Nineteen Seventy-four by David Peace
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
When a little girl goes missing, crime reporter Eddie Dunford is on the case. Eddie finds a pattern between the girl's disappearance and others. Where will the trail lead and will Eddie have anything left when he gets there?
There's a greasy spoon close to my house that serves something called The Mess, a pile of scrambled eggs, hashbrowns, bacon, sausage, and gravy, a meal that will simultaneously help you achieve Nirvana and hit your nadir. That's what this book reminded me of.
Nineteen Seventy-four is a cluster fuck of biblical proportions. Crime reporter Eddie Dunford is in way over his head from day one. In fact, I don't really buy him as a crime reporter seeing as how he's kind of a coward.
The narrative starts a bit slow but is soon bouncing around at ninety miles per hour, zig-zagging like a mouse on a speed. Much like Eddie, I had no clue what was going on a great percentage of the time.
The repetitive style grated on me after a while, making me long for the prose of such crime writers as Lawrence Block and George Pelecanos. In fact, Eddie reminds me of a less competent version of Nick Stefanos.
Another thing I wasn't crazy about was all the people with similar names. Also, practically every damn character in the book was in on the crime. I wasn't sure if I actually liked the book while I was reading it and wasn't any more certain by the end.
Nineteen Seventy-four was unique and powerful at times but I can't really say I enjoyed it. I guess we'll call this a 2.
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