Customer Reviews

Hard, Hard City

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Manhattan Private Eye Terry Orr is still dealing with the death of his wife and son, who have been gone for three years. He has a bright twelve-year-old daughter named Bella who he should be spending more time with and he feels guilty about not doing so. He's got a new relationship going with attorney Julie Giada and he has a problem with commitment, and he has his work. He is a complex man.

One day his daughter's friend, a boy named Daniel Wu asks Terry to investigate the disappearance of Allie Powell, another teen. Terry agrees and before long he's run off the road, shot and and beaten to pulp. This, of course, does not deter him, on the contrary, he works even harder and, of course again, more violence ensues as he digs up some dirty secrets that have sent the boy into hiding. Secrets that could get both him and the boy killed.

Mr. Fusilli has written, in my opinion, a tension filled, character driven book that is a worthy addition to his series. I don't see how anyone who reads mysteries or thrillers could possibly not love this book. I know I did. It's dark, it's got suspense, it's awfully darn good.

Terry Orr tries to live in the present but the past is never more than a seconds thought away. Not that he doesn't have plenty of reason to live in the here and now thanks to his young teenage daughter, Gabriella whom he calls lovingly Bella, her friends, and other things of interest. But, he still feels the loss of his wife Marina and their young son and while he mourns their loss he also never will really know what his wife Marina truly felt and thought.

He used to write and hasn't in a very long time. He used to work as a detective until after his last case when Bella hid his private investigator license in an attempt to protect him from himself. It has been over a month and he really hasn't done much of anything. That is until a friend of hers, Daniel, asks Terry Orr for his help.

Daniel, describing a situation of a friend of a friend deal asks his help in locating a young student by the name of Allie Powell. Allie took classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City and hasn't been seen in days. His powerful parents don't seen to know or even care where he is. The Uncle who lives up on the Upper East Side wasn't much help either to Daniel's friend when she went looking for him. Daniel doesn't like the situation at all and thinks it needs to be made clear to the family of the missing student that Allie has friends.

Orr agrees to talk to the Uncle and things quickly get out of hand. Accosted and roughed up repeatedly, Orr works a case that quite clearly no one in the boy's family want him involved with. Beyond the rather strange Uncle and his issues, the parents have an agenda of their own and the welfare of their son seems to be a minor secondary concern. They share their lack of concern over the boy's safety with another group who is looking for him for unknown reasons and don't seem to care who gets hurt in the process. Through it all Orr tries to deal with a current mystery as well as the pain and unresolved questions of his own past.

This fourth novel of the series is a well written and features an interesting multi facetted main character as well as a slew of interesting secondary characters. Relationships matter deeply in the work as does the past. The result is a highly engaging read that could be read as a stand-alone but would definitely be better enjoyed if read in the sequence of the series. The pace of the tale is slow, broken by violent sequences of action at times, and at other times, by digressions regarding past events and motivations. As the story moves forward the real world falls away and the reader becomes enmeshed into this enjoyable and highly entertaining novel.

Kevin R. Tipple © 2005
(real name--way past 13)

I would suggest to anyone reading this particular novel to put on an extra sweater because every page makes your blood a little thinner. Both the city and Terry Orr, run from numbingly cold to red hot. Orr has this one little problem, he only relates to women that can't warm up to him. Those he loves eternally, while those who dare to say that they love him he runs for cover. Usually to thugs who enjoy knocking his block off. Could that be his way of connecting? Why? Of course it's his cold, heartless mother who never tells him what he has done wrong. Maybe its the chunky he stole from the candy store. In this installment, Terry revisits his past because of a half baked assignment from his daughter's young, charmingly warm and wonderful friend. Not her boyfriend, what father could truly love his daughter's boyfriend. Anyway this little excursion leads him back in his imagination to his morose, blue collar childhood, peopled with ineffectual fathers, weird uncles and the evil, crazy mother. Probably the true villian of this little rag to riches saga. He actually travels towards Springsteen country to hook up with the villian who is also from a dismal Jersey town, but who turns to the dark side, makes good and seeks status in all the wrong places. Not like Orr who struggles to overcome his working class roots but retain his soul.
Get off it Orr, tell us about what really is ticking you off so you can get this series in gear. If you haven't already, Mr. Fusilli, read Khaled Hosseini's Kite Runner, a great book about childhood, fathers and sons and absent mothers. This narrator pieces together his past in a way that reverberates through the reader. Break your no reading rule.

