Customer Reviews

Tribeca Blues

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4 star:		(2)
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First of all, if you have not read Jim Fusilli's CLOSING TIME and A WELL-KEPT SECRET, please stop reading this right now, obtain those books, read them, and come back. I'll be happy to wait.

Thank you. TRIBECA BLUES is the third of Fusilli's novels to feature Terry Orr. Orr is by turns a novelist, an erstwhile pro bono private investigator and occasionally hapless father --- a man quietly but severely damaged by the death of his wife and infant son. You can probably experience TRIBECA BLUES without reading CLOSING TIME and A WELL-KEPT SECRET, but sledding through TRIBECA BLUES is a bit easier if you read its predecessors first. You also will be able to fully appreciate how good Fusilli has been right out of the gate and how he seems to be developing into such a great writer that we may need to start creating new adjectives to describe what he is doing.

TRIBECA BLUES begins with Orr and Bella, his (precocious, but not overly so) 15-year-old daughter gently interacting, a scene that is a prelude to the death of a close friend of Orr. Orr's friend leaves him a bequest and a request, one that takes Orr, Bella and their friends to New Orleans for a funeral and the beginning of a quest to bring Orr's friend the justice that was denied him during his life. While in New Orleans, Orr is advised that the mother of Raymond Weisz, the man suspected of murdering Orr's wife and son, has passed away. Orr immediately returns to New York City to attend the funeral, believing that Weisz will be compelled to attend his mother's funeral, if only to assure himself that she is dead. The funeral becomes a catalyst for Orr's discovery that everything he knew about his wife and her death seems to be dreadfully, horribly wrong. It also dovetails into Orr's quest on behalf of his late friend.

All is told before the backdrop of New York City, a place that Orr (and Fusilli) knows quite well. Orr in fact personifies the city, as both are badly damaged by tragedy. Both are surviving, existing and even to some extent thriving, but forever damaged and forever changed in ways both known and yet to be. TRIBECA BLUES answers some questions and raises new ones. The only constants for Orr and his city are sorrow and hope.

Fusilli is simply incredible. He never goes for the easy shot, choosing instead to quietly aim for the moon and stars and hitting them every single time. His intimate knowledge of his locales is not limited to New York City either. While his characters journey to the French Quarter during their New Orleans visit, Fusilli wisely pulls back from making the area the focal point of their business, focusing instead on The Warehouse and Garden Districts. Fusilli's reference in TRIBECA BLUES to Meyer the Hatter --- a fedora shop tucked away on St. Charles Street --- demonstrates not only a knowledge of but also a love of New Orleans as he captures a detail that only those who know the city well would appreciate.

Fusilli is that rare writer who both created and fulfilled the promise of greatness with his first novel. TRIBECA BLUES continues the fulfillment of that promise and the ongoing creation of a new legend. Very highly recommended.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

It's been five years since Raymond Weisz allegedly threw his infant son on the railroad tracks in the path of an oncoming train. His wife Marina was also killed when she jumped down to rescue her son. Terry Orr is still determined to track down the man and kill him but in the meantime he and his fifteen-year-old daughter Bella go to New Orleans to attend the funeral of his friend Leo Mallard.

Leo wanted Terry to find his wife so she could face justice. Lenore caused their flourishing restaurant to go into bankruptcy because she embezzled company funds. Terry has every intention of fulfilling Leo's last request but while he is in New Orleans he gets a fax stating Weisz's mother died. Believing that his family's killer will finally show at the funeral, Terry rushes back to New York City. As he talks to a person who had seen the subway killings of Terry's family members, the witness is murdered. As Terry searches for Raymond, he begins to learn the truth to that deadly incident five years ago and why Leo's reputation and happiness was destroyed.

The protagonist of TRIBECA BLUES, a man readers have come to care about, conducts two different investigations in his own quixotic manner. Having a private investigator's license doesn't harden the man nor does the tragedy that haunts him or seeing the dark side of humanity. Instead it allows Terry to take action and feel he is part of making the world a better place. Jim Fusilli gives his audience an insider's look at the Big Apple he loves so much and come to understand why he loves the city that never sleeps.

