Night Train [Hardcover]

Martin Amis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 12, 1998

Detective Mike Hoolihan has seen it all. A fifteen-year veteran of the force, she's gone from walking a beat, to robbery, to homicide. But one case--this case--has gotten under her skin.

When Jennifer Rockwell, darling of the community and daughter of a respected career cop--now top brass--takes her own life, no one is prepared to believe it. Especially her father, Colonel Tom. Homicide Detective Mike Hoolihan, longtime colleague and friend of Colonel Tom, is ready to "put the case down." Suicide. Closed. Until Colonel Tom asks her to do the one thing any grieving father would ask: take a second look.

Not since his celebrated novel Money has Amis turned his focus on America to such remarkable effect. Fusing brilliant wordplay with all the elements of a classic whodunit, Amis exposes a world where surfaces are suspect (no matter how perfect), where paranoia is justified (no matter how pervasive), and where power and pride are brought low by the hidden recesses of our humanity.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

On a beautiful night in a second-tier American city, a beautiful astrophysicist with the clichéd everything to live for shoots herself dead with a .22. Tough-talking detective Mike Hoolihan, quickly summoned to the scene, has witnessed every sort of victim: "Jumpers, stumpers, dumpers, dunkers, bleeders, floaters, poppers, bursters." But this case is different. Mike has known the young woman for years--she's the daughter, it turns out, of Mike's mentor, Colonel Tom Rockwell. And the colonel is desperate to find a perp, despite massive evidence to the contrary.

In Night Train, Martin Amis has fixed his sights on the American female--with a difference. Mike is in fact a woman--a hulking, chain-smoking, deep-voiced alcoholic who comes complete with a squalid family background and a none-too-happy foreground. She even lives in a building next to the proverbial night train and can't survive without her tape with eight different versions of the R & B "hymn to the low rent."

Did this novel begin as narrative flexing, yet another test the hypertalented author--and number-one Elmore Leonard fan--wanted to pose to himself? If so, he has passed with flying colors. True, Mike's search occasionally pushes her up against pulp pathos, but mostly the genre keeps Amis true. "Police are pretty blasé about ballistics. Remember the Kennedy assassination and 'the magic bullet'? We know that every bullet is a magic bullet. Particularly the .22 roundnose. When a bullet enters a human being, it has hysterics. As if it knows it shouldn't be there."

Mike spends her time weighing the evidence, wishing it would point to murder, and letting us in on some current police realities. Whatever television tells us, in real life (not to mention postmodern crime fiction), there's no neat solution. Even that old standard, the good cop-bad cop approach, no longer works: "It's not just that Joe Perp is on to it, having seen good cop-bad cop a million times on reruns of Hawaii Five-O. The only time bad cop was any good was in the old days, when he used to come into the interrogation room every ten minutes and smash your suspect over the head with the yellow pages." With such discourses, Amis is stretching the rubber band of his book's realism. But in the end, all his fancy footwork doesn't stop us from admiring and pitying his heroine, and hoping she won't board the ultimate night train: suicide.

From School Library Journal

YA?"Suicide is the night train, speeding your way to darkness." Detective Mike Hoolihan is a case-hardened policewoman, but this case is different. The dead woman is Jennifer Rockwell, the daughter of Mike's friend (and boss), Colonel Tom Rockwell, head of criminal investigation. Even though all the evidence points to suicide, Colonel Tom asks Mike to take another look. Everyone agrees that Jennifer had everything; she was beautiful, a brilliant astrophysicist with a promising career, in love with a professor at the university. Why suicide? As Mike probes the secrets of the deceased woman's life, she is forced to re-examine her own, and the decision she makes at the end of her investigation says as much about her as it does about Jennifer, or Colonel Tom. The author's portrayal of the conflicts and complexities of a criminal investigation is utterly convincing, the dialogue is authentic, and the writing is both spare and powerful. YAs who like detective stories will find themselves pulled into this investigation.?Molly Connally, Kings Park Library, Fairfax County, VA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 175 pages
• Publisher: Harmony (January 12, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609601288
• ISBN-13: 978-0609601280
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (94 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,510,427 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars As usual Amis is misunderstood, November 14, 1998

By 

Robert Stribley (NY, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Night Train (Hardcover)

Much has been written below about Amis's Night Train, and it's interesting to see so many divergent opinions about a single book. I wish only to broach a couple of subjects, rather than give my overall impression of the book (I've reviewed it elsewhere).

First, to address the complaint that NT isn't good detective fiction. One writer complained that Amis has failed at detective fiction and should go back to writing modern fiction. Night Train *is* modern fiction. Amis has adopted the voice of noir fiction to tell another of his typically post-modern stories. The bulk of Amis's work is both satirical and thought-provoking. Night Train doesn't stray from this pre-established territory. If the reader is angered because NT's ending is something other than concrete, because things unraveled instead of being compartmentalized and shunted into pretty, neat, explainable bundles, then he or she has simply chosen the wrong book to read and should probably have picked up Elmore Leonard's latest instead. That doesn't mean Amis was unsuccessful in his endeavor.

Second, as to the complaint that the crime remains unsolved: bollocks. I think a close reading (you cannot successfully read this book thinking it to be a simple detective story)reveals that Amis is again satirizing modern society. I don't have the book in front of me, but I remember the essence of parts which discuss the following idea: in an are where motiveless murder is so common as to be mundane, what (area of crime, if you will) does that leave unexplored? Motiveless suicide. I'm oversimplifying what Amis wrote for the sake of brevity, but the seadlings for your own thought are certainly planted within those pages. I'll agree that the ending is somewhat nebulous. Many of Amis's are, I believe because he makes great efforts to avoid hackneyed, cliched writing, and so many endings are typically hackneyed, cliched; try appreciating his ending to his latest short story in the NYer, "The Janitor on Mars," what a bizarre, but similarly provocative little piece of work that is.

Having said all this, I can only give the book three stars for the simple reason that if I gave it more, what would I give to London Fields or the Rachel Papers?

Cheers!

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Necessary spoiler follows, October 13, 2004

By 

Deacon Ficks (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Night Train (Paperback)

It seems to me that the bad reviews that readers shower upon Martin Amis, on Amazon, are written by people who get so lost in Amis' wordplay that they miss the usually uncomplicated point.

Firstly, Night Train is a beautiful novel in which our hero(?) Mike Hoolihan is forced to examine her self worth. Faced with the suicide of a "perfect" girl, Mike is forced to reconsider whether or not her own existence is worth prolonging. She points out, fairly early in the novel, that suicides are prone to leaving a vast variety of commentary for those they leave behind. These suicide notes vary in style and form.

Night Train IS Mike's suicide note. Some two hundred pages of explaination for her loved ones. In the process she manages to prove that her self image is twisted. She has admirers and friends but views herself as ultimately alone.

Anyone who didn't appreciate this novel, I'm convinced, missed the point that what they were reading was something personal intended for Mike's loved ones. A farewell that was meant, as suicide notes usually are, to comfort, explain and beg forgiveness for their author's actions.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A profound and worthwhile read, October 28, 2001

By 

Fairbanksreader "Fairbanksreader" (Alaska) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Night Train (Hardcover)

This is one of those books that can not be characterized as a single genre. It is a compilation of mystery, psychological suspense, and an exploration of the impact of death and suicide on those close to the victim. Mr. Amis' writing is superb. He uses a concise and hard-hitting style to narrate the examination of an apparent suicide of the daughter of a police officer. I could not put the book down and I asked my husband to read it so that we could discuss it together. As a clinical social worker and psychotherapist, I found it profoundly insightful about the mysteries of death and suicide.