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"[A] funny, craftily malevolent first novel, an ice-pick-sharp crime story that sustains its film noir energy all the way to an outrageous whammy of an ending." The New York Times
Ballantine
November 2001
240 pages
ISBN: 0345440196
Trade Size (reprint)
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Suspense | Thriller | Fiction
Loaded guns, ladies of the night, broken neon, broken dreams. Here is a world that is immediately recognizable-- through a shot glass at three A.M. This is life with rough edges, in a novel that gives you the straight goods--point blank-- one cold, snowbound Christmas Eve in Kansas. One single night, defined in shadings of black and white, when everything changes. . . . For most, the city is closing up. For a few outsiders, this night, Christmas Eve 1979, is just beginning. Charlie Arglist is a lawyer saying goodbye to Wichita by revisiting the landscape of his used up life: the cold stare of his angry ex-wife, the empty strip clubs and bars where loneliness turns a profit, the frozen glare of ex-lovers and cops long snuggled in his deep pockets. Club owner Renata, an elegant dish in a smoky dive, dreams of financial prosperity and holds a single frame of a stolen film that could help her achieve them. And there's Vic. He's got a reputation, a bad temper, and a secret worth half a million dollars. Not to mention a knack for bringing people together . . . for the last time. Before the night is over, the decisions they face and the choices they make will irrevocably alter the course of their lives--if they can live long enough to see Christmas Day sunrise.
 Media BuzzFresh Air - NPR - December 16, 2005
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