The Craigslist Murders: A Novel [Paperback]

Brenda Cullerton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 23, 2009

Most people think of a world gone to hell in terms of famine in faraway Durfur, war in Iraq, and genocide in Rwanda. Not Charlotte Wolfe. For her, a Manhattan interior "desecrator" who is, happily, offing New York City trophy wives, that world gone to hell stretches from Bergdorf Goodman on 57th St. and Fifth Avenue, north to 96th St., across Madison to Park Avenue, and back down to 59th St.

This is the Upper East Side, the richest, greediest 1.8 sq. miles in the United States. Inhabited by professional time killers, it is a world where women mistake trend for truth, fame for faith, and money for meaning. Here, where the insatiable pursuit of luxury square footage and perfect decor breeds monsters, Charlotte is not just biting the hands of the Botoxed, newly converted Buddhist women who feed her, she is murdering them. Murdering them with a fire poker hidden inside a yoga mat. "Cleaning house," she calls it.

As the real world continues to teeter on the brink of financial extinction, readers will applaud the efforts of this Pilates-pumped Crusader as she surfs through Craigslist, her online hunting ground, and rids the city of women whose only job in life is to amuse themselves to death.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A prophetic, hilarious, and suspenseful take on how the financial crisis turns one interior designer homicidal...Brenda Cullerton's new book is a stunning commentary on contemporary New York society."
—The Daily Beast

"[A] hilarious and unsettling novel about class war. Upper East Siders beware...this killer wears Louboutins."  
—Kathleen Massara, Flavorwire

"A deliciously smart, darkly comic novel"
—New York Daily News

"Wickedly topical, with a fully developed and sympathetic protagonist, Cullerton’s debut novel abounds with juicy details about Charlotte’s exclusive world."
—Kirkus Reviews

"Cullerton...has a real knack for satirical writing. Her supporting characters are a mostly fatuous bunch, but not so much that they stop feeling like real people; and Charlotte herself is a marvelous creation, a likably murderous woman whose solution to her intense frustration is, if not legal, at least effective."
—Booklist

“A brilliantly prophetic and modern tale of the macabre . . . A novel that roars across the intersection of Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho and Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities.”
—James Wolcott, Vanity Fair columnist

“The book flies cinematically, riffs ferociously, and then floats in moments of poetic contemplation and longing. Swift, sensational, The Craigslist Murders reads scathingly and emotionally true. A tour de force!”
—Laura Jacobs, author of Women About Town and The Bird Catcher --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Brenda Cullerton is a writer for the fashion, beauty, and interior design industries, and the author of the memoir, The Nearly Departed, Or, My Family and Other Foreigners, which O Magazine called "wise, courageous, brutally honest and darkly hilarious." She has also written several books on interiors and the home.  She lives and works in New York City. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 184 pages
• Publisher: iUniverse (November 23, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1440181454
• ISBN-13: 978-1440181450
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,328,528 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A flaming arrow into the dark heart of Manhattan's filthy rich, November 15, 2009

By 

L. Jacobs (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Craigslist Murders: A Novel (Paperback)

The Craigslist Murders: A Novel is a flaming arrow into the dark heart of Manhattan's filthy rich, and also a sharp portrait of our culture's psychological health. Cullerton knows this milieu and her portrait is all in the details a la the New Journalism that stormed the Sixties. Perhaps it's no mistake that Cullerton's heroine, or rather anti-heroine, is named Charlotte Wolfe. This Charlotte -- as opposed to Tom Wolfe's recent, ridiculously dated I Am Charlotte Simmons -- is a true embodiment of her time, contemporary compulsions at war with distant ideals. And while she's murderously troubled, she's also amazingly sympathetic. This is not easy to do. The book flies cinematically, riffs ferociously, and then floats in moments of poetic contemplation and longing. Swift, sensational, The Craigslist Murders reads scathingly and emotionally true. A tour de force!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Go, Charlotte, Go!, December 22, 2009

By 

S. M. Swope (NYC, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Craigslist Murders: A Novel (Paperback)

I read this gem of a book in one greedy gulp. Brenda Cullerton has created one of the great and unforgettable characters in any novel -- her Charlotte Wolf is a deliciously nasty piece of work, a complicated and believable mess of a woman, one of those villains you can't help loving and even rooting for. Go, Charlotte, go! Kill the bastards!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Is there botox in hell?, December 3, 2009

By 

City Boy - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Craigslist Murders: A Novel (Paperback)

Brenda Cullerton's The Craigslist Murders is a murderously satirical romp through the land of the uber-rich and the well-heeled but tortured souls who reside there. A lovingly crafted celebration of New York City emerges through the closely observed details and urban ironies that can come only from someone who walks the city streets with her eyes and her soul wide open. Piquant aphorisms and cynical observations about life, love, pleasure and despair are embedded like jewels in this merciless satire of characters addicted to over-the-top materialism and self-gratification. How does Ms. Cullerton know such much about the rich, the poor, the decorating trade, and the peaks and pits of life in New York? Who knows, but this reader thanks her for the marvelous ride through such a forbidding, and deliciously rendered funhouse!