Calumet City

By: Charlie Newton

Narrated by: Eliza Foss

Among the most self-assured and sharply crafted debuts in recent years, Calumet City detonates a Molotov cocktail of character-driven suspense and ghetto-Chicago intrigue.

Meet Patti Black, the most decorated cop in Chicago. On her ghetto beat, Patti Black redefines the word badass. But her steel-plated exterior - solitary, stoic, loveless - belies the wrenching legacy of her orphaned childhood. Haunted by the horrifying abuse she suffered at the hands of her foster parents, Patti Black sublimates past torments into a meticulously maintained tough-gal persona.

When a series of unrelated cases - a drug bust gone bad, a mayoral assassination attempt, the murder of a state attorney, the exhumation of a long-concealed body from a tenement basement wall -- all point in Patti Black's direction, she finds herself facing the dark truth: You can't hide from your history, no matter how far into the fog you run. For Patti Black, that history didn't die in the tenement wall; it's alive -- and riding her down.

In researching this electrifying thriller, Charlie Newton rode in the squad car with real-life street cop Patti Black. The result is a powerful fiction debut that captures the precise emotional landscape of one cop's hard-bitten life in the trenches. This first-time author joins that rare breed whose fiction is suffused with profound authenticity

©2008 Charlie Newton (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"An atmospheric shocker...Newton certainly has all the hallmarks and above all the classic noir tone -- urban and nocturnal, stealthy and smoky, grim determination doing its two-step with gallows humor." (Chicago Sun Times)
"The best cop noir in years." (Lee Child)

Very suspenseful

A very suspenseful and tight edged thriller. Very gutsy. A Chicago cop is thrown into a collision course with her past. Kept me riveted until the very end. I'd have given it five stars but I didn't like the way the author portrayed Christianity- thought that was a little over the top. Otherwise a great novel. It's a little gruesome and has sexual sadism in it. The heroine is very strong and compelling.

a bit shrill

Yes, the scenario and coincidences are highly unlikely, but the Chicago-Arizona connection is kind of cool, and I'm willing to go along with it. But the protagonist tries too hard to persuade me she's on the edge of losing it every third page or so, and the hapless narrator must constantly try to represent this anguish in the too-often repeated plaint "my son . . . not my son." I would have shot the little bastard myself, given half a chance, just to get on with it.

GET A NEW NARRATOR

Is there anything you would change about this book?

The narrator is awful. The 'story' is only thing that kept me going. I've already returned a book because of a bad narrator and I honestly didn't think I could do it a second time.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

Narrator

What didn’t you like about Eliza Foss’s performance?

Too much emphasis on WORDS and PHrases that Didn't NEED the emphasis. Running sentences and character comments together.

Any additional comments?

I won't buy anything by THIS narrator again.

Disappointment

I cant beleive the endorsment from Lee Childs, (must be friends) The main character was so DUMB,so CLUMSY that it was obnoxious. I was more surprised that Mr.Childs would give a thumbs up on this terrible read

Unrealistic

Ugh. Patti Black is a decorated veteran of the Chicago PD. Patti Black is also some kind of wonder human. In the first hour she kills some gang bangers, saves an apartment building full of people from a fire, discovers a dead body in same building and..forget it. During the next few hours of the book she is nearly killed at least 4 times, she is summoned to meet the commissioner(several times), saves a fellow officers life and becomes a parody of a super cop. If these things aren't enough we find out she has a teen son(who she gave up for adoption), he is being threatened by some gangsters to get her into line. But of course Human Services will not even think of letting the adoptive family know of the danger. I am tired of reviewing this absurd story. The main character performs some super-human act every few minutes, and this makes the tale absurd. Don't pay attention to those lobotomized reviewers at Amazon, they don't understand how bad this story is.

Lee Child owes me 15 hrs. & 15 bucks

I bought this audiobook solely on Lee Child's recommendation. I love Lee Child's novels, so I figured that anything he praised I would like. Wrong. This novel tells a highly unlikely story without the panache that allows me to suspend disbelief. The protagonist, Patti Black -- presumably a tough, street-hardened Chicago cop -- goes through the book in an almost constant state of hysteria. I had trouble buying that Chicago's most decorated cop would keep losing control of her emotions with each successive event. Books like this re-affirm my conviction that men shouldn't try to write novels with female protagonists. Lee Child, you have let me down and cost me money.

Disappointing

I also selected this book because of Lee Childs' endorsement. I couldn't get past the reader's performance. I found her voice too breathy and unlikely for the character. The narrative was like a taffy pull. I gave up after an hour. I didn't look forward to the hours of commitment ahead. I'm pretty cheap, so giving up on a book that I paid good money for should tell you something!

Not Jack Reacher!

Is there anything you would change about this book?

I'm disappointed - I expected a character and narrative on the same caliber that the Reacher series has given me. Although I'm sorry it didn't meet my expectations I listened to the entire presentation - which is not how I handle a book that doesn't meet expectations ( generally I just delete it before finishing).

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

Flat ending.

Which character – as performed by Eliza Foss – was your favorite?

The protaganist.

Did Calumet City inspire you to do anything?

Scene future listens by sampling first.

Noir to the tenth power

Beyond noir in . The protagonist is a woman, which is a welcome change from the standard burned-out male detective of the genre.

Alas, the woman is haunted by extremely black memories and the brave reader who plunges into her bleak world gets a giant dose of noir and despair. If you plan to read this as a diversion, think again. If you're ready for the blackest noir, you are in for a wild ride.

Waaaaaay too much mindless thrashing

I listened to about the first two thirds of this book before I finally got tired of it and gave up. This is one of those books where the main character takes a stupid pill and never recovers. At every turn, she is either mindlessly firing her gun without first identifying the target, driving her car like a maniac, punching her friends in the face, or basically refusing to act like a normal human being. Up to the point where I gave up, I don't think she had made a single reasonable decision, even allowing for the fact that she was supposed to be damaged by abuse as a child. My advice: take a pass on this one.