Harriet Klausner

This is ellen in atlanta, and Jim Fusilli's newest Terry Orr book has arrived and the story and character lines are getting more potent and heady -- survivors - like the folks after 9/11 in the TriBeCa area - Orr has been striking out to find the man who he thinks purposely killed his infant son and wife - the last 5 years of his life has been stagnant - and he needs answers and needs to move on with his life, writing career, or pi career, and the lady friend in his life, and the light of his life, his daughter, Bella - he receives answers he did not expect, yet shows how big his heart is and helps closure-
Time for Terry to shine in the next novels!
Bravo Fusilli!!!

This is the third installment in the Terry Orr chronicles. Terry is an independently wealthy Manhattanite, father of a precocious teenage daughter, (Bella), and a widower... His wife and young son tragically killed in the NY subway. Because of this tragedy, Terry has given up writing and become a pro bono PI, i.e. after reading the paper he takes on cases just because they spark his interest or capture his emotions.

This last premise, as goofy as it sounds, worked fairly well in the first two installments of this series because the author didn't let the the fact that Terry had no clients, nor did he collect fees, interfere with engaging story lines. In the background was always his family tragedy but without overwhelming the story.

In this book, five years after the event, the tragedy comes to the forefront as it inevitably had to. Unfortunately there is no real case or mystery to this book and without spoiling the plot, no real resolution for poor Terry.

All the quirks and nuances of the past books are here, including Bella's teenage witticisms, the geography of NYC, (usually while Terry is hoofing it), NPR programming, the Italian dishes served in the Orr household, Terry's habitual run-ins with the NYPD and for some reason, numerous brands and descriptions of bottled water. But unfortunately,at least for me, no engaging story line.

All the threads of the first two novels about Terry Orr come together here in a (more or less) satisfying resolution, which means you definitely do *not* want to read this book first. It's really almost a single long novel, and you'll have to start at the beginning. It all starts with the death (natural) of one of the major supporting characters, with the informal will the deceased leaves behind, and the back story of his exile in New York from south Louisiana. Terry has to see to it that his late friend's wishes (on behalf of another close friend) are fulfilled, which involves a couple of trips to New Orleans. Now, Fusilli's work is noteworthy for the sense of place he gives to New York City -- a place I have never lived -- but I have to say he also does pretty well by New Orleans and Thibodaux -- a part of the world I know very well. The details and place names he drops are accurate and well directed. (Though I also have to say he perhaps makes more of the local humidity than necessary. On the other hand, I'm originally from south Texas, which may be even soggier than the bayous. . . .) But the real plot interest for fans of the series is Terry's discovery that everything he thought he knew about his late wife, about the nature of his marriage, and about the schizophrenic whom he believes killed his wife and son -- all of it is fundamentally incorrect. And other people who sympathize with him knew it all along. Five years of his life wasted. Five years when he should have concentrated much more on his adolescent daughter. The resolution of his conflict with The Madman is cinematic in its "rightness," and it wraps up the trilogy rather nicely. But, perhaps unfortunately, there's now a fourth novel out about Terry Orr; having resolved the tensions in Terry Orr's life, what is the author going to do with him now? I'll keep my fingers crossed.

In this third installment in Fusilli's Terry Orr series, Fusilli explores Orr's quest for vengeance for his wife's death five years earlier. As a P.I., Orr is still hunting the mentally ill Ray Weisz whom he believes pushed his infant son's stroller onto the path of a New York subway train causing his wife Marina to follow, plunging both to their deaths. But his quest his put on a temporary hold when friend Leo dies, and Terry and his teenaged daughter Bella travel to The Big Easy for Leo's funeral.

Taut and complex, Fusilli's tale is full of unexpected curves, especially when Orr discovers from an eyewitness to his wife's death, that she was kissing an unknown man, and Weisz possibly tried to stop the stroller's ominous descent onto the subway tracks. Not only does this unexpected disclosure stun Terry, it alters his quest for vengeance and allows him to open up to patient girlfriend Julie.

At the request of his deceased friend Leo, Orr tries to locate Leo's long absent wife Loretta, whom Leo believes caused financial disaster in their New York restaurant business, forcing Leo to buy the pathetic bar he owned until his death. But Loretta somehow ties into the circumstances surrounding Marina's death, and Orr isn't sure anymore who was responsible for Leo's financial demise.

