Flesh and Metal [Hardcover]

John Early (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1998

The Coen brothers' movie Fargo demonstrated that the human comedy could incorporate the most desperate acts in the least sophisticated regions of our country. With comparable skill, John Early in Flesh and Metal also uses the territory of the northern Midwest to tell an engrossing story of good people who refuse to allow the unfair vagaries of life to defeat them.

Jacob Warner, a successful claims lawyer, didn't heed the warning signs that he was burnt out. He didn't notice how immersed he was in his hobby. He barely noticed how distant he'd become from his wife. When she was killed in a tragic accident, it was too late for him to notice anything.

For ten years, Jake's world has consisted of a body shop in North Dakota, where he tries to salve his wounds by smoothing out twisted planes of metal. Then, abruptly, he is dragged back into the world by a surrealistic encounter with a dying sheriff and soon finds himself engaged in a battle of wits against a ruthless insurance executive.

Snapped out of his torpor by rage and by his remarkable friend Luella, Jake seeks to vanquish the executive who represents everything he never wanted to be. In so doing, he rebuilds himself, and just as he has learned to repair with his hands the metal others have wrecked, he discovers with Luella how to restore his own body and soul.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Burnt out after a career defending insurance companies against their claimants, widowed by a car crash, guilty over not having gone to Vietnam, North Dakota attorney Jake Warner, hero of this debut suspense novel, leaves his practice in 1975 to make an honest living as an auto mechanic. Ten years later, he is summoned to the deathbed of a county sheriff, who reveals that he was a conspirator in an insurance fraud that bilked the company out of hundreds of thousands of dollars and paid accident victims' and their families nothing. Allied with girlfriend Luella, herself an accident victim, Jake uses his knowledge of the insurance business to defraud the defrauders, collect a pile of money for his wife's death and see justice done. Although complicated unnecessarily by pretentious prose and heavy-handed thematic flags (everyone is a victim sooner or later, flesh and metal have things in common), the novel sustains tension throughout. Keeping the blood and guts off the page, Early nonetheless creates in Wally Reno a memorably nasty psychopathic villain and complex, sympathetic protagonists in Jake and Luella. (July) FYI: Before he took up the pen, Early worked as an insurance adjuster in his native North Dakota.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

The worlds of auto-body repair, accident insurance, and North Dakota offer unlikely venues for this first novel of love, tragedy, and affirmation. Emotionally maimed by his wife's death in an auto accident, Jake Warner leaves South Dakota and his career as an attorney for an insurance company. He moves to a small town in North Dakota and finds work in an auto-body shop, restoring maimed quarter panels, if not his own psyche. A decade after the accident, he learns that a crooked claims manager falsified reports about his wife's accident and pocketed some of the settlement. But only the drive of his feisty friend, Luella, herself the victim of a disfiguring auto accident, forces Jake from his stuporous, grief-ridden existence to seek redress. The recurring motif of shattered lives and rent metal makes this a dark, dolorous book. Early's technique for linking characters' thoughts to their dialogue is irritating. But readers will find themselves pulling for Luella and Jake to bring down two vividly realized bad guys and restore each other. Thomas Gaughan

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 284 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub; First Edition edition (July 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786705116
• ISBN-13: 978-0786705115
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,990,319 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good Story ANNOYINGLY Told, August 11, 2000

By 

Carol Lindberg Feight - See all my reviews

This review is from: Flesh and Metal (Hardcover)

I was interested in this as a Bargain Book because it takes place in North Dakota, and because the book's author is a teacher at Moorhead State. I almost couldn't finish the book because of the haphazard narrative style; the tenses shift from past to present without warning -- or without reason, and that habit the author has of interjecting dialogue without cues is absolutely maddening. I have never seen anything like that before: Jake blah blah blah and "Suddenly says something." That particular device was so irritating I almost couldn't focus on the plot.

It was a good story but I really wish it had been told in a more straightforward manner.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Was Not What I Expected, July 16, 2001

By 

"bibliofiend" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Flesh and Metal (Hardcover)

My lack of interest in this book stems from the fact that nothing really happens. The character of Luella is a nagging witch who constantly gets pissed at Jake because he doesn't act or respond to her the way she would like him to. Ten years after losing his wife, Jake is a quiet, reserved man still in mourning, and Luella is always screaming at him to let go of the past (not exactly an endearing character you want to relate to). I reluctantly finished the book just to see how it would end. Maybe some people can dig enough to find a deeper meaning to this book, but to me it is just what it seems on the surface--a novel about insurance fraud.