We All Fall Down - Couverture rigide

Harvey, Michael

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0307272516 ISBN 13 : 9780307272515

Editeur : Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2011

Synopsis

Book by Harvey Michael

A propos du livre

Revue de presse

Praise for Michael Harvey's We All Fall Down

“Harvey shows how a thrilled focused on bioterrorism should be done in his outstanding fourth novel. . . . The complexity of the plot never overwhelms the narrative flow in this utterly persuasive view of a present-day apocalyptic nightmare.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
Praise for Michael Harvey’s The Third Rail
 
“Jolting. . . . Harvey’s feel for Chicago ramps up the fast-paced, grimly realistic action.”
—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
 
“Somebody needs to notify the authorities, because Michael Harvey is bound to create havoc and mayhem with his new thriller. . . . Harvey does for the Windy City what Michael Connelly did for Los Angeles: He commandeers it, warts and all, and wrangles it into his fiction.”
— Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune
 
“[A] knockout thriller. . . . Harvey dispenses the pressure plays, cruel surprises and heartbreaking setbacks of his plot with crack timing, never allowing the reader a moment to unfasten his seat belt. And all the while Harvey renders [P. I. Michael] Kelly’s Chicago in crisp, tough and ironic prose.”
—Gerald Bartell, The Washington Post Book World
 
“The suspense hums and the dialogue is truthfully tough, but it’s the writing that elevates Harvey to the top of the PI genre. He’s the best Chicago novelist . . . since Nelson Algren.”
—Les Roberts, Cleveland Plain Dealer
 
“Michael Harvey should be read by all.”
—John Grisham
 
“A major new voice.”
—Michael Connelly
 
“[A] stellar third novel. . . . Harvey stakes a persuasive claim as the preeminent contemporary voice of Chicago noir.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
“[A] book-length jolt of pure adrenaline.”
—Kirkus
 
“The expert use of Chicago politics that distinguished Harvey’s previous novel, The Fifth Floor, is much in evidence here as well. . . . [T]he action is nonstop, Harvey once again captures the unique zeitgeist of the city, and Kelly, tough, smart, and a bit rough around the edges, is a true native son.”
—Thomas Gaughan, Booklist
 
“Harvey drives his third Michael Kelly entry (after The Fifth Floor) like an efficient train. . . . The mixture of high-speed drama and historical elements showcases the author’s journalist roots.  It comes off like a juicy true-crime story with abundant twists, ensuring that the reader is left feeling unbalanced most of the time.  Harvey shares his passion for Chicago, much like Gabriel Cohen does with his Brooklyn crime novels.”
—Teresa L. Jacobsen, Library Journal
 
Praise for Michael Harvey’s The Fifth Floor
 
“In The Fifth Floor, Michael Harvey gives us a tale of murder, bare-knuckle mayoral politics, and historical catastrophe–in short, the perfect Chicago detective story, complete with a loving tour of the city’s funkier locales that’ll make any displaced Chicagoan long for home.”
—Erik Larson, author of The Devil In the White City
 
“Michael Harvey has done for Chicago what Raymond Chandler did for Los Angeles and Dashiell Hammett for San Francisco. . . . Dazzlingly good.”
—Les Roberts, Cleveland Plain Dealer
 
“This is a first-rate detective novel that brings back the glory of those earlier heroes, but with the appeal of today’s modern world. They don’t come much better than this one.”
—The Journal Star
 
“Harvey is a budding superstar.”
—The Daily News
 
“Impressive . . . a tangled, fascinating tale.”
—Dick Adler, The Chicago Tribune
 
“A sophisticated caper that keeps readers guessing. . . . Rapt attention is necessary to keep track of the plot twists and characters, but Harvey brilliantly brings all the threads together, and provides a satisfying conclusion.”
—The Missourian
 
“Harvey . . . weaves Chicago history and politics with the conventions of mystery writing to create meditations on power—how it’s used, who it helps, and the way it hurts. . . . Honest, smart and funny.”
—Joe Kolina, Chicago Sun-Times
 
“A fresh take on the classic American private-eye novel. Reading it feels like putting on a favorite old sweater on a nasty Chicago November day, and it recalls Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald at the top of their form. Harvey makes Chicago and its politics a primary character, and the picture he paints is knowing and shrewd. . . . Like Chicago itself, The Fifth Floor is edgy but intoxicating, and Harvey seems ready to join Sara Paretsky at the top of the city’s crime-fiction A-list.”
—Thomas Gaughan, Booklist
 
