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Pet Sounds is, rightly, one of the most celebrated pop albums ever released. It has also been written about, pored over, and analyzed more than most other albums put together. In this disarming book, Jim Fusilli focuses primarily on the emotional core of the album, on Brian Wilson's pitch-perfect cry of despair. In doing so, he brings to life the search for equilibrium and acceptance that still gives Pet Sounds its heart almost four decades after its release.
For all the ups and downs, the scandals and, finally, the good times that are associated with Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, nothing can diminish the beauty of Pet Sounds - its sense of adventure, its insight into the boundless mysteries of young love and how all its elements seem to coalesce to lay bare an insecure teen confronted by the uncertainties of adulthood, a man who wishes life were as simple as he believed it once was. More than a wonderful work that has easily withstood the test of time, Pet Sounds raises pop to the level of art through its musical sophistication and the precision of its statement which, taken together, celebrate the fulfillment of Brian Wilson's ambition.
A crime thriller, coming-of-age story and a family saga, The Price You Pay unravels in mid-1970s Jersey City, a crumbling town where violence and coercion reign. Young Mickey Wright is thrust into a world controlled by a powerful Teamster local associated with the Genovese crime syndicate. The man who puts him in jeopardy: his father, a free-wheeling policeman well-known to Jersey City's politicians and drug dealers.
When a Black trucker is murdered, Mickey is forced to choose between loyalty to family and the Teamsters or to values he shares with Debbie Olsen, the love of his young life who is the daughter of a solidly middle-class family. Memorable appearances by Mickey's sister, who is broken by her father's foul will, and memories of their late mother haunt the story. The question of whether Mickey can stand tall, break free and live a worthy life of his choosing isn't answered until a final, shocking confrontation. The Price You Pay is rich with vivid details and the kind of propulsive yet compassion storytelling that defines Fusilli's career as one of today's most admired mystery writers. As in his novels Narrows Gate and The Mayor of Polk Street, he proves once again that he knows how danger can explode when the mob, police and politics are intertwined. As for Mickey and Debbie, there is a way out. Will they survive to take it? Critical Acclaim for The Price You Pay Jim Fusilli has done a lot of good writing in his time, but The Price You Pay is his best book. It's everything you want urban crime fiction to be: taut, seriously suspenseful, closely observed, wry, and very knowing about the way the real world works. I started off admiring the precision of the writing, and then found the pages flying. I was going to say George V. Higgins, the author of The Friends of Eddie Coyle, would have liked this novel. But then again, he might have just been pissed that he didn't write it himself. -Peter Blauner, author and screenwriter With The Price You Pay, Jim Fusilli gives us a tough and heartfelt coming of age crime story-gritty, suspenseful, involving. The characters pop and ache and burn. Mickey Wright is memorable. -Meg Gardiner, #1 New York Times bestselling author Critical Acclaim for Jim Fusilli: Superior. This courageous and original writer works against the grain of expectations, looking to make our experience not easy but illuminative and true. -Boston Globe Fusilli writes with poetic intensity. -Kirkus Reviews Fusilli's a master of his craft, each line brimming with his sense of urban life and nail-biting suspense... His prose is diamond-bright and conjures up a realm you cannot forget. -Providence Journal
Jim Fusilli's new novel takes place in the years surrounding World War II in the dangerous immigrant neighborhood of Narrows Gate, overlooking the Hudson River, where anything can happen--and it usually does. Sal Benno is a neighborhood kid who doesn't take to school but is able to provide the favors the Mafia needs, a skill that brings him into their inner circle and closer to ultimate danger. His lifelong friend Leo Bell sticks by Sal through thick and thin, but harbors a dangerous secret that could either keep Sal alive--or bring his life to an abrupt end. In the middle of it is Billy Bebe Marsala, a hugely popular and handsome crooner who becomes a pawn in a mob war that could destroy them all. A novel that rekindles the spirit of such groundbreaking works as Mario Puzo's The Godfather and Budd Schulberg's On the Waterfront, Narrows Gate is a powerful, epic saga that captures the heart of the immigrant experience--and the soul of America.
One of popular music's most prolific and creative composers, Elvis Costello has written songs in every conceivable genre: pop, reggae, rock, country, funk, soul and jazz, but also for full orchestras and string quartets. What you may not have noticed is that a surprising number of these songs are crime stories-not mere nods toward unsavory events featuring questionable characters, but complete tales of murder and violence told in verse.
Costello's song titles alone confirm one of his preferred themes: Accidents will Happen, American Gangster Time, Bullets for the Newborn King, Coal-Train Robberies, The Final Mrs. Curtain, Hetty O'Hara Confidential, Kinder Murder, My Thief, Shabby Doll, Shot with His Own Gun, That's How You Got Killed Before and Watching the Detectives, among them. His album titles include Blood & Chocolate, Brutal Youth, National Ransom and When I Was Cruel. You can just imagine the so-called pulp mysteries of the 1920s, '30s and '40s bearing identical titles accompanied by lurid, evocative cover art. In Brutal & Strange, contemporary masters of crime fiction dig into Costello's catalogue for inspiration. The marriage of Costello's themes and these award-winning authors' creativity will seem an inevitable match when you experience the results. Whether it's Meg Gardiner and Complicated Shadows, Catriona McPherson and Tramp the Dirt Down, Alex Segura and I Want You, Mark Billingham and Our Little Angels or many other virtuoso interpretations, the stories match the composer's high standards and suggest there's even more stirring beneath the surface of his songs. In his Everyday I Write the Book-explored here by Gar Anthony Hayward-Costello portrays an author as sinister, controlling and vengeful. That's not to say the authors who contributed to Brutal & Strange are anything of the kind. But you will find their questionable characters engaged in unsavory events. One imagines Costello himself would approve.
For years the drifter haunted the background of American life, roaming the side streets and highways that crisscross this vast country. Cool and handsome, with a single teardrop scar and a knack for silence that keeps the world at bay, he is a man alone.
That all changes on a rainy night in Chicago, when he witnesses a brutal assault on a young woman. By the time he reaches her, the assailant is gone, leaving a trail that is all too easy to follow. But playing the good Samaritan may be more trouble than it's worth, when his moment of conscience hurls him into a shadowy world of violence, intrigue and deception.
Caught between duty to his fellow man and the anonymity of life on the road, the Samaritan could walk away. But when his estranged teenage daughter is threatened, he will make his choice--and never look back. By turns violent and insightful, this suspenseful novel from acclaimed journalist and author Jim Fusilli introduces an unforgettable hero to the ranks of contemporary American fiction.
A man alone takes to the road following the brutal murder of his wife. After years lost to drifting and isolation--except for the comfort of the kind of women he cannot deny--he finds himself swept into a world of violence and danger, his life in the hands of a madman. Freed by an unexpected savior, he returns to the road, still a haunted man who remains the target of his estranged daughter's scorn.
But as he wanders from the red-rock spires of Arizona to Sun Studios in Memphis, he succumbs to sordid temptation--and is soon accused of murder. To clear himself, he must find the real killer, unaware that his nemesis, a Wall Street power broker, is manipulating him from afar and has unleashed a killer on his trail--and the trail of his daughter.
The second novel in the Sam series, Jim Fusilli's Billboard Man pulls the drifter off the long, dark road once again--long enough for him to find that the world is small when so many people want him dead.