Customer Reviews

Shooting Dr. Jack

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Norm Green's characters are so real and alive, I could swear that I've seen them somewhere in the NY metro area. Shooting Dr. Jack is a mystery...but much more than your typical mystery. It brings you in and puts you right on the streets of Brooklyn. Even though I lost sleep from reading late into the night, I really didn't want the book to end.

My advise to others: try it, you'll like it.

I can't wait for his next novel. Hurry up Norman Green, give us more.

I ended up reading Green's three books in the reverse chronological order in which they were written ... this is his first book and the last one that I read.

I'm a big fan of Green's ... and like this book almost as well as his last.

Like the other two, this has a good plot and interesting characters. While you don't feel much sympathy for the characters at the beginning, they grow on you and by the end you're wholly engaged.

Not a mystery ... but a good suspense novel and a great character study. I'm only sorry that his fourth book hasn't been released!

Shooting Dr. Jack is an excellent first novel for Norman Green. The book's characters come to life with Green's detailed descriptions. His ability to describe characters, places and events is a rarity in todays books, and you feel as if his characters are actual people walking the streets of Brooklyn. Once I started this novel and got to know these characters I could not put it down. I can't wait for Norman Green's second book, I am sure it will be full of more detailed and memorable characters, and surprises.

This is really an unbelievably good first novel. The best part about the book is the characters--they're like something out of The Sopranos. They're not exactly good guys, but boy, do you root for them. The language here sounds completely authentic and the story keeps you turning the pages. This is really a terrific read.

Shooting Dr. Jack was a great crime story that I could not put down that made me run out to the bookstore to buy Norman Green's next three novels The Angel of Montague Street, Way Past Legal and Dead Cat Bounce the very night I finished it!

Right from the get go Mr. Green makes you feel the pain and discomfort welling up in his characters anxiety ridden lives that are starting to spin wildly out of control. The novel's setting and characters are thoroughly believable, not like the usual unrealistic and trite type seen in all too many crime stories.

The stories `less than upright citizens' end up in trouble with some `even less than upright citizens' (who are themselves in trouble with some `much less than upright citizens') and can only get out of danger by setting up an elaborate sting.

All of this frenzied complication and suspense is brilliantly set to the backdrop of alcoholism, drug addiction and prostitution.

Norman Green would like his "Shooting Dr. Jack" to be a gritty crime novel of the Andrew Vachss mode. Indeed, it has the right elements; shady underworld characters, a heartlss neighborhood, and and good amount of violence. Neverheless, it feels like a novel written by someone who has spent their life outside looking in at the world of crime. This novel, while interesting and with enough compelling characers to pull it along, never quite feels authentic. Despite its attempt t be street hip, it is actully quite conventional.

Would I recommend this novel? I suppose I would to anyone who likes a good crime story. It is moderately ententaining, but not all that memorable.

This is an engrossing short novel that has at least two things going for it -- a sense of authenticity and economical writing. The plot has been summarized in other reviews; so I need not go into that.

It didn't have anything to keep my interest. Maybe you have to live in NYC to like it.