Suspension

Rating:
Summary: Superb Historical Mystery
Review: I stayed up till 3:30am to finish Richard Crabbe's wonderful first novel. What a cracker of a story! He has captured 1883 New York City in all its glory and grime from its meanest tenements, through its dens of iniquity, to its finest mansions and all the territory and people in between. He seamlessly weaves both fact and fiction into several plot lines which collide in a gripping climax all centered around the building and the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge. Anyone wanting a slice of New York City's past and a marvelous tale should read this book

Rating:
Summary: A Real Page Turner
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed Mr. Crabbe's debut novel, Suspension. The novel succeeds on every level - the plot, characterization, imagery,and historical detail are all intelligently executed in a book that is hard to put down. The action sequences are literally pulse pounding. Even weeks after completing the novel I find myself thinking about the book, its characters, the bridge and the historical time period; Mr. Crabbe will literally take you back in time and out of yourself on a wonderful story-telling journey. I wholeheartedly recommend Suspension and have already made the decision to purchase the author's next novel.

Rating:
Summary: Imaginative and enjoyable
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this novel that combines historical fact and fiction about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. Mr. Crabbe weaves a highly imaginative and plausible plot. There are actually two plots: one about the search for a murderer and saboteurs of the bridge, the other surrounding police corruption in 1880's New York City. The story is well-crafted and researched, including the technical details of bridge building, as well as the look of late 19th century New York and Brooklyn, and even post Civil War Richmond, Virginia. Although quite lengthy, the novel never becomes dull. There is a large cast of colorful characters from police captains and cops to street urchins, ex-Confederate Army soldiers and Kung Fu masters, who keep the story moving and keep the reader guessing what is going to happen right up to the very end.

Rating:
Summary: Imaginative and enjoyable
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this novel that combines historical fact and fiction about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. Mr. Crabbe weaves a highly imaginative and plausible plot. There are actually two plots: one about the search for a murderer and saboteurs of the bridge, the other surrounding police corruption in 1880's New York City. The story is well-crafted and researched, including the technical details of bridge building, as well as the look of late 19th century New York and Brooklyn, and even post Civil War Richmond, Virginia. Although quite lengthy, the novel never becomes dull. There is a large cast of colorful characters from police captains and cops to street urchins, ex-Confederate Army soldiers and Kung Fu masters, who keep the story moving and keep the reader guessing what is going to happen right up to the very end.

Rating:
Summary: Monumental!
Review: I've never walked across the Brooklyn Bridge before .. but now I will find the time. I always thought I had a special appreciation for the achievement that this bridge represents ... but now I see it in a very different light. I never gave much thought to life in 19th century New York City .. but now I do.

This book changed the way I see these things and that's only one reason to recommend it. It is a compelling story and riveting mystery that brings the people and times to life.

Rating:
Summary: If you like historicals...
Review: If your looking for another "Alienist" this is not it! "Suspension" is very deep in historical detail but more adventurous than "The Alienist". It's more along the lines of Maan Myer's (if you are not familiar with Maan Myers then, first, slap your hand with your other, and secondly, go and do an out-of-print search for any of the Dutchman historical series) books than Caleb Carr's in that the prose is very "popular fiction" in its telling although you get some great dialect dialogue!

This is a good find that I hope gets some great press!

NOW GO FIND MAAN MEYER'S BOOKS!

Rating:
Summary: Spectacular...A First Class Debut!
Review: In the Spring of 1883 Colonel Washington Roebling, with the help of his wife Emily, sets out to complete the world's largest suspension bridge that would span across the vast expanse of New York's East River. What Roebling does not know is that a rogue group of former Confederate soldiers hold him personally responsible for a horrible incident that happened years ago on the battlefields of Gettysburg, and have labored for years to destroy his bridge. When one of Roebling's workers is found dead in a dingy alley, a maverick detective named Tom Braddock is assigned to the case. Tom is a good cop with a heart of gold, but his past is not exactly stellar. Not only does he have to deal with the pressures of leading an unsolved murder investigation, but he must also contend with the saboteurs who are closer than ever to implementing their plans, officials within his own department who want to bury him in a life of corruption, and Mike, the dead man`s son who literally holds the key to solving this case. If Tom can manage to stay alive, he might be able to save the bridge, and possibly build a life with Mary, a beautiful, but unusual woman who keeps him both happy and sane.

