Customer Reviews

The Craigslist Murders: A Novel

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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!

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!

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!

Solace for all those lamenting the season finale of Dexter. Charlotte Wolfe takes up the cause following her own carefully cultivated code, ridding the world of serial social climbers. This is a funny, macabre, fast paced novel that captures the outrageous and ludicrous self-absorption of the super rich who mercilessly get their just reward.

I opened "Craigslist Murders" and was immediately pulled into Charlotte Wolf's world. I read through the night, fearful at times, but needing to know how Brenda Cullerton was going to seal Charlotte's destiny. It is a powerful book, its impact almost physically felt as one reads it. Charlotte is complex character .Her fragility and compassion are mixed with her judgmental violence in such a way that the reader cannot help but experience the conflicted feelings of revulsion and sympathy towards her. This complexity carries the story and keeps the reader fully engaged. With "Craigslist Murders" Brenda Cullerton has succeeded in weaving a scary, somewhat disturbing, but very compelling tale of murderous envy.

I loved "The Craiglist Murders." I never read Woolfe's, "I am Charlotte Simmons." I read about it, and couldn't stand the thought of it. I haven't read anything by Woolfe since "Bonfire of the Vanities." Woolfe is all facade, and never moves inward. I love Brenda Cullerton's writing, in the book, and in her blog ([...]), where I discovered her upon the recommendation of James Wolcott. At the heart of the satire is beauty. It is a sublime humanness. I think she captures this in what at first one thinks will be a procedural novel about a killer. The "of the moment" device of Craigslist; but this Charlotte is popping off the villains in the service of a wound so deep as to be forever open. She is functioning in a world of treachery, just waiting to be triggered. Loss, over and over. The coda/postscript, is funny and macabre. And perfect. I am a fan forevah. Oh, and there is a lollipop sucking UPS guy, and a sly nod to the Madoffs, and so many other New York characters make cameo appearances in the neighborhood. The neighborhood of Cullerton's finely observed Manhattan.

Charlotte Wolfe is a successful decorator to the very rich of NYC's Upper East Side. She helps them spend millions on redecorating thing their various expensive properties, while they treat her like a therapist, whining about dealing with BBS- Birkin Bag Syndrome, like carpal tunnel from carrying those heavy expensive handbags, their cheating husbands, and ungrateful children. They buy and buy and are never happy. Charlotte hates them. One day while meeting one of these types of women who was selling something expensive on Craigslist, Charlotte snaps and kills her with a fireplace poker. It made her feel so good, that she becomes addicted to perusing Craigslist for items being sold by Upper East Siders, finding more women to kill. But with each kill, she comes closer to being caught.

This novel is satirical in nature but also goes further than that. Charlotte has a lot of pent up rage (obviously) and we learn about her childhood, growing up wealthy until her father made some bad investments. But Charlotte's mother was cruel and sadistic as she tried to make her daughter into the perfect little girl. Charlotte has few friends and is quite lonely. She has constant nightmares about her childhood.

Cullerton does a great job of describing all of the shallow, rich, elitists who go through money the way most of us go through water. Sadly, these people are all to real in life. I found myself rooting for Charlotte. One of her clients destroys a $15,000 toilet after catching one of the workers using it. Another is devastated over her husband cheating on her until he takes her on a very expensive and exclusive safari in Botswana. I almost wished Charlotte could kill her clients!

This was a quick, enjoyable read with a little more depth than I expected. Unless you are one of those Upper East Siders, I think you will find this book a good summer read.

my rating 4/5

All that vengeance, bloodlust and shrieking fury you've been feeling towards the filthy rich since the 2009 meltdown? Unleash it, my pretties -- and safely! -- via the doings of hard-eyed cutthroat Charlotte Wolfe.

Not that there is indeed someone running around killing annoying consumption-based idiots, but it is awfully fun to think that some people could pay for their bad moral taste.

Cullerton has a fine-honed sense of the absurd (the dinner party guest list alone is worth cracking open the covers), and she's touching on a fundamental flaw in our society in general. Do we really measure worth based upon "things" that we stuff into our houses, or wear on our feet? Are the monsters in her novel, moving their swimming pools (yes, swimming pools) while figuratively Rome burns, truly "victims"? Frankly, I cheered on the anti-heroine as she went about her calling, and the ending was pitch-perfect.

Fingers crossed that Cullerton decides to write a sequel. Surely there is more gold to be mined here.

Just when one thinks the decadence of rich Manhattanites is impossible to satirize, here comes Brenda Cullerton who makes it look as easy as falling off a log. Finally, a crime novel set in the decorating and antiques business that's vicious, credible and perverted and not one of those cloying cozies.

I'm not sure about the series possibilities of the protagonist, Charlotte Wolfe, and I began to miss her as the last chapter ended, but more novels from Ms. Cullerton, please. I think the only other credible and enjoyable writer on the 10021 zip code is the poet, Frederick Seidel.