Night Train

Rating:
Summary: More than just a murder mystery
Review: A gripping read about a tough cop and her problems, her life, her doubt that this brilliant young woman could willingly take her own life. Not an exciting page-turner, not a shoot-'em-up, no car chases, no deeeeep, dark secrets.
But there's an undercurrent, and if you get the What and Why of the very end, you'll understand that this is not just another murder/suspense novel - it's a psychological classic. It's so good, it should be labeled "literature". It should be made into a black & white film. It should win a prize (has it?).
I want to go back and read it again, four or five times. But first I have to catch my breath.

Rating:
Summary: Lotsa problems here . . .
Review: By and large, I like Martin Amis's work. He's inventive and witty and a master of the English sentence. But his actual novels don't always work, and this one is less successful than most. Homicide detective Mike Hoolihan is a world-weary female city cop somewhere in (I think) the American Midwest. She's a recovering alcoholic, she was abused by her father, and she has lousy taste in men. She would also do anything for Colonel Tom Rockwell, her mentor and ex-boss, now high brass in the department. And when Colonel Tom's daughter, the beautiful and brainy Jennifer Rockwell, apparently shoots herself in the head (three times), she has to carry the news to the unbelieving father. And then she has to investigate the incident at his behest to make sure it really was a suicide. Mike talks like a parody of the streets but she's an intelligent and experienced, though somewhat bigoted cop (as they all are, she says), and her inquiries lead her only to the reasons Jennifer might have killed herself. Except Amis never quite makes this clear, and the last couple pages rather baffled me. Maybe I missed something here -- but I really don't thing so. But there's one other major problem with this book, a very jarring problem, something that keeps me from enjoying it as much as I believe I would have. How can someone with Amis's gift for language, someone whose father was an expert in English usage, be so totally unaware of American idiom? The very opening line is "I am a police," which he seems to think is a common construction in this country. This continues throughout the book and it throws me every time I see it. Then there's the use of purely Brit terms like "semi-detached house," which few Yanks comprehend, even those who read British mysteries. And there's that whole thing of referring to the police department as the "CID." Isn't that also a British thing? I've never heard the usage in this country. And Mike mentions a city cop who "took a bullet for the State." No, he didn't, because the U.S., unlike the UK, does not have a unitary governmental system. He took a bullet "for the city" -- except I can't imagine any cop would think like that. And there are lines like "The science crew come and go." Does he really not know that in American English collective nouns are considered singular? (I assume "science crew" refers to the forensics team, and I've never heard that term either, but who knows?) I've read that he was somehow running a riff on American society, but if so, he's awfully vague about it. My puzzlement about the resolution (or not) of the plot aside, this short novel would have been far better had the author set it in London or Manchester.

Rating:
Summary: I'VE GOT A LOT OF PROBLEMS WITH THIS BOOK!
Review: I got a big kick out of "Money", Amis' novel of the decadent 90's, because I was a twenty-something Anglo-American at the time. It really hit home. Since then, I haven't found another book of his that I like. He's sort of like Gertrude Stein meets Kurt Vonnegut.

Amis once cleverly said in an interview about how hard it is to write books: "A novel is long...a long novel is very long." Well thank God this turkey's as short as it is! Here's what I don't like:

1. The character's names. Too obviously symbolic, pretentious. This is true of all Amis' stuff.

2. The language. Reminds me of Vonnegut, which was unique back then, but this is the 3rd millenium already! Also, the more Amis tries to write like he thinks Americans talk, the more ridiculous it sounds when he missteps. Some of the dialogue is just silly. No one talks like that, least of all Yanks.

3. The plot. A not very interesting twist on suicide: a mystery. He makes a half-assed attempt to resolve the plot in some way and, you're like, "Oh, I see, that's interesting...whatever."

Rating:
Summary: Necessary spoiler follows
Review: It seems to me that the bad reviews that readers shower upon Martin Amis, on Amazon, are written by people who get so lost in Amis' wordplay that they miss the usually uncomplicated point.

Firstly, Night Train is a beautiful novel in which our hero(?) Mike Hoolihan is forced to examine her self worth. Faced with the suicide of a "perfect" girl, Mike is forced to reconsider whether or not her own existence is worth prolonging. She points out, fairly early in the novel, that suicides are prone to leaving a vast variety of commentary for those they leave behind. These suicide notes vary in style and form.

Night Train IS Mike's suicide note. Some two hundred pages of explaination for her loved ones. In the process she manages to prove that her self image is twisted. She has admirers and friends but views herself as ultimately alone.

Anyone who didn't appreciate this novel, I'm convinced, missed the point that what they were reading was something personal intended for Mike's loved ones. A farewell that was meant, as suicide notes usually are, to comfort, explain and beg forgiveness for their author's actions.



Rating:
Summary: Amis takes you into the night, and leaves you there
Review: Martin Amis' novel Night Train is a short (about two hundred pages) novel purporting to be his version of the hard-boiled novel. Indeed, and I think rather facetiously, it is referred to on the cover as a cross between Nabakov and Hammett and while the Nabakov comparison is not so entirely out of the question, the Hammett and any other references to the hard-boiled genre must really be stricken from one's mind immediately if one wishes to enjoy the true charms of Night Train. Indeed, the true basis for the plot is a police officer, who in a quaint turn of the phrase from Amis, refers to herself and other officers with the sobriquet of "a police" -- as in I am a police, you know that we are in the land beyond beyond. Taken along with the grain of salt that the full and complete first name of our over-weight, hulking, female detective is Mike and that the major suspect is one Professor Trader Faulkner, we realize quickly this is indeed more the land of Nabakov and less the realm of Chandler. From the police narrator to the delicate processes of the autopsy we are thrown directly into the world of the police procedural novel popularized by such as Ed McBain, but with the caveat that things are very much different in this unnamed American city where crime is closer to Sartre than Spillane. The voice we hear, even as we are asked to imagine this female hulking senseless officer is the English, very English, wit of Mr. Amis. Indeed, that is the major conceit of this novel -- the suspension of disbelief to enter this world, full of self-referential stereotypes and English colloquialisms from an ex-barfly cop. Doing a reverse play upon Camus' The Stranger, as we watch the investigator rather than the perpetrator.

