Word: novelized
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Murphy, however, Rudolph had stopped at the local grocery to stock up on raisins, trail mix and eight packs of flashlight batteries. Then, apparently on foot, he vanished, leading more than 100 federal agents and local officers on a manhunt across rugged terrain right out of the best-selling novel Cold Mountain. Agents of the FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms armed themselves with semiautomatic rifles and bulletproof vests as they searched Rudolph's trailer and poked cautiously under neighbors' porches and in their barns. Helicopters clattered overhead, using infrared scanners that can detect body heat...
...English gentleman he has "made" by sending money from abroad. Does that premise sound familiar? It will to those who have read Charles Dickens' Great Expectations and remember Pip's turmoil when he learns that his elevation in society has been financed by the fearsome felon Abel Magwitch. The novel being described here, however, is Peter Carey's Jack Maggs (Knopf; 306 pages; $24). What the dickens is Dickens' plot doing in Carey's new fiction...
...fine, suspenseful time reading Jack Maggs. Carey takes a cue from Dickens but then ad-libs an original and freestanding performance, replete with the sorts of twists and shocks and coincidences that originally gave page turners a good name. And those readers who retain a clear sense of Dickens' novel will encounter a trove of subtle allusions, not just to the 19th century author's life and works but also to the predatory relationship between an inventor of tales and the real-life subjects who find themselves grist for this creative mill...
...struggle between Maggs and Oates, a character obviously based on Dickens and lacking only the original's extenuating genius, forms the stem of Carey's plot. But, as befits a mock-19th century novel, there are many fascinating exfoliations. All of Carey's major characters come equipped with vivid childhoods--not just Maggs, thrown on a Thames mud flat as an infant and adopted in order to be trained as a thief, or Oates, humiliated and impoverished young by a feckless father. There is also Mercy Larkin, who befriends Maggs and who was sent into prostitution when barely more than...
...police," begins Martin Amis' novel Night Train (Harmony; 175 pages; $20). "I am a police and my name is Detective Mike Hoolihan. And I am a woman, also." And with that satisfying jolt, we're off, as Amis once again bombards, delights, excites and irritates the reader with his hard-edged writing and warped spirit. Paying homage to the American tough-guy novelists of yore--Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler--Night Train pushes the boundaries of noir almost to the edge of darkness. The experiment does not always work, but this little book never gets boring...