The Night Inspector [Import] [Unbound]

Frederick Busch (Author)

Product Details

• Unbound
• Publisher: Harmony Books (September 2000)
• ISBN-10: 0609607685
• ISBN-13: 978-0609607688
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fails to Gell, October 7, 1999

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Night Inspector (Hardcover)

I fully expected to enjoy this gritty suspense set in the same gilded age NYC of E.L. Doctrow's The Waterworks. For whatever reason though, I found it rather tedious and affected at times. The story follows a former Union army sharpshooter, who must always wear a mask to conceal his wartime disfigurement. This is presumably a metaphor for the city itself--as Busch manages to put tidbits of its historical sordidness, such as child prostitutes, on display for the reader. There are a lot of flashbacks, telling the background of this man, and of his wartime exploits, where he is used as any other tool. These struck me as much better written and interesting than the bulk of the book, which revolves around the man's attempt to liberate some child slaves with the aid of Herman Melville and various other cultivated allies. The characterizations are quite good, as is the period detail, but the story itself never quite gelled for me.

23 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Good night to "The Night Inspector", August 23, 1999

By 

"kevarama" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Night Inspector (Hardcover)

The only other Frederick Busch book I own is "Girls" and I can't recommend it highly enough. That's why "The Night Inspector" gauls me so much and has prompted me to write. This book is a HUGE letdown, a clumsy read, and about as engaging as a trip to the dentist's office. Before anyone writes "Well, you should compare apples to apples" or anything when comparing "Girls" with this book, there are quite a few similarities between this book and "Girls." (A haunted narrator with a violent past trying to save the innocents of the world.)

Yes, Busch's descriptions of exploding heads are quite clever but not jaw-dropping, not tension-packed, nor anything much except, well, dull. I did not care one smidge for the narrator not on his terms, my terms or Busch's terms. I thought the mask was silly (yes, sure, people wear masks) but this is a mask worn by a character in a book, OK? It's heavy-handed, it's old, it's clunky, it's a Big Fat Overdone Symbol like a dove or a rainbow. (You know, check me if I'm wrong, but he's saying that people wear metaphorical masks, right? Whoa, man, heavy....) On the heels of reading "Girls" this story felt programmatic, calculating and a rehash of his previous book in several ways only without the wife, the dog, the wonderful nature descriptions and the slowly building sense of doom. He's taken away those wonderful, subtle things and plugged in a Civil War hero (to catch that post-"Cold Mountain" craze) and a Brush With A Celebrity (in this case Herman Melville to tie into the celebrity fiction craze--see "I Was Amelia Earhart" and "Underworld" and "Dewey vs. Truman" and "The Hours" to name but a few.)

I got really sick of this book early on what with the fact that there's only a cursory attempt at a plot (maybe I didn't tease the plot out enough) but more so during one moment when Melville and the narrator are talking about books and Melville, speaking for the author of course, dismisses the popularity of the memoir--a trend popular then and now and forever more it seems. I took this as an authorial swipe at a very valid art form, albeit an overdone one sure, but for Busch to criticize (through Melville, of course) the authors and/or publishers wanting to produce books that tap into a craze is puzzling. After all, isn't he tapping into popular forms as well, the historical fiction craze, the civil war craze, and giving us, basically, a retread of his last book in the process, only dressed up in this year's finest colors? People do horrible things in the name of capitalism as this book points out with a leaden thunk, but what of it? There are worse things to do something for than money. Yes, of course, there are better reasons too, but money and capitalism are here to stay. Anyway, I wish I had my money back for the purchase of this book. It's an ice-pack of a book that chills and drizzles and puts you right to sleep.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Night Inspector both haunting and lyrical, July 5, 2000

By 

will thomas - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Night Inspector (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (Paperback)

Frederick Busch has given us a heady mixture of emotion, narrative and history in The Night Inspector. This is a powerful novel, a gripping tale of a hero who is damaged emotionally as well as physically. William Bartholomew is a civil war sniper whom fate has punished with a hideous face wound, forever hidden behind a papier-mache mask. The title character of the book is the then for gotten author, Herman Melville- Bartholomew's new friend- who lives a twilight existence as a customs inspector. Melville and the Phantom-like wander a bleak Victorian New York City, drinking heavily and visiting sights of depravity in the old city. Interspersed with the narrative, the masked protagonist's mind keeps wandering back to his days in the war, and the grisly but efficient assassinations he made on behalf of the Union side with his Sharps rifle, prior to his disfigurement. This is a fascinating adventure, written by an excellent storteller. Atmospheric, moody,violent, and sometimes bawdy, this is a novel well worth a few night's reading.