Hurricane Lady [Paperback]

Jerome Charyn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2001

Jocko Robinson is the 97th richest man in America and the creator of Lamplighter, the world-popular TV crime series. But that doesn't stop Jocko from getting shot in the head while looking for a tofu burger in Los Angeles. And that won't stop Jocko from falling helplessly in love with the Hurricane Lady, a former model who calls herself Inertia and serves a crime lord from Cologne. A man obsessed among other obsessed men, a man in love among a tangle of lovers, Jocko is desperately trying to pry away Inertia from her life of mayhem and promiscuity. To succeed, Jocko has to enter the realm of his own fantasy-and somehow find a way out again.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Somewhere in this fantastical tale is a plot. Jocko Robinson, the 97th richest man in the world and the developer of the hit television series Lamplighter, is knocked over the head in the parking lot of his favorite Los Angeles lunchtime hangout, Duck Soup. This attack launches a two-continent adventure, which shuffles back and forth between Los Angeles, New York and Cologne, Germany. Jocko is seduced by "Inertia" (born Katinka Baer), one of the "Hurricane Ladies" a group of former models who prey on rich men in order to make their bosses even richer. Inertia's father, the evil Sergeant Baer, turned her into a Hurricane Lady at a very early age. Others of the group go by such names as "Skeleton," "Sloth" and "Lazybones." They are all incredibly beautiful, utterly irresistible to men and totally amoral. Is the top dog of the criminal world that employs these unrealistic women Herr Lothar from Cologne or mobster Carelli from Detroit? Jocko falls in love with Inertia, despite her well-checkered past, while Inertia must resort to desperate measures to save her sanity and her life. The prolific Charyn (The Black Swan, etc.) sweeps the reader through his surreal magical world in a slick Hemingway-esque style. By the end, however, one is not sure if the joke is on the characters or the reader. (May 1)the American Academy of the Institute of Arts and Letters, Charyn received a nomination for the first Hammett Award for his 1991 novel, Elsinore.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Charyn's spare, insinuating prose keeps the reader on the very edge of unease in this nihilistic thriller. Its antihero, Jacko Robinson, despite being the ninety-seventh richest man in America (thanks to^B his creation of a hit TV series about a criminal crime fighter), is wracked by a hopeless love for a woman he pulls out of a snowdrift in New York. Once you learn that the woman drifting in the snowbank is called Inertia, a somewhat seedy fashion model who fleeces businessmen, you know you're being pulled into a dream, heavy on noir symbolism, light on realistic detail. That realization, though, makes Jacko's freefall into obsession no less compelling, and we watch entranced as he finds himself in a nightmarish encounter with a crime lord in Cologne and various criminals in Los Angeles and New York, whose common link is the greedy, well-traveled Inertia. Charyn's dreamlike prose, soft as a whisper, underscores the disturbing fantasy he creates. Unsettling. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Mysterious Press (May 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446677337
• ISBN-13: 978-0446677332
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,778,958 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was born in the mean streets of the Bronx and have remained a city wolf, dividing my time between New York City and Paris.

I grew up reading comic books and watching movies; you can see their influences in my books. I started writing novels at the age of eleven; Amazon carries 40+ titles, fiction and non-fiction.

For the past fourteen years I taught film at the American University of Paris.

I love Emily Dickinson's poems and William Faulkner's novels. I also love Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction," which has the feel of a novel. (I wrote a book about Tarantino, "Raised by Wolves," after the film's release.)

My novel "The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson," published in 2010, inspired a community of more than 3500 Emily Dickinson Facebook fans dedicated to the poet's place in the 21st century.

"The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson" is now available in paperback in a reading group edition with online reading guide.

My most recent book, "Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil," was released on March 8, 2011, part of the Yale University Press series on American Icons. More than 1000 fans are already registered on its Facebook page.

I invite you to join me on Facebook for "The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson" or "Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil." Or visit my website: www.jeromecharyn.com