From the riveting opening "nightmare" sequence to the final pages of mass hysteria that take place during the bridge's first opening days, Richard Crabbe does a tremendous job of transporting you into 19th century New York with a ghastly tale of murder and the building of the Brooklyn Bridge as his backdrop.

This is a top notch historical thriller that involves terrorism, police corruption, and bone-chilling suspense. It also includes a few surprises for Civil War buffs and those of us who never really appreciated the beauty of the Brooklyn Bridge. Caleb Carr fans will eat this one up and savor every morsel.

Masterfully done.

Rating:
Summary: Spectacular...A First Class Debut!
Review: In the Spring of 1883 Colonel Washington Roebling, with the help of his wife Emily, sets out to complete the world's largest suspension bridge that would span across the vast expanse of New York's East River. What Roebling does not know is that a rogue group of former Confederate soldiers hold him personally responsible for a horrible incident that happened years ago on the battlefields of Gettysburg, and have labored for years to destroy his bridge. When one of Roebling's workers is found dead in a dingy alley, a maverick detective named Tom Braddock is assigned to the case. Tom is a good cop with a heart of gold, but his past is not exactly stellar. Not only does he have to deal with the pressures of leading an unsolved murder investigation, but he must also contend with the saboteurs who are closer than ever to implementing their plans, officials within his own department who want to bury him in a life of corruption, and Mike, the dead man's son who literally holds the key to solving this case. If Tom can manage to stay alive, he might be able to save the bridge, and possibly build a life with Mary, a beautiful, but unusual woman who keeps him both happy and sane.

From the riveting opening "nightmare" sequence to the final pages of mass hysteria that take place during the bridge's first opening days, Richard Crabbe does a tremendous job of transporting you into 19th century New York with a ghastly tale of murder and the building of the Brooklyn Bridge as his backdrop.

This is a top notch historical thriller that involves terrorism, police corruption, and bone-chilling suspense. It also includes a few surprises for Civil War buffs and those of us who never really appreciated the beauty of the Brooklyn Bridge. Caleb Carr fans will eat this one up and savor every morsel.

Masterfully done.

Rating:
Summary: Avoid at all costs
Review: Never in my life have I read a novel issued by a major publisher that was so amatuerishly written. While Mr. Crabbe may be accurate in his historical details, he is apparently incapable of writing a sentence that avoids cliche, redundancy or gut-busting violations of the most elementary rules of grammar. Here's one early example that sent me running to the hills:

"Sitting motionless in the cold March moonlight, three gulls sat perched on a cable of the bridge."

In one sentence Mr. Crabbe manges to inform us not once, not twice, but three times that the gulls are sitting.

Trust me, it's all downhill from there. My only solace in this unfortunate purchase is that I was able to return it for a full refund. I bear Mr. Crabbe no ill will for my time wasted reading the first chapters. But to his editors at St. Martin's Press, I say this: shame on you.

Rating:
Summary: Very good historical suspense fiction
Review: The nitpicker who said "it all goes downhill from there" is just totally wrong. Mr Crabbe has done an excellent job of historical research and his character-development is outstanding. This IS a first novel, and he made mistakes, but the clanger of birds sitting could have been cleaned up by a copy-editor simply deleting the first "Sitting" -- which is the job of the copy-editor. The bridge was made to seem the latest technological marvel, the trials of being a cop in a crooked New York City in the 1880's seemed real, the sufferings of the poor were genuine. Mr Crabbe, unlike a lot of people writing hardware into their story took the time to learn about firearms, he described them without going into boring detail, and he got them right. Some things he perhaps -- almost surely -- got wrong, were that one would wait a long time for the service records of Confederate soldiers to come from the United States War Department, since they didn't hold those records, and I'm fairly sure, as one who took a steamer from Washington DC down to Norfolk, Virginia several times more than a half-century ago, that the voyage from New York to Richmond would take more than an overnight. Contemporary terms definitely alien to the 1880's include "skosh," "Get out of Dodge," and a couple I don't remember, but perhaps the author was merely trying to use terms modern readers would understand. These are minor problems that we hope Mr Crabbe won't duplicate in his next novel. Perhaps the nitpicker who thought the birds should sit only once has never tried to write a novel. It's very difficult. Anyone can write a grammatical sentence with a little effort, but stringing together a number of occurrences, murder, attempted murder, sabotage, construction details, lives of people in a different century, and making an interesting story come alive is a great deal more difficult than writing sentences.