Steel Toes: A Novel [Paperback]

Eddie Little (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2002

Eddie Little, author of the hit Another Day in Paradise and who The New York Times describes as "Reminiscent of Hunter Thompson and William Burroughs," is back with a new gripping crime novel. Little writes about the world he used to inhabit, a place filled with drugs, crime and danger at every turn. His electrifying prose brings to life the rough, raw, and seedy life of Boston's underworld where corruption lies at the heart of every deception.

Bobbie is a young criminal prodigy. Living in Boston he's approached by a mysterious Greek on behalf of an anonymous shipping tycoon, who wants to commission a theft. The Fogg museum is the target; a collection of ancient Greek coins the score. Everything goes fine with the burglary, but with easy street just around the corner Bobbie's life takes an unexpected twist and his big score evaporates. With his life on the line, Bobbie must learn who he can trust when trusting anyone can make you lose everything.

Steel Toes is as close to reality as fiction can get. Little draws you in with his knife sharp writing, his authentic and unflinching characters and plot as tight and strong as the hold of addiction.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Revisiting the prison milieu that made the author's Another Day in Paradise a critical success, Little springs a violent felon from an Indiana prison and sends him climbing up the criminal ladder before a high-stakes coin heist in Boston brings him tumbling back to earth. The adventures of antihero Bobbie Prine continue in this sequel as Prine executes a daring escape from the high-security Indiana facility he calls home, and quickly goes back to his drug-taking, law-breaking ways after landing on his feet on an Illinois farm run by a friend. His first criminal venture is a mildly lucrative gig kiting travelers' checks, but Prine's longing for the big score remains unfulfilled until he moves to Boston. There, he is hired by a gang to steal a rare coin collection from the Fogg Museum, but his plans go up in smoke when the famous elderly buyer suddenly dies, leaving Prine with a potentially priceless but unsellable haul. His bosses try to take him down after the heist falls apart, leading to a violent bloodbath when Prine goes on a no-holds-barred killing spree. The first third of the book is flat and derivative, but the plot gets interesting once Prine makes his break, and the passages set in Boston offer plenty of suspense and intrigue to offset the gratuitous violence and some silly romantic subplots. Little sticks closely to the tried-and-true formulas of prison fiction, but his ability to put together a fast-moving and at times riveting caper should help develop his critical reputation. (Nov. 5)Forecast: Another Day in Paradise was made into a movie directed by Larry Clark (Kids) and starring James Woods and Melanie Griffith, which should boost Little's name recognition. His rep as an ex-addict he is now the director of an organization that feeds the homeless in L.A. should help generate interest, too, at least on the local level.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

The sequel to Another Day in Paradise (1998), this bleak tale continues the saga of 18-year-old Bad Bobbie, last seen in an Indiana juvenile detention center after a crime spree gone terribly wrong. After a bloody jailhouse fight, he escapes along with two friends just before being transferred to a state prison. The rest of the book is a long, grim, violent odyssey through the underworlds of the Midwest and the East Coast as Bobbie hooks up with some old and new associates for increasingly high-stakes criminal activity. He seeks money and heroin with a single-minded intensity that even falling in love can't change, and his bad choices lead him two steps back for every positive step he makes along the way. Little, an ex-convict and recovering drug addict, injects the story with realistic, rapid-fire dialogue and spares no depressing detail about the poisonous lifestyles of Bobbie and his unlucky entourage. A painfully graphic cautionary tale. Carrie Bissey
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: L.A. Weekly Books (November 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312303203
• ISBN-13: 978-0312303204
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,456,163 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Little loves to break your heart, June 28, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Steel Toes: A Novel (Paperback)

The late great Eddie Little follows his born-to-lose autobiographical character Bobby Prine to prison and on to further escapades with Syd, Ben, and Billy Bones from Another Day in Paradise. If you liked the former you'll find this a respectable follow-up. Little sketches out his underworld characters, not as fully developed as in Another Day in Paradise, which is the superior book, but still draws you in until you start to care about his adopted family of thieves and junkies. As before, he pulls no punches and makes no excuses for his characters behaviour; it's an unflinching, unapologetic revelation of their world. He demonstrates how their addictions, fears, insecurities, and violent coping mechanisms, constantly undermine their intentions, even their better ones. What I liked about Little's writing was this ability to articulate the root causes of crime and addiction: abuse, ignorance, and the eternal cycle of violence, without his characters being victims of anything other than their own choices. He gets in his licks, makes a few points about thrill seeking and the dangers of addiction, but always with his eyes wide open, and with redemption just out of reach, for Bobby Prine, and it most unfortunately seems, for Eddie Little himself.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better than the last, and that's saying plenty, March 5, 2002

By 

Crime Guy (Mobile AL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Steel Toes: A Novel (Hardcover)

No kidding, Eddie's first [Another Day in Paradise] is fantastic. Having said that, I think his latest is even better. The voice is more refined, where it's still all tough, but with more focus. And I found a lot more hope in this one. Rock on, Eddie!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Steel Toes showcases Little's development, January 20, 2002

By 

Eric Evans (Ann Arbor, MI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Steel Toes: A Novel (Hardcover)

If you liked Another Day in Paradise, then Steel Toes is a must-read. Eddie Little is a modern day Beat writer who takes on gritty reality and serves it up raw. This guy writes from the heart, his tales are gripping, intense, and they take one into an underworld that few have experienced. I found the characters in this novel more developed and more real than in the first novel; particularly enthralling is the portrayal of the hit men in Steel Toes. As homicidal maniacs who profit from their sickness, the hit men come to life as real people, carrying the weight of the sickness but also capable of human emotions, love, friendship, while still you know in the back of your head that they make their living by taking the lives of others. An awesome experience to look inside their lives and that of the other characters in Steel Toes. I've no doubt that Eddie Little shaped these characters from real-life acquaintances, the characters are too compelling, too deep to have been concocted from his imagination. My only complaint is that Eddie Little can't write novels as fast as I can read them!