The FortyTwo Ed Kurtz 9780989932349 Books
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It’s 1979 in New York City and Charley McCormick loves the Deuce—42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues—more than anything in the world. He loves the peculiar low-budget movies. He loves the bizarre all-night circus of it all. But when a pretty girl sits beside him at a horror double feature at the Harris and ends up dead before the lights come back on, his scene is turned upside down…and Charley is thrown into whirlwind of murder and betrayal where no one is what they seem. As he winds through a network of sex workers, gangsters, and B movie producers, Charley gets himself in so deeply there is no choice but to unravel what started on the Forty-Two and might very well end in the city morgue.
The FortyTwo Ed Kurtz 9780989932349 Books
Ed Kurtz's "The Forty-Two" is a wonderful blend of crime novel, mystery story and homage to the Times Square grindhouse theater district of New York's 42nd Street circa 1979 all in one. "The Forty-Two" is a gripping, page-turner of mystery set in the world of the people who made the movies and those who watched them. The story begins innocently enough with Charley McCormick, hotel clerk and sometime trash movie boom mic operator (if you can call it that) indulging in his favorite recreation: catching a movie on 42nd Street. An attractive woman, without explanation, sits next to him in the mostly empty theater. At a shocking moment in the film, she clutches his hand and never lets go. Because she's dead. Stabbed in the back as she and Charley watched the movie. From there we're off on a page-turning nightmare through the back alleys of New York and the lowest, most disturbing avenues of exploitation film-making as Charley plays detective against his better judgment. And it quickly becomes apparent that the people responsible for the murder will not sit by waiting for someone to find them out.Both the writing and plot are taunt and fast-moving. For a 364 page book, it seems only half that length as Kurtz throws unexpected revelations and plot twists as fast as you can read them. The only fault in the whole of the book might be that Charley has an incredible knack for being rescued just as someone is about to shoot him in the head (it happens several times), But each time, it seems that there is yet a new revelation demanding that you turn the page, so it's a minor fault.
"The Forty-Two" has a great plot, but Kurtz also fills the story with realistic, compassionate characters. Charley and, in particular, the prostitute Ursula, are vivid, real people with complex stories of their own. And as much as the plot twists and turns, it's Charley and Ursula who keep you turning the page because Kurtz gives them the depth to make readers genuinely care about what may or may not happen to them. And Kurtz keeps things real by sometimes having the story and characters do exactly what you don't expect them to do (or shouldn't do according to convention). Sometimes it's exciting, sometimes shocking, sometimes frustrating, sometimes heartbreaking, and always uniquely Ed Kurtz.
Unlike his short novel, "Dead Trash", "The Forty-Two" doesn't attempt to replicate a grindhouse movie on paper, but the settings, subject matter and certainly some of the characters would be right at home in a 1970s AIP film showing on a 42nd Street theater screen.
"The Forty-Two" is a hard-driving, page-turning thriller in the best sense of the words,
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Tags : The Forty-Two [Ed Kurtz] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. It’s 1979 in New York City and Charley McCormick loves the Deuce—42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues—more than anything in the world. He loves the peculiar low-budget movies. He loves the bizarre all-night circus of it all. But when a pretty girl sits beside him at a horror double feature at the Harris and ends up dead before the lights come back on,Ed Kurtz,The Forty-Two,New Pulp Press,0989932346,Crime,FICTION Crime,FICTION Thrillers Crime,Fiction - Mystery Detective,Fiction : Suspense,Thrillers - Crime,Thrillers - Suspense
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The FortyTwo Ed Kurtz 9780989932349 Books Reviews
This book's another great example of the blurred overlap between crime fiction, thriller, and horror. It covers them all, and it covers them well, while also being a nostalgic hearkening-back to an iconic piece of Americana even people who weren't alive then or never went there have absorbed by cultural osmosis.
New York. Times Square. The late 1970s, the heyday of sleazy nightlife, strip clubs, smut shops, sex, drugs, and movie theaters. Oh so many movie theaters, catering to a wide range of tastes, as long as most of those tastes are of the low-brow, low-budget variety. Adult movies, kung-fu movies, biker movies, exploitation flicks ...
And Charley's favorite, horror movies. Bad ones. The schlockier and gorier and bloodier, the better. He loves 'em. Can't get enough. Until the night he ends up sort of holding hands with an attractive stranger in the dark. He spends the rest of the show mulling over possible chat-up lines, but when the lights come up, he realizes that the girl beside him is dead. Stabbed in her seat while they sat there.
Suddenly, Charley's got all the blood and gore he could want ... only, this is real life, and he doesn't want it. Yet he can't put the incident behind him. He can't walk away. He needs to know who this mystery girl was, who killed her, why she had to die.
