Scott Lasser

This book is a fictional work told in several various flashbacks. I really liked it. For me it was unusual to have a story that takes place in a place I actually know.

I'm not sure if you would like it as much if I wasn't from here. The author describes many places in Metro Detroit by location only, and I'm not sure if you would get it on your own. (Greektown, Gratiot, Birmingham's McMansions)

It took me a while to figure out the race of all the characters. In theory this should not matter, but since its a story about Detroit, it does.

Above all it gave me yet another glimps at my new home, the FBI fighting the drug war, and the kids caught in the middle. Really it made me want to be Dave, a white guy who moves to a big old house in the City and makes a difference. Too bad I could never get Suz to go for it

Please be aware there is adultery, but no graphic sex scenes.… (mais)

I’ve seen this billed as a mystery, I suppose because there is a murder, although it is part of a secondary plot and it’s not really a mystery to the reader, only to the protagonist. The book is much more a novel about “coming home”. But, as the book jacket says:: “Where do you go when home is Detroit?”

My dad grew up in Windsor Ontario, across the river south of Detroit. He was a life-long Tigers and Red Wings fan, but no fan really of the city of Detroit itself, into which he took regular business trips. Myself, I spent my teen years listening to the music of Motown on clear radio signals throughout southern Ontario.

Today, Detroit has a reputation of a city in decay—although, recently, one finding its feet again—and so that question of coming home to Detroit intrigued me greatly. And it is as that—a novel about ‘finding place’ in a struggling city—that this book works.

Read this if: you come ‘from’ somewhere that’s changed for the worse since you’ve left; or you’d like to understand a little better the fierce pride of city in Detroit. 3½ stars… (mais)