Fusilli has penned a novel that constantly hovers in the gray, where there is no black or white, no right or wrong, and many of the characters are constantly crossing the line, especially Terry, as he attempts to seek closure in the death of his wife. The tightly written plot line will leave even readers unfamiliar with his series eagerly seeking a sequel.

Tribeca Blues, the third in the Terry and Bella Orr series is, to put it simply, a KNOCKOUT! Fusilli just keeps getting better and better. There are surprises in this book that actually had me gasping. That doesn't happen too often. You don't have to have read the first two books to appreciate Blues. But if you haven't, you'll want to run out and read the other two immediately. Fusilli writes rings around most of them out there. I can't wait until the next. And, no, he's no relation to me!!

This book is located primarily in New York City (Manhattan) but some takes place in Louisiana. He creates in an atmospheric "noir" mood about an angry man searching for the truth in both places.

I think I liked this book less than the first I read by him, A Well Known Secret (which was written in the wake of 9-11 and captured the country's mood well). I was tiring a bit of the main character, Terry Orr, in this book (it has, after all, been five years since wife and baby died, hit by a subway train, and he's still awash in rage and self-pity).

Still, the book is well worth a read because Fusilli writes so well. In this book, a lot of what Terry Orr has believed gets turned upside down. The book begins with the natural death of a friend of his (Leo, found dead in his own bar). Terry finds a letter from Leo asking him to find the Leo's ex-wife and punish her somehow for what she's done. Terry sets out to find her, but has not lost sight of his 5-year goal of finding the person who pushed his son's stroller onto the tracks in front of an incoming train so he can punish THAT man. Somehow these two plots wind together.

The other thing I didn't like was the negative view of women apparent in this book -- the only female I liked was basically a child (Terry's daughter Bella) -- the adult women were despicable (avaricious and cruel) or made carpets of themselves (Terry's girlfriend, although, despite seeing her for 3 years, he won't call her that). I think this is probably more of a man's book -- as a woman, I found it hard to not be bothered by his portrayal of women. At the end, one of the characters asks Terry if he likes women, and Terry says that he does. I didn't believe Terry, and I have some questions about the author. He really needs to give this matter some deep thought.

"Tribeca Blues" picks up approximately a year after events depicted in "A Well-Known Secret" with the shocking death of Leo, owner of Tilt and Terry Orr's good friend. He was like a father to Diddio and in a way, was to Orr as well. While both Diddio and Orr knew Leo was not the picture of good health, far from it actually, his death is a shock and a heavy blow and another in the tragic series that has befallen the small group of friends. Also shocking were his last requests that they find hidden in his things.

Diddio is to get Tilt and is to make of it what he will. Orr is to keep an eye on Diddio which is something he would have done anyway and isn't a surprise. What is surprising is that Leo wants Orr to find Loretta Jones, Leo's evil ex-wife and make her pay for what she did to Leo years ago. He wants justice from the grave and Orr isn't going to turn this request down. He begins with good intentions but soon is sidetracked by an opportunity to catch the madman he hold responsible for killing his wife and young son.

Emotionally complex, this novel somewhat completes a story arc that was begun in the first novel. Obsession has been a strong theme throughout the previous two books but not nearly at the level in this book. Obsession and the past along with Orr's raw emotions are ramped up to a higher level that in the previous books but yet do not rise to the level that would drown the reader.

While there are heavy periods of intense emotional angst and introspection, the main storyline of bringing Loretta Jones to justice is always present. Often that storyline is slowed to a near standstill while Orr searches for his own personal justice but his search and Leo's last request are deeply intertwined. This sets up a final fifty pages or so when everything clicks into place and the reader is whipped along in an intense climax. Considering the overall story arcs, it isn't surprising that this novel is aimed squarely at the ongoing internal emotions and psychic struggle of Orr. As such, it also becomes a character study of one man and where his responsibility and well as guilt lie.

This third book in the series is another excellent book. I strongly recommend reading the two previous books so that the power of this book is not diminished. It is simply very good stuff and a real treat.

Kevin R. Tipple © 2005

This book is the third in the Orr series, but it's the first one I picked up. It's fantastic. Fusilli is an excellent writer. Keep 'em coming!