This book is a pleasure to read. I have been disappointed a lot lately by mysteries but this one makes up for a couple of stinkers. The following is an off the wall example of the author's skill but indicative of what he can do. The PI main character lives in Manhatten and has a genius, precocious teen daughter. I could actually read the scenes involving her without visualizing my hands slowly closing the windpipe of the little know it all. He could make even her bareable. I loved the plot and the 3D characters. One problem, I wanted to buy the rest of the series but they aren't in print. I'll just have to wait until a new one comes out.

It is hard to believe that HARD, HARD CITY is only the fourth of Jim Fusilli's entries in the mystery novel genre. Already well-known for his insightful reviews and essays concerning the music industry for the Wall Street Journal, Fusilli has carved a separate career out of whole cloth and has done it to the extent that it is easy to think of him first as the creator of Terry Orr: writer, erstwhile private investigator, single father of Bella, and widower of the late Marina. This latest novel continues Fusilli's examination of Orr's life, his struggles with and accommodations to post-911 Manhattan.

HARD, HARD CITY finds Orr still reeling from the revelation --- possibly true, possibly not --- that his wife was involved with another man at the time of her death. Orr is not obsessed with, so much as shadowed by, the ghost of Marina and their infant son, David, who also died. There are days, however, when the memories and the uncertainty of what is true or untrue threaten to drown him.

He accordingly welcomes a request from Bella's friend, Daniel Wu, to look for a missing friend. Allie Powell has been missing from school for weeks. He has been staying with John McPorter, a friend of the family, in New York City during the week while attending school and returning home to New Jersey on the weekends. McPorter is an odd but apparently harmless soul who assures Orr that Allie is a good boy; he doesn't connect Allie's disappearance with the simultaneous burglary of a few hundred dollars from his safe. Harlan Powell, Allie's father, is a high-rolling investor who has made a number of enemies in the financial world with his questionable business practices. Powell grudgingly retains Orr to locate his son, an act that suddenly becomes the catalyst for the commencement of a cycle of senseless violence.

Fusilli has become a master at blindsiding his readers. He has few equals in this regard --- Ross Macdonald, possibly one or two others --- and his timing is so subtle, so exquisite, that one is compelled to turn the page while simultaneously being almost afraid to do so. Orr's domestic life balances nicely against the grimness of his cases, and Fusilli is wisely showing no inclination toward keeping Bella in pigtails and anklets forever; instead, he is letting her age in real-time between appearances in the novels.

HARD, HARD CITY is appropriately named, a work that further ensconces Fusilli's name and work onto the short list of the best in the genre. If you haven't read him before, start now while his backlist remains manageable. You'll want to catch up.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

The underlying plot in this story is one of family relationships; Terry's with his parents, his late wife and child, and his daughter and current girlfriend. There was much to recommend this book; interesting characters, excellent dialogue and the depiction of New York. The problem I had was due to not having read the previous books in the series. I didn't have a relationship with the characters or a sympatric understanding of their relationship with each other., which left me with a feeling of disconnect. Still, the story is well written and the author very talented.

I usually like to read several books at once. But I HAD to read "Hard, Hard City" in one sitting. It is sensational. I beg anyone who has not read this author to order this book immediately. It's that good.

After years of mourning for his wife and their son who died in a train accident, private detective Terry Orr still struggles with the fact that his spouse was locked in a passionate embrace with another man while her son was on the rail tracks. She died trying to save their child's life. Terry cares for Julie, but is unable to tell or show her how much he needs her. His daughter Bella looks after him because she understands his pain and he will do anything for her.

Bella asks her father to find Allie Powell, who has been missing for several days. Terry visits John McPorter, who shows the sleuth his open safe in which $471 and some envelopes were stolen leaving behind much more valuable items. Next Terry sees Allie's father Powell who believes the detective has the stolen items; his goons rough up Terry. He returns to John's house to find the man impaled on a fence and not long afterward the man's son is dead in a shoddy apartment building. Terry concludes that Powell seeks incriminating documents that John possessed and if he can prove this perhaps Allie can come out of hiding.

Jim Fusilli provides a dark urban noir that paints the meanness of city streets. The protagonist prefers being shot at or beaten up as less painful than his thoughts and enables him to escape from his growing unwanted feelings for Julie. The story line is action-packed filled with colorful secondary characters, but it is the sinister Manhattan skyline that makes HARD, HARD CITY a tale that fans of James Patterson will want to read.

Harriet Klausner