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Trevanian Hot Night in the City
St. Martin's Paperbacks 2001 0312978820 / 9780312978822 Mass Market Paperback Very Good
0312978820 From Publishers Weekly Wide-ranging in setting and tone, yet linked by their sense of irony and reverence for the past, these 13 short stories reflect in miniature the pseudonymous Trevanian's chameleonic career as a genre-defying author of popular fiction (Shibumi; Incident at Twenty-Mile). Most of the tales take place in pre- and post-WWII urban environments, most notably the title story, which features a lonely girl dressed up like June Allyson and a gentlemanly stalker who imitates Jimmy Stewart and W.C. Fields. Trevanian tells the story twice, the first version introducing the volume, the second ending it; each has a different denouement, but both are tragic. A similar period mustiness permeates "Snatch Off Your Cap, Kid!"Aan ode to the tramps and hobos of bygone days; "After Hours at Rick's," an evocation of the timeless, edgy ennui of last call at a pick-up bar; and "The Sacking of Miss Plimsoll," the story of an unusual relationship between a bestselling author and his literary secretary. Basque country serves as the backdrop for two of Trevanian's tales: a young couple come together in a light romantic farce entitled "The Engine of Fate," and a village idiot improves his lot in life by pretending that he has a fortune to bequeath in "That Fox-of-a-Be?at." The author ventures even farther afield with "Easter Story," set in ancient Rome and detailing Pontius Pilate's first meeting with Jesus, and with a retelling of the wise and witty Onondaga creation parable "How the Animals Got Their Voices." Though he employs a number of hoary devices to achieve his effects, Trevanian can be an engaging storyteller, with a knack for getting inside his characters' heads. Several tales get bogged down when his narrative style turns pedantic, but the collection as a whole is enjoyable, if vaguely anachronistic. (June) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Library Journal Trevanian keeps his fans guessing with long silences (15 years elapsed between The Summer of Katya and Incident at Twenty-Mile) and shifts in genre, from thriller to police procedural to romance to Western. Now comes a shift in format, from novel to short story. The 13 stories in this collection show Trevanian to be a storyteller as versatile as he is skillful, using a variety of voice, time, and place to leave the reader with a smile, a shake of the head, or a shudder. Narrators include an imaginative nine-year-old boy in the 1940s, the slave translator of Pontius Pilatus, and a middle-aged professor at a pickup bar. There is an ancient folk tale, one from the Round Table, and several featuring canny Basque peasants. In the title story, a plain young woman in an anonymous city at mid-century goes out alone at night and is picked up by a well-spoken drifter. Told twice with different endings, this story brackets the others and is the most chilling of all. An admirable collection. -Michele Leber, Fairfax Cty. P.L., VA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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1.69 USD
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Trevanian Incident at Twenty-Mile
St. Martin's Paperbacks 1999 0312970234 / 9780312970239 Mass Market Paperback Very Good
0312970234 Amazon Review What is it about single-monikered artists that inclines them toward constantly remaking themselves? Trevanian, for instance, changes fictional genres about as often as Madonna changes hair styles. In Shibumi he wrote a classic early-'80s paranoid thriller à la Robert Ludlum, complete with a Zen-trained assassin protagonist who, in addition to being the world's most accomplished killer, is also so gifted tantrically speaking that he can give a woman multiple mind-blowing orgasms from three states away. Then came The Summer of Katya, a tender romance set in Basque country in 1917. The Main was yet another switch--a profound exploration of character masquerading as a police procedural set in Montreal. In Incident at Twenty-Mile Trevanian changes hats yet again and produces a remarkable novel set in the Old West. The year is 1898 and the place is Twenty-Mile, a dying silver-mining town in the hills of Wyoming. Matthew, a young drifter who models himself after the Ringo Kid, a character in a dime-store novel, arrives and soon manages to ingratiate himself with the citizenry. Though given to fabricating tales about his past (one skeptical citizen tells him, "You know what you are young man? You're a natural born con. That was pretty slick, the way you picked up on one of my girls singing upstairs and parlayed it into telling me that your ma was religious, that your folds were dead, and that you were all alone in this cruel, cruel world."), Matthew seems a harmless enough fellow to the folk who employ him in various odd jobs. Then one day, escaped murderer Hamilton Leider concocts a crazy plan to rob the silver mine and young Matthew becomes the lynchpin in the town's struggle for survival. Gritty, violent, and resolutely unromantic when it comes to the romance of the West, Incident at Twenty-Mile is a harrowing and memorable foray into the past. --Margaret Prior --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Publishers Weekly The mysterious, pseudonymous Trevanian, who scored several bestselling hits in the 1970s and early '80s with The Main, The Eiger Sanction and Shibumi, is back after a long silence?and turns out to be as unpredictable as ever. This time, he has written a kind of archetypal western set at the turn of the century in a God-forsaken little town that supports a silver mine in the wilds of Wyoming. A racist and violently psychotic killer, Lieder, breaks out of jail and descends on the community with two subhuman sidekicks. Matthew Dubchek is a friendly, cheerful young drifter who has lugged his dead father's weighty old rifle into town and is looking for a job among Twenty-mile's assorted misfits. They are a crew any moviegoer would recognize: the sullen, dying gambler; the decent Jewish merchant; the black soldier of fortune; the bedraggled crew of whores at the Traveller's Welcome saloon; the tightfisted Swedish hotelkeeper; the storekeeper's beautiful daughter. Still, they are rendered with uncommon skill, and Matthew's efforts, simultaneously heartfelt and wily, to ingratiate himself with them are sharply drawn. From the moment Lieder and his gang arrive, the outcome is never in doubt, but Trevanian creates considerable tension, even if some of the scenes seem to have a pruriently violent edge. If the book had ended some 20 pages earlier than it does, it would have been a solid, well-crafted and often exciting western. In a penultimate section, however, Trevanian chooses to introduce himself as author, offering a seemingly spurious account of how he found his story, replete with old newspaper cuttings, and even winding up with a cast list and an indication of what became of his characters in later years. It's a pointless exercise that adds nothing to what has preceded it. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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