His bumbling efforts at investigation very quickly get him in way over his head. People trying to kill him, more people around him getting killed, secrets, lies, conspiracies, murder, money, hookers, drugs, cautionary beatings, and more.
No spoilers, though! You'll just have to read it. Written in a style that celebrates its grainy, grimy, graphic, transgressive, vivid Technicolor subject matter, it's a definite experience, gripping and exciting, sordid and tragic. This book about movies should go full-circle and become a movie, but I don't know if current movies could do it true justice.
Loved it! I wish it was a series of books with the same characters.
New York City has been a hotbed of sin for years, but until I read this work from Ed Kurtz, I'd never known that Times Square at the turn of the seventies was a pleasure palace for some, Hell on Earth for everyone else.
I felt like I had to take a shower at the end of this read. It was that good. Packed with murder, drugs, deceit, hedonism, and a surprise ending that you won't see coming, Kurtz is a writer to watch.
It's like walking into a photograph. I can't imagine what kind of research was done for this thing, but it is dense with locations, movies, books, culture, paraphernalia, sights and smells of one of the seedier neighborhoods in an awfully seedy setting. There's so much going on in this book, it's hard to nail it in an online review, but if you are a big fan of mystery and noir, this book will not let you down. It's one part historical novel, one part mysterious romp. Get crackin'
In THE FORTY TWO, author Ed Kurtz lovingly renders the glory, gory days of Times Square at the end of the '70s when it was the hub of vice for the whole country, maybe the whole world. Mr. Kurtz gets the details just right - the movie titles, the music, the headlines, the patois of authentic New Yorkers. But Kurtz isn't just painting a picture, he's also telling a riveting crime story. After the protagonist, Charley, a grindhouse movie aficionado, witnesses a murder, things rapidly escalate. Along the way, the reader encounters a wonderful parade of characters; prostitutes, strippers, junkies, Serbian gangsters, world weary cops and a transsexual with a heart of gold. Not a dull one among them, and there are few dull moments to be found in this fast-paced tale.
Things get pretty sleazy and this book doesn't look away when things get dark (at times it's as x-rated as the movies showing on 42nd street) but Kurtz finds a bizarre beauty in the seedy world he has resurrected.
So take a walk on the wild side and let Ed Kurtz be your tour guide on a lurid trip to the past. You won't be disappointed.
Ed Kurtz's "The Forty-Two" is a wonderful blend of crime novel, mystery story and homage to the Times Square grindhouse theater district of New York's 42nd Street circa 1979 all in one. "The Forty-Two" is a gripping, page-turner of mystery set in the world of the people who made the movies and those who watched them. The story begins innocently enough with Charley McCormick, hotel clerk and sometime trash movie boom mic operator (if you can call it that) indulging in his favorite recreation catching a movie on 42nd Street. An attractive woman, without explanation, sits next to him in the mostly empty theater. At a shocking moment in the film, she clutches his hand and never lets go. Because she's dead. Stabbed in the back as she and Charley watched the movie. From there we're off on a page-turning nightmare through the back alleys of New York and the lowest, most disturbing avenues of exploitation film-making as Charley plays detective against his better judgment. And it quickly becomes apparent that the people responsible for the murder will not sit by waiting for someone to find them out.
Both the writing and plot are taunt and fast-moving. For a 364 page book, it seems only half that length as Kurtz throws unexpected revelations and plot twists as fast as you can read them. The only fault in the whole of the book might be that Charley has an incredible knack for being rescued just as someone is about to shoot him in the head (it happens several times), But each time, it seems that there is yet a new revelation demanding that you turn the page, so it's a minor fault.
"The Forty-Two" has a great plot, but Kurtz also fills the story with realistic, compassionate characters. Charley and, in particular, the prostitute Ursula, are vivid, real people with complex stories of their own. And as much as the plot twists and turns, it's Charley and Ursula who keep you turning the page because Kurtz gives them the depth to make readers genuinely care about what may or may not happen to them. And Kurtz keeps things real by sometimes having the story and characters do exactly what you don't expect them to do (or shouldn't do according to convention). Sometimes it's exciting, sometimes shocking, sometimes frustrating, sometimes heartbreaking, and always uniquely Ed Kurtz.
Unlike his short novel, "Dead Trash", "The Forty-Two" doesn't attempt to replicate a grindhouse movie on paper, but the settings, subject matter and certainly some of the characters would be right at home in a 1970s AIP film showing on a 42nd Street theater screen.
"The Forty-Two" is a hard-driving, page-turning thriller in the best sense of the words,
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