“Supurb. . . . Harvey’s plot twists in all the right places, and his noir-inspired dialogue crackles without sounding showy. Marlowe and Spade would readily welcome Michael Kelly into their fold.”
—Publisher’s Weekly
 
 
Praise for Michael Harvey's The Chicago Way
 
“The efficiency of [Harvey’s] cinematic style . . . suits the brisk, animated shots of Chicago that give the story both grit and authenticity.”
—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
 
“An intricate, fast-paced crime thriller. . . . The book’s tightly drawn, relentlessly page-turning plot grabs the reader and doesn't let go until it rockets to a truly nasty surprise. In the end, it’s a fascinating story of revenge and expiation as old as the classics Harvey studied in college.”
—Joe Kolina, Chicago Sun-Times
 
“It is a measure of the ambition of Michael Harvey’s first novel, The Chicago Way, that we start it thinking about Dashiell Hammett and end it pondering Aeschylus.”
—Patrick Anderson, The Washington Post Book World
 
“A smart, stylish debut . . . fresh. . . . The dialogue is snappy and crisp and the characters pop off the page. The plot flows along swimmingly with plenty of surprises.”
—Hallie Ephron, The Boston Globe
 
“Michael Harvey’s tightly plotted evocation of the Chicago underworld is set in the present but brings to mind the voices of Chandler and Hammett.”
—Boris Kachka, New York
 
“[Harvey] composes punchy noir sentences that he stacks into punchy noir paragraphs that have all the rhythm, irony, and wit of the genre’s manly classics of the 1920s and ’30s.”
—Jennifer Reese, Entertainment Weekly
 
“Gritty and witty, The Chicago Way is done the classic Raymond Chandler Way. Harvey’s taut plot, snappy prose, and memorable characters make this debut novel a real winner.”
—Kathy Reichs
 
“The Chicago Way is a wonderful first novel. Michael Harvey has studied the masters and put his own unique touch on the crime novel. This book harkens the arrival of a major new voice.”
—Michael Connelly
 
“Harvey has written a provocative novel that captures the grittiness of the Windy City and spins a murder mystery with a satisfying and out-of-left-field ending. . . . Readers will find the clipped cadence of Harvey’s dialogue and narrative wonderfully reminiscent of Raymond Chandler.”
—Carol Memmott, USA Today
 
“[Harvey] composes punchy noir sentences that he stacks into punchy noir paragraphs that have all the rhythm, irony, and wit of the genre’s manly classics of the 1920s and ’30s.”
—Jennifer Reese, Entertainment Weekly
 
“The opening pages are packed with the kind of wry, dry narration that goes down as smoothly as a pulp paperback with a shot of rye. . . . A twisty page-turner.”
—Keir Graff, Booklist
 
“Harvey’s debut delivers a fast-paced thrill ride through Chicago’s seedy underbelly . . . [He] masterfully combines the sardonic wit of Chandler with the gritty violence of Lehane’s Kenzie and Gennaro series. Bringing Chicago to life so skillfully that the reader can almost hear the El train in the distance, Harvey is poised to take the crime-writing world by storm.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
“Heartfelt, ambitious . . . Kelly, a wisecracking Irish Scrapper, slings metaphors like Philip Marlowe and reads Homer and Aeschylus in Greek . . . Harvey ends up delivering the goods.”
—Kirkus
 

Extrait

CHAPTER 1

My eyes flicked open. The clock read 4:51 a.m., and I was wide awake. I’d been dreaming—-rich colors, shapes, and places—-but couldn’t remember all the details. It didn’t matter. I climbed out of bed and shuffled down the hallway. Rachel Swenson sat in an armchair by the front windows. The pup was asleep in her lap.

“Hey,” I said.

She turned, face paled in light from the street, eyes a glittering reflection of my grief and guilt. “Hey.”

“That dog can sleep anywhere.” I pulled a chair close. Maggie slipped an eye open, yawned, stretched, and went back to sleep.

“I should be staying at my place,” Rachel said.

“I like you here.”

She tickled two bandaged fingers across the top of the pup’s head and ran her eyes back toward the windows. Rachel was a sitting judge for the Northern District of Illinois. And one of the finest people I knew. She was also damaged. Because she was my girlfriend. Or, rather, had been.

