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You know when you had that one favorite album? You would put it on the turntable and listen to it over and over, because you could not get enough of it? That is how I felt about this anthology. I loved it, from beginning to end. There was not a single bad song, I mean story, in the whole book. What a brilliant idea to take a group of very talented writers and have them write short stories inspired by Bruce Springsteen's songs. This is a gathering of crime stories. They are not too violent. So, i...
The concept here is inspired (even if I myself have just a passing interest in the work of Bruce Springsteen). What's more impressive still, though, is the inspiration that this broad array of fine writers drew from the concept. Crime is the bedrock of this collection, but there are other surprising elements to it as well -- a dash of sci-fi and even a funny joke for variety. You'll find numerous different settings, hear many different voices, and be impressed by the skills on display. Only here...
To be honest, I was not fond of some of the writing here. I think that the stories had some promise, but the writing fell short of that promise in more cases than I would have liked. Still, most of the stories were quite good and well written.
3.5 stars, uneven but very enjoyable.
This collection of short stories is uneven, some very good, some meh, and most somewhere in between the two extremes. I'd actually like to give it 3.5 stars. Still, I enjoyed it and will probably return to some of the stories later.I happened upon this book because my wife is a Springsteen fan and while I noodling around the internet looking up Springsteen songs I found that there is a strong element of noir in many of his songs as well as crime themes. Being that crime and noir are two of my fa...
As a big fan of Springsteen (even my first son's called Bruce) and crime fiction, I was always going to get around to reading this at some point. I finally tracked down a reasonably priced copy on eBay and here we are. Joe Clifford cites in his introduction that "you'd have a tough time finding a more impressive roster of who's who in modern pulp fiction," and he is not wrong. The book is chock full of cars, bars, marriage & murder and a bevy of folks working towards a dream however they can, bu...
Some good writing, but mostly disappointed. Though I rarely read short stories, there were only a few of these that were more than interesting. Most of them fell flat.Of course, I was drawn to this set primarily because of the Springsteen title connection. Beware, however, except for a few nods to Boss songs and lyrics, these stories had only passing allusions to Springsteen.
A collection of excellent stories of out-of-working-class born in the USA people whose glory days are way, way behind them. With a few exceptions, the stories are very good, but there's a certain samishness to them that makes this a better book for dipping into than for mainlining. But hey, making a good book last ain't no crime.
So, it turns out that I'm just not a fan of crime pulp fiction. The stories of crimes committed by people on the desperate edges of trying lives don't appeal to me. I was drawn to the book because I like Springsteen's music. Appreciating his music is not critically necessary to understand the stories, but the songs provide some context for some of the stories, and for others, part of the appeal is to see the divergence from the song's storyline that the writing takes.