Nice Surprise I found this book in a bargain book shop in Auckland, New Zealand and couldn't have enjoyed it any more. The end of the novel does a great job of both pulling together the characters and the plot but also plugging the holes in the story that I initially found unrealistic. The author does an impressive job of building together characters that are indeed multi-dimensional and believable. Few people are truly "good" or universally "bad" and Colin Harrison's main characters are both likable and realistic. The ending was neither dissapointing nor predictable.
New York Noir at its Finest Charlie Ravich is a very successful telecommunicaitons mogul in his late fifties, however he is racked with injuries he got during his time as a POW during the Vietnam war. On a trip to Hong Kong, where he is trying to get a factory built, he witnesses a murder and it winds up making him wealthy, very wealthy. But money won't buy you everything. Or will it. Charlie's son died from leukemia years ago, his wife is slipping away with Alzheimer's and Charlie is obsessed with his pending oblivion. He desperately wants someone to carry on his name. So he advertises for a woman to have his child.
Christina Wells is a pretty young thing just out of the joint, where she spent four years. She's gone to Columbia University, so you know she's smart, but she dropped out to lead the life of a small time grifter. She'd been raped when she was a little girl and it haunts her. Well, maybe she's not so smart, because she spent the fours years behind bars, because she took the rap for her iron-pumping, former boyfriend, Rick Bocca, who somehow found out when she was getting out on a surprise release. It seems that somehow five million went missing from that job she went up for and he wants it back.
This is a well written and well paced story with an ending which doesn't leave you wanting or feeling short-changed. The characters are a little over the top, but Mr. Harrison is such a honeydripper of a writer, who throws people and situations together so well, that we don't care, in fact instead, we revel in his character's excesses. This novel is film noir on the written page and is really, very, very good.A pile of sadistic tripe This book does for literature what fecal matter does for holiday dinner. In a wandering, hollow story Harrison writes of a main character who has none, a series of events that are pointless, and a sick focus on over-described torture. All books are supposed to enlighten you about some aspect of life and Mr. Harrison certainly has with Afterburn -- I'll never read another book he writes. Ever.