“I was going to make a cup of tea,” I said. “You want one?”

She shook her head. I stayed where I was. And we sat together in the darkness.

“You can’t sleep?” she said.

“Dreams.”

She nodded, and we sat some more.

“What’s the knife for, Rach?”

She looked down at the knife tucked into her left hand. “I got it from the kitchen.”

“Why?”

Her gaze drifted to a small table and the slab of cheese that sat on it. “You want a piece?”

I shook my head. She held the blade up between us. “You thought I was going to hurt someone?”

“Just wondering about the knife, Rach.”

“I’m fine.” It had been almost a month since the attack. Most of the swelling in her face was gone—-the bruises reduced to faint traces of yellow.

“What did you dream about?” she said.

“I usually don’t remember.”

“Usually?”

“Sometimes I get premonitions. Twice before. I wake up and feel certain things have happened.”

“If they’ve already happened, they’re not premonitions.”

“You’re right.”

“Are you going to make your tea?”

“In a minute.”

“Tell me about them,” she said, cutting off a small slice of cheese and nibbling at a corner.

“The dreams?”

“The premonitions.”

“I got the first one when my brother died.”

“Philip?”

“I was seventeen. Woke up in the middle of the night and walked out to our living room.”

“And?”

“I sat in front of the phone and stared at it for ten minutes until it rang. The warden told me he’d killed himself. Hung himself in a cell with his bedsheet. But it wasn’t anything I didn’t already know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Second time was a couple years back—-the night my father died.”

I remembered my eyes opening, tasting the old man’s passing like dry dust at the back of my throat. I pulled out the whiskey that night and filled a glass. Then I sat by the phone again until it rang.

“And now?” Rachel said.

“That’s the thing. I’m not sure this time.”

“But it’s something.”

“I believe so, yes.”

She got up from the chair and settled the pup on the couch. “I’ll make the tea.”

I listened to her rattle the tap in the kitchen, then set the kettle. I got up and pulled a book off the shelf, Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War. It took me a moment to find the passage. Book 2, chapter 7. The historian’s description of the Plague of Athens.

All speculation as to its origin and its causes . . . I leave to other writers, whether lay or professional; for myself, I shall simply set down its nature, and explain the symptoms by which perhaps it may be recognized by the student, if it should ever break out again. This I can the better do, as I had the disease myself, and watched its operation in the case of others.

I thought about Thucydides, surrounded by death, touched himself, scribbling down its essence for us to read twenty--four hundred years later. I’d lied to Rachel. I knew what I feared. Knew why I feared it. I closed my eyes and they were there—-two lightbulbs hanging in the darkness of the Chicago subway. Inside their glass skin, a question mark. Something the old historian himself might struggle to decipher.

The kettle began to whistle. On cue, the phone rang. Rachel watched from the doorway as I picked up. It wasn’t a voice I expected to hear. And that was exactly what I expected. I listened without saying more than a word or two. Finally, the voice stopped talking—-waiting, apparently, for a reaction.

“Where are you?” I said. The voice told me.

“I’ll be there in an hour.” I hung up. Rachel looked like she might speak, then turned away. Maggie was awake now and staring at me from the couch.

“You want breakfast?”

The pup’s ears perked up at the last word. I walked toward the kitchen. She beat me there by the length of the living room.

“Was it what you thought?” Rachel handed me a mug of tea.

“I don’t know.”

I fed the dog. We both listened to her crunch away and then lick the bowl clean.

“I have to go out,” I said.

“I can’t be here when you get back.”

“Rach . . .”

“Stop.” She raised her arm and touched her hand to her face, as if I were about to hit her. Then she turned and left. The pup followed. I walked back into the bedroom and got dressed. When I returned to the living room, Rachel was curled up on the couch.

“I’ll talk to you later,” I said. She didn’t respond. I was going to say more, but recalled the lessons of saying too much. So I left.

It was still dark out as I tramped down Addison. The first streaks of morning stained the Chicago night—-fresh paint on an old canvas. Underneath, a city slept. Everywhere, it seemed, except in my dreams. And the dreams of those I cared about.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Date d'édition: 2011
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0307272516
• ISBN 13: 9780307272515
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 297
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Authorised Representative Service; ar.info@doceupoint.com; ; 77 Camden Street Lower; Dublin; Dublin; D02 XE80; Irlande