Fresh Kills

By: Bill Loehfelm

Narrated by: Gary Wilmes

Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's Summary

In Fresh Kills, the murder of John Sanders Sr. on a New York street corner reunites his estranged and abused children, John, Jr. and Julia. While Julia struggles to keep things together on the home front, Junior, unhinged by his father's death, searches for the killer across the bleak, haunted landscape of his Staten Island hometown. Complicating Junior's pursuit are two police detectives: one, a former childhood friend; the other, a veteran cop who might have his own reasons to wish John, Sr. dead. Junior's emotional state crumbles under the pressure coming at him from every side. Bedding his high school sweetheart doesn't exactly simplify the situation. When the opportunity for revenge presents itself, Junior must decide whether he will continue the chain of violence that has nearly destroyed his life, or give in to the possibility of a new beginning. With emotional intensity, crackling dialogue and a heartfelt sense of place and character, Fresh Kills delivers unexpected and profound insights that speak to the soul of its struggling hero, and heralds a breakthrough voice in fiction.

©2008 Bill Loehfelm (P)2008 Penguin Audio

Critic Reviews

" Fresh Kills is an interesting hybrid, a well-written, fine-quality literary novel wrapped in the thriller genre....with well-developed characters and a terrific sense of place and time; it's also, in thriller terms, a great read." (John Sandford, author of Phantom Prey)
"Superb prose and psychological insights distinguish Loehfelm's debut.... Loehfelm excels in making Staten Island itself a palpable presence, brilliantly evoking the reek of the world's largest landfill that gives the novel its name, as well as the despair of the local residents." ( Publishers Weekly)
"You've got to hand it to narrator Gary Wilmes. He loads protagonist John Sanders, Jr., with enough resentment for all of Staten Island, where Junior resides, and enough left over to cover one or two more boroughs for good measure." ( AudioFile)

Not a Mystery

Unfortunately this book is not a mystery and the title "Fresh Kills" is a reference to a land fill that is only marginally referenced in the book and really has nothing to do with anything. While the main character makes efforts to solve his father's murder, the book is really a psychological study on his efforts to deal with his own childhood abuse. Even in this, the book doesn't hit the mark. The mystery of his father's death is resolved at the end of the book with little fanfare and the reader is never actually in on the real detective work. What finally puts this book in the real dump is the reader. The book is not well read. The listener can barely distinguish one character from another and it appears as if the reader has a slight lisp or a piece of candy in his mouth the whole time. Audio readers can feel free to pass this one up.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Boring

This book is just boring. I wanted to come up with a better review than this but I kept waiting for the book to get better and it never did. Don't waste any credits or money on this book.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Not good

Awful story...it goes absolutley no where, worse narration...my cat could have done a better job, and I don't even have a cat! Skip this one.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful