Customer Reviews

Caught Stealing

5 star:		(69)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

Hank Thompson, a once California high school baseball star destined for the "bigs", is permanently sidelined in a stolen base gone bad, and now, some ten years later, is tending bar in New York City. Part time alcoholic and full time slacker - albeit a lovable slacker - Hank does a neighbor a small favor and as a result finds his previously ordinary life spinning wildly out of control through a .44 Magnum-sized case of mistaken identity. Hank, whose biggest previous concern was a remedy for sore feet and the fate of his San Francisco Giants, is now the target of a motley crew of Russian gangsters, assorted New York freaks, and dirty cops.

Give first-time author Charlie Huston lots of credit: his irreverent, hip, and uncensored delivery assaults the reader relentlessly and without apology. A poor man's Cormac McCarthy, Huston dispatches the goods with none of the poetry but all of the impact; a visceral personal tour of one man's worst nightmare. Huston's gradual transformation of Hank from the basically docile ordinary guy to a stone cold killer is jolting, and guaranteed to trash any plans for the weekend you may have had. And despite his found talent for violence, you'll find yourself still rooting for Hank who, as the mayhem surrounding him mounts, his most pressing issue remains the outcome of baseball's regular season.

Brutal, blunt, and gritty, Huston's "Caught Stealing" satisfies the deepest addictions of the pop thriller junkie. The first in a trilogy, "Stealing" was followed by the equally outrageous "Six Bad Things", and is scheduled to conclude with "A Dangerous Man" next year. If you're anything like me, you'll be anxiously waiting for Huston to wrap up Hank's crazed odyssey of blood lust and baseball.

A very powerful narrative voice is what drives this debut novel which just so happens to be one of the best of the year so far. The author, Charlie Huston, is also a screenwriter and as expected the dialogue is dead on.
Hank Thompson is a bartender on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His life has been a bit of a disappointment in that he was slated to become a major league baseball player until he broke his leg. His humdrum existence comes to an abrupt end when Russ, a neighbor, leaves his cat with him while he visits his sick father for a few days or a few weeks. That night Hank gets so severely beaten up in a bar by two thugs that he requires surgery to remove a damaged kidney. This is just the beginning as Hank is chased, beaten, tortured for an unknown reason. As friends start to die, Hank realizes he must get to the bottom of the problem as his life depends on it.
Hank is a complex character. He is tormented by an accident in the past and, in a sense, continues to punish himself with guilt. He is a sympathetic figure to the reader in that it seems everybody else in the book is evil. Rooting for this underdog drives the rapid pacing as the thrills continue one after the other. It is difficult to put the book down until the highly satisfying conclusion. With the superb characterizations, realistic dialogue and riveting story line, CAUGHT STEALING is one of the most memorable debuts this year.

I loved this book. It reads like a good movie, but better. It seems like some books read like movie scripts, but they're flat. This book has the pacing of a good movie, but with an interesting voice and depth that makes a great book.

Apparently this is Charlie Huston's first novel. This amazes me. Usually I read the first novel by an author and walk away thinking - "it's a good first effort." I didn't think that with this book. It's a good book - period. No asterisk needed.

One word of warning since it seems like most of the negative reviews are based on people being offended by the content. This book contains drug use, language, and violence. If this offends you, this isn't the book for you. This is not a G rated, appropriate for age's story.

The premise of the book is the wrong place / wrong guy scenario's where the lead character is going to be on the run a lot. It takes place in and around New York and paints a complete suburban nightmarescape of bad neighborhoods surrounded by not so bad neighborhoods. The story is told from a narrative point of view which really servers to draw the reader into the frantic world of the protaganist. I've got to say that I really enjoyed living through the eyes of someone who is just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's a fun fast read.

Some of my favorite flicks involved extraordinary ordeals encountered by ordinary people: wrong place wrong person scenarios. "Caught Stealing" was just that sort of novel. Henry Thompson was introduced as an alcoholic bartender anguishing through his adult years after two wretched life-changing events. First, a younger Henry (Hank) had seen his dreams of baseball stardom smashed by a career ending accident to his leg (clue: the title of the novel has something to do with baseball). Second, Hank accidentally killed his best friend when he swerved his car to avoid a baby calf and catapulted his childhood buddy through the windshield into a tree. Eventually, Hank escaped his hometown in California and picked New York to live out the rest of his pitiful existence. One day a neighbor (and an acquaintance) asked Hank to take care of his cat so he could visit his ailing father. From one seemingly meaningless/innocent favor all hell broke loose and Hank's nightmarish existence dropped a few more levels deeper into the abyss. Hank found himself the target of various bad guys, each with their own unique personality traits (I'd love to pick all the actors to play these guys in any potential movie) and each with their own lethal techniques of assault and torture. The action packed thriller was so much fun to read that I completed it in two days. Hank's heart-pounding adventure was pure pulp fiction bliss, and I could only picture Quentin Tarantino making a movie adaptation worthy of the super prose provided by Charlie Huston's pure-adrenaline-laced story unburdened by needless evocative details. Fancier authors sometimes get caught up in writing hundreds of descriptive sentences on unnecessary particulars in order to show off their command of the English language via the utilization of wacky adjectives, tacky adverbs and esoteric verbs. Trust me; this would be a fantastic beach book. I loved it and I can't wait until it is transformed into an action-packed movie extravaganza.

Jay's Grade: A
May 21, 2004

This is my first Houston novel and likely my last. I liked the start but the writing style wore on me as it continued. As others have mentioned the violence was a constant flow to the point that it was absurdly overdone. It was a story that was myopically focused with not surprises, twist to turns. It doesn't lead the reader into contemplation or thought. In that regard it was an easy read - too easy. I was looking for a new author but Houston is not it.

Although the violence was a bit much at times overall I thought it had a good pace and was easy to read. Despite the stupid decisions at times I ended up liking the character in the end.

Meet Henry "Hank" Thompson (ex-high school baseball player/star turned alcoholic and all around nice guy), add a favor for a friend (to watch a neighbor's cat "Bud", who ends up being the "key" to the mystery) + a crooked/sadistic cop + some sweat-suit-wearing Russian bad guys + countless other bad guys (two extremely bad brothers)+ a secret key (hidden in Bud's crate) that opens a storage room with 4.4 MILLION dollars + 1 lost kidney + countless gun fights and lots of killing = a novel that will leave you breathless until the final scene. Some will survive and some won't. People will do things they never thought that they would, but overall the theme is that sometime you can get "caught up" in events that are beyond your control. Both visceral and gritty, this novel leaves you wanting more.

Charlie Huston has a knack for comic timing and structure, a fearless imagination and a wicked sense of the absurd. He also doesn't waste the reader's time with the inessential and his characters are comic gems without being caricatures. This book is a ripping, wild ride, loads of fun and engagingly human despite its dark elements--but that's where the humor kicks in. I found myself caring for Hank in a way I haven't rooted for a protagonist in a long, long while. I'll definitely be reading everything Huston writes.

Henry "Hank" Thompson is what many would call a likable loser. He was a high school baseball star in California, but he broke his leg, sliding into third and there went his major league career. He tried college for about six years and left without a degree. Plus he's tormented by an auto accident where he was the driver and one of his friends was killed, so he doesn't drive anymore. He moved to New York with his girlfriend and she left him. Hank is complex, tormented, intriguing, interesting and at times he doesn't seem very bright, but he is likable and now he tends bar six nights a week, which works out okay for him, because he's a drinker.

Then a friend named Russ Miner has to leave town to visit his sick father and he asks Hank to care for his cat, Bud. However it seems Russ is a crook who was in charge of an awful lot of laundered money. Some serious bad guys named Roman, Bolo, Red, Bert and Ernie want the money back and they believe Hank knows how to get it. Poor Hank suffers unmentionable beatings and torture at their hands and if that isn't enough, a second set of bad guys come after him, the brothers Ed and Paris Durante, and they're not very nice either. Hank finally figures out where the money is, but he's not going to give it up.

As the bodies start to pile up, many of them Hank's friends, Hank blames himself for not acting earlier, but when he does act, violence is the order of the day in this gritty book. Hank may be a likable loser, but even a likable loser can be pushed too far. The climax here is so satisfying that as soon as I finished this book, I started it again. This is a thriller with crisp and gritty dialogue, a gritty plot and gritty characters, just plain gritty, just plain good.