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Fiction. Mystery. Suspense. Thriller. HTML:From the bestselling author of the Bone Collector novels, soon to be an NBC series Five feet two inches of slick repartee, near-purple hair, and poetic imagination, twenty-year-old Rune hasn't been in Manhattan for very long. But she's crafty enough to have found a squatter's paradise in an empty TriBeCa loft, and a video store job that feeds her passion for old movies. It's a passion she shares with her favorite customer, Mr. Kelly, a lonely old man who rents the same video over and over. The flick is a noir classic based on a real-life unsolved bank heist and a million missing dollars. It's called Manhattan Is My Beat. That's the tape Rune is picking up from Mr. Kelly's shabby apartment when she finds him shot to death. The police suspect a robbery gone wrong, but Rune is certain the key to solving the murder is hidden somewhere in the hazy, black-and-white frames of Mr. Kelly's beloved movie. But as Rune hits the mean streets of New York to find answers, she gets caught up in a dangerous adventure more chilling than anything Hollywood could dream up. As her story draws to its terrifying conclusion, Rune's final close-up may include the killer of a co-star.… (more)
User reviews
It is then that her fantasies and the cruel realities of real life collide.
Although this is clearly an early work is is much less assured than his later books,it still has a lot going for it. Certainly it kept me reading and the several surprises near the end,were well executed.
In this novel we meet Rune, a twenty-year old woman who works in a video store and loves fairy tales. And when I say loves, I don’t mean someone who fondly looks back on Disney films. I mean someone who imagines scenarios in her head and actively narrates from a fairytale perspective. That’s cool, it didn’t bother me, but I can imagine why some people would look at Rune and think of her as irritating and childish. Moving on... Rune is a fairly existential person. She goes with the flow (a constant phrase used by her is “thems the breaks”) and doesn’t really plan for anything. This is until a customer from the video store is killed and Rune barely manages to survive intercepting the killer.
She believes clues to the murder can be found in an old movie, Manhattan is my Beat. Mr Kelly, the deceased, rented the movie 18 times before his death, and once Rune does some digging, she realises that the movie is based on a true story; a bank heist that occurred in Manhattan and involved controversy surrounding the police. With the aid of her overactive imagination, Rune decides that Mr Kelly had found where the money from the heist had been hidden. As usual, the story is far more complex than this. And this is where Deaver really begins to shine. The characters and the storylines are so well structured, so intelligent, and the twists and turns just keep coming. Quickly Rune finds herself in a desperate race to solve the mystery of Mr Kelly’s death before others with more sinister intentions beat her to it. But with a host of colourful characters along the way, Rune must learn how to tell who to trust before placing her trust in the wrong person could just be the last mistake she ever makes.
Another novel and another amateur sleuth. I think I’ve found the decade/s where my new favourite novels come from!