Sound intriguing? Or simply sound annoying? It is intriguing, and it defies being annoying primarily because of its slight and breezy tone. Even as death closes in and weighty questions are put forth and pondered, a froth of Amis winking and nodding runs to the surface. It is these ephemeral glimpses from the real to the surreal to the literary to the unreal to the pulp the pulp the pulp that make these works worthwhile. And what makes Night Train worthwhile.

And like the best existential novels and the best hardboiled smash you can roll through Amis in a day, just run free with Detective Mike and solve the case of the ages. And leave the audience wanting some more.

Rating:
Summary: As usual Amis is misunderstood
Review: Much has been written below about Amis's Night Train, and it's interesting to see so many divergent opinions about a single book. I wish only to broach a couple of subjects, rather than give my overall impression of the book (I've reviewed it elsewhere).

First, to address the complaint that NT isn't good detective fiction. One writer complained that Amis has failed at detective fiction and should go back to writing modern fiction. Night Train *is* modern fiction. Amis has adopted the voice of noir fiction to tell another of his typically post-modern stories. The bulk of Amis's work is both satirical and thought-provoking. Night Train doesn't stray from this pre-established territory. If the reader is angered because NT's ending is something other than concrete, because things unraveled instead of being compartmentalized and shunted into pretty, neat, explainable bundles, then he or she has simply chosen the wrong book to read and should probably have picked up Elmore Leonard's latest instead. That doesn't mean Amis was unsuccessful in his endeavor.

Second, as to the complaint that the crime remains unsolved: bollocks. I think a close reading (you cannot successfully read this book thinking it to be a simple detective story)reveals that Amis is again satirizing modern society. I don't have the book in front of me, but I remember the essence of parts which discuss the following idea: in an are where motiveless murder is so common as to be mundane, what (area of crime, if you will) does that leave unexplored? Motiveless suicide. I'm oversimplifying what Amis wrote for the sake of brevity, but the seadlings for your own thought are certainly planted within those pages. I'll agree that the ending is somewhat nebulous. Many of Amis's are, I believe because he makes great efforts to avoid hackneyed, cliched writing, and so many endings are typically hackneyed, cliched; try appreciating his ending to his latest short story in the NYer, "The Janitor on Mars," what a bizarre, but similarly provocative little piece of work that is.

Having said all this, I can only give the book three stars for the simple reason that if I gave it more, what would I give to London Fields or the Rachel Papers?

Cheers!

Rating:
Summary: Terse, poetic, entertaining
Review: The beautiful Jennifer Rockwell is found dead, an apparent suicide. Mike Hoolihan, a female police, as she calls herself, gets the case. What we, the readers, get is an involving and entertaining exploration of the events preceding Jennifer's death, with the terse and poetic Mike describing her own funny but fragile stability as she tries to unravel the mystery.

Mart's writing in this short detective novel is sheer brilliance. For some cold-blooded perfection, I recommend the autopsy. But here's a more manageable example, with Mike describing Tobe, her boyfriend, as well as offering Mart's first treatment of his night train theme. "One thing about Tobe-he sure knows how to make a woman feel slender. Tobe's totally enormous. He fills the room. When he comes in late, he's worse than the Night train: Every beam in the building wakes up and moans."

I wonder, by the way: Does anyone develop the possibilities in a series of sentences as brilliantly as Amis?

Rating:
Summary: ANTI-CLAMATIC SUICIDE MYSTERY
Review: This is a story told by the main character detective Mike Hoolihan who is a female detective who has been a hard driven to succede cop for 15 years she has always strived to be the best.She gets a call from from a detective buddy that he has a suicide of Jennifer Rockwell and he wants mike to notify the parents the father happens to be Colonel Tom Rockwell who is head of the police force and who happens to be like a father figure to mike and took her in to his house to help mike dry out from being an alcoholic.
Colonel Tom and his wife ask Mike to investigate because it donesnt sound like something their daughter would do she had everyting going for her.
This book was pretty good and moved along building up to what would seem a pretty good end maybe explosive but it just did not deliver

Rating:
Summary: Night Train - A dark and gritty suicide mystery
Review: Wow, what a gem! I expected a routine detective read, but instead got a dark and gritty police story that was anything, but routine. Mike Hoolihan is a tough, chain smoking, no nonsense detective with a dark history of family issues and alcoholism. The style is very much in the Marlowe tradition except this detective is a beefy, street wise woman. Amis, who resides in London, writes this American police story from an outside perspective and the result is very effective.

Hoolihan is called on to investigate an apparent suicide by the father, who for obvious reasons, cannot accept the possibilty that his near perfect daughter did this. There are plenty of suspects that make this a classic whodonit, but it's the dark and realistic style that make this night train a ride worth taking.

Rating:
Summary: The ending leaves you feeling cheated
Review: You're set up for a "classic whodunit" mystery type of conclusion, but the ending leaves you feeling cheated. Fortunately, not at a great investment of time (175 pages, large print).