sees the mother of one of the teenagers she killed and she tries to express her condolences to the teenager's mother.
The alderman tries to make Patti look bad but the newspapers praise her as a hero for saving the other policemen from the machine gun fire.

Now someone puts a hit on Patti and he wants to kill her son, who few people know about and is the product of the years of rape in the foster home. Patti had put her son up for adoption after his birth.

She now believes that Roland Ganz, the man who raped her and destroyed her youth, is still living and wants to kill her and her son. She also believes that Ganz killed the woman found in the basement of the former foster home.

There is another woman, still living from the foster home and she asks Patti's help to save her from Ganz.

Newton moves the plot along quickly with little lost dialogue. It is a noir novel with a believable lead character and is a fun read. The book has been nominated for an Edgar Award for the best first novel in the mystery field.

Recommended.

It has been almost two decades since Patti Black ran from her foster home in Calumet City. Her life with her foster parents was torturous, a chamber of horrors; that led to her drinking as a teen to forget the atrocities. After running away she eventually got her act together and has been a Chicago police officer. She is the most decorated cop in the city and in line to a promotion to detective. Her world starts to implode when she and her crew enter a gasoline soaked apartment where she finds walled inside the ruins the remains of her foster mother.

State Assistant District Attorney Richard Rhodes is a former foster child raised in that nightmarish home. Soon it is discovered that the mayor's wife owned the house where Patti's foster mom was "buried". Too many clues lead back to Patti. CPD crime investigators and Internal Affairs, and the FBI want to interrogate Patti, but she is not talking to anyone. Instead she is on the road seeking her foster father who she thought was dead before he can find their son.

This is a dark gritty police procedural in which the protagonist is haunted by demons from her past despite putting on a tough presence in front of her peers or gangbangers. There are plenty of action and chase scenes, but the tale is owned by the fully developed Patti. Readers feel as if they know her yet lingering doubts persist re her innocence while also rooting for her to finally confront the demons that are devouring her mind.

Harriet Klausner

I stumbled on this by accident in the book store. I remembered the name Charlie Newton as an aspiring author I'd met at the Cape Town Book Fair in South Africa in 2006, when my own co-authored novel Out To Score was published. Charlie was still working on Calumet City at this stage (I think it was this novel - he seems to have a whole lot of others up his sleeve!) so when I saw it had been published I bought the book. I responded to Patti Black from the first pages, recognized in her a compassionate woman with balls - the way I like `em. This is a cop who's larger than life, with heart, and brains, and I clicked with her immediately. And her history of abuse at the hands of evil Roland Ganz is fascinating and harrowing material indeed. To have Patti Black's nightmarish foster-home experiences linked so cleverly with an assassination attempt against a city mayor, and a state's attorney's murder - and what a gruesome one it is, too - plus myriad other twists and turns, makes for exciting reading. I felt as if I was right there with Patti though her various ordeals, and there are plenty for those of us that like a fast pace and bold action. I get a thrill from being swept away by a new, strong voice, and it's what I'm always on the lookout for, especially in first novels. That's me, a debut-novel junkie! I can usually tell from the debut if I'll watch out for more on the shelves from a particular author. I liked Calumet City so much, in fact, I went to the effort of tracing Charlie Newton's email address and telling him so myself!
Good stuff! Can't wait for more!

An edgy, intense ride. Charlie's writing takes you by the back of the neck and makes you live in the story. Can't wait for the next one.

I picked this book up on the recommendation of Lee Child...I agree, Patti Black is one tough mother. A highly decorated Chicago PD officer of the Year relives 4 years of horror in a foster home in Cal City over a one week period. Needless to say, she proves her worth as a officer & a mother when worse becomes impossible.
I read this book from cover to cover in 5 hours....gripping story, great style, some good characters. If you like Reacher, you'll like Patti Black & through her, Charlie Nweton.Can hardly wait for his next book due out in 2012.

Sick of the formulaic dreck the publishing houses are spitting out? Take a dose of Calumet City and call me in the morning.

Its opening words draw you into the adrenal high-wire act that is Chicago cop Patti Black's life; by the time you get to the final period you know that, after you finish, you're gonna miss the rush.

This is a story unlike any you've ever read, and it's told by a master. Charlie Newton has done with words what Vincent van Gogh did with paints: put em together like hasn't been done before, and in a way that that catches your attention and your imagination.

Wanna know what novels--at least the great ones--are going to be like in the 21st Century? Read Calumet City. But brew some coffee first. It's gonna keep you up late, reading.