New York, 1886. A society architect is blackmailed into helping a gangster plan daring raids on banks and society mansions. The architect's entire family, one by one, discover the thrills of illicit activity.
The author has clearly done a lot of research about New York of that period. Some paragraphs, for example when describing the menus of a society dinner, sound as if he has transcribed his research notes.
From this situation, the plot development is entirely cliched and predictable. The characters are predictably two-dimensional. Complex human emotions are described in a few definitive sentences (we are told, repeatedly, that George's gambling problem is a sickness). The amorality of the story is immense: bit parts are killed off in a few sentences and, although the architect is said to suffer remorse and horror about the murders he witnesses, the reader doesn't feel that. The entire story is plot driven.
And the plot is predictable, repetitive and boring. There's a heist. There's another heist. And then another. There's an informer. The architect's brother is a policeman. There is gambling, drinking, prostitution, pick-pocketing ... There are society balls (and, of course, rigid moral codes: these are regarded as straight-jackets against which the crime spree seems like entrepreneurial free enterprise). This is a story that has been written many times before.
Not my sort of tale.
July 2021; 413 pages
No comments:
Post a Comment