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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of my "Year's Best", December 23, 2001
This review is from: The Night Men (Jason Keltner Mysteries) (Hardcover)
Reviews are a strange business. In the end, of course, it's just an opinion of a singular individual, but it's funny how a book or music--or anything, for that matter--can inspire such wildly divergent opinions. For example, the negative review posted below is a substantially different one from my own, as I thought THE NIGHT MEN was one of the best books I've read this year. For one thing, it takes chances. Combining three different story arcs--that of Jason's vigilant nightwatch over Zeb's shop after it's been vandalized, when Jason and his closest friends Robert and Martin meet as teenagers and forge their friendship in the midst of a similar situation (but with different results), and excerpts from a PI novel that was an inspiration for the trio in their teen years and from then on--is no easy task, and most writers don't even come close to succeeding. However, I never had a problem discerning between the arcs, and the transitions were very smooth and easy to follow. Second, the characters have grown from previous books and grow throughout. The Jason, Robert, and Martin you may have met in SHOW CONTROL (or more likely in the later books) are older, more thoughtful, and less likely to fall back on the flippancy that often characterizes their conversations. It's still there, and I'm glad for it, but not to the same degree. This mirrors the progression of Snyder's own writing style--it has far more substance and honesty in THE NIGHT MEN than it ever did before. Which ties into my third point, which is that this book doesn't patronize talk down to the reader, but instead assumes that he or she can handle reasonably intelligent ideas and thought. And it's probably the only book with a subplot about a stolen theremin, and I just thought that was cool. Admittedly, THE NIGHT MEN is not an easy book to categorize; it's drenched in the conventions of the crime novel and owes much to it, but I wouldn't call the book a crime novel. It doesn't have Big Best Seller (TM) written all over it (though I really wish it did) because it doesn't fit so neatly into the little boxes occupied by whoever's on the fiction list these days. But that shouldn't stop you from getting it, reading it, buying it for your friends, getting them to read it, etc. Because if you're looking for something that actually makes you think about a great many things, like what makes a friendship and the emotional benefits and costs, and why familial bonds are often less strong than they potentially should be, THE NIGHT MEN's the book to pick up.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Impressively deep, October 11, 2010
Snyder really tells three stories here, and interweaves them with lyrical brilliance. We see the modern Jason Keltner deal with solving a mystery in his usual Gentlyesque fashion, but at the same time we get both a formative story from his childhood and excerpts from a fictional early 20th century hardboiled detective novel. The invented crime fiction forms a backdrop for Jason's transition into adulthood, which in turn is reflected in his modern day situation. Whilst the main plot amounts to not very much in the end, the journey Snyder takes us on is thrilling and engaging. The language accurately evokes that peculiar sense of teenage loneliness and camaraderie that so many of us carry into our adult lives; it would be hard not to empathize with fifteen-year-old Jason as he is suddenly and harshly rejected by his closest friend. An innovative and insightful read.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wow!, December 21, 2001
This review is from: The Night Men (Jason Keltner Mysteries) (Hardcover)
"Suddenly, thoroughly sick of learning things, Jason snapped. "Look-!" Keith Snyder goes deeper and farther with Jason Keltner and his friends than he's gone before (And neither he nor Jason would be guilty of committing a cliche like that.) Comng of age is another cliche and The NIght Men is not "just" a coming of age story. A friend's music store is trashed in the night--amybe a hate crime--and Jason rides his bike over the Brooklyn Bridge in winter. Not a good idea for anyone, especially a California boy. Something more than macho pride or even friendship impels him. The past is never really past, of course, it bleeds into the present. When Jason and Robert and Martin were in high school, they met because life sometimes throws people together and fighting in a very nonTV-ish unsimplistic way against a hate crime/defending Robert's house binds them together. The Night Men--a crime novel that Robert and Jason read togethe--binds the story together. Carter is the hero, one of those lone men who down those dark streets go, the knight errent who tried to save--who tries to save who and what he can. When he can. Jason offers to guard the music store at night. robert flies out to be with him. The past is present. The boy stands guard with the man. And Jason learns, even though, as he says, he is tired of learning lessons. He learns about friendship and love and what a man does to be honorable even when he wonders if he's only making a fool of himself, swinging at shadows. This is a brilliant, wonderful, funny, heartbreaking, heartmeaking book. Buy it. Read it. Love it. (I did. I do.)
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