Small Crimes

Garbage, I fell for this on strength of other reviewers. Guy can't write. Story had Noir potential but there is too much repetition... two games of checkers with the same guy in the first 100 pages come on, it was dull the first time. Same conversations with the DA, the dying hood, his son etc Descriptions of people constantly amounted to their smile or grin, anti hero losing his temper was a hot flush under the collar. I had to keep checking to see if I had lost my page, it felt like I was re reading same stuff again and again. Oh and this is not a guy you can root for, bent cop, gambling debt and drug habit forced him into more debt, worked for a mobster, attempted to murder the DA and only copped for a seven year stint. Pulled a gun on his wife and kids and whinges and walks out of the room in a huff when his father tries to give him advice. Unreadable I hate to give up on a book but I had to on this after 150pages

Small Crimes is a cracker of a story. Zeltserman writes with a honed intensity that fully immerses the reader in the claustrophobic world of small town America. He vividly portrays the complex social relations of a former cop being released back into his local community - the resentments, the shame, the cold shouldering and petty confrontations, the web of lies and deceits. The characterisation is excellent, with each character rich and multi-layered, and the plotting is first rate (with the possible exception of the Charlotte's back story which felt contrived - although in the grand scheme of things it really doesn't matter). The story slow builds to a pressure cooker of an ending that eventually explodes the lid clean off the pot. The ending really is first class. Small Crimes is not a joyous read - it's difficult to sympathise with most of the characters and it's intense and emotional - but it's well worth the ride. A humdinger of a read.

Never heard of the author before and found it by luck and thank God for that! A truly amazing book that has you on the edge of your seat. My only gripe is it isn't long enoughBuy it, you wont be disappointed. Brilliant

This dark, claustrophobic tale follows crooked cop Joe Denton after he is released from prison for seven years. Joe is stuck between a rock and a hard place for most of the book as the corrupt, small town sheriff wants him to kill one of two people: DA Phil Coakley or loan shark Manny Vassey. The DA has been reading the Bible to Manny in the hospital as he suffers from terminal cancer. If Phil is successful and gets Manny to talk, Manny's dying confession will put the sheriff and Joe in prison for a long time. The problem is: Joe doesn't want to kill either of them.There aren't many books about a criminal's attempt at redemption. Here, Dave Zeltserman gets it right. You don't know what Joe will do from one page to the next. It was enjoyable from start to finish. Highly recommended!

The noir crime genre has never been satisfactorily defined, but most critics agree that there are certain touchpoints, which, when appearing together, signal to the reader that what they are reading is "noir." This Vermont-set story is so full of these noir elements that it's hard not to imagine the author sitting down with a checklist nearby as he outlined it. Morally flawed protagonist? Check. Redemption as theme? Check. Crooked authority figures? Check. Deadly female? Check x2. Stripper/Hooker with a heart of gold? Check. Small town claustrophobia? Check. Inescapability of the past? Check. And so on.It's this latter touchpoint that drives the story (just as it does in countless classic and neo-noirs). Joe is a former cop just out of jail after a seven-year stretch for attempting to kill the local DA. He'd been taking bribes, coking up, and working on the side collecting for the local kingpin he was deep into gambling debt to, and the heat was on. Now he's lost his job, wife and two daughters, and the respect of his parents -- but his troubles are just beginning. It seems that the kingpin is lying in a hospital dying of the big C, and the same DA is trying to squeeze out a deathbed confession that will put Joe back behind bars forever. And one of Joe's fellow crooked cops is putting him in the poor position of murdering either the kingpin or the DA -- or else.Joe spends the bulk of the book trying to get out from behind this 8-ball in a way that allows him to redeem himself. He's under the self-delusion that he's a changed man and can somehow now live a normal life. Of course, for the reader there are plenty of clues that this ain't gonna happen, and besides, if Joe had read his noir, he'd know that redemption isn't possible. Thus, most of the story unravels in rather predictable ways, with one or two useful coincidences thrown in. However, it does do a very good job at realistically portraying the damage Joe has done to his family -- an area where crime writers tend to succumb to their more sympathetic side. On the whole, it's a reasonably well-executed neo-noir, but without much to distinguish it from its many ancestors.