Night Train

Time Magazine

One of the most gifted writers of his generation.

Michiko Katukani

[Amis] virtuoso performance...and quicksilver narrative...grabs the reader and refuses to let go.
-- The New York Times

Allen Barra

Martin Amis' Night Train is being billed as a kind of serious author's holiday, a genre vacation between his thick, clever, mostly "serious" works. The Brit press is roasting him for it. Well, screw them. Many other serious novelists have taken a little time off now and then -- there are certainly those of us who prefer what Graham Greene called his "entertainments" to his longer, presumably less entertaining books.

And Night Train is entertaining. It's a detective story about the suicide or murder of a young woman who had everything those around her wanted: beauty, wit, vivacity, health and a stimulating career. The characters, particularly Detective "Mike" Hoolihan -- the quotes are because Mike is female -- are crisp and entertaining. And the solution to the death is original while remaining faithful to murder classic conventions. This last point is no small one: As Borges once observed, the American detective story is generally a disappointment precisely because its solutions don't satisfy the curiosity that the plot has stirred.

Night Train is a disappointment for opposite reasons. Amis has never been much interested in character, motivation and plot, which aren't considered major virtues in an era when technique holds court, but at the kid's table of crime fiction, they're essential. You feel as if Amis does care about his characters, perhaps more than he's cared about most of those in his previous novels, but doesn't know how to give voice to that concern. Night Train feels rootless. "Mike" is convincing as neither a woman nor an American, and the unnamed city Amis places her in gives off no heat. (One suspects it's a pastiche of American big cities that Amis has glimpsed during book tours.) It's true that Elmore Leonard, one of Amis' idols, also doesn't waste a lot of time in description of local fauna, but with Leonard's deft paintbrush strokes, he doesn't need a lot of time to make you feel as if you're in a particular place. The city in Night Train is like Gertrude Stein's Oakland: There's no there.

To cover these deficiencies Amis falls back on the mechanics of the murder mystery plot -- a peculiar homage to Leonard, whose books (like most of Dashiell Hammett's) aren't mysteries. Amis may not like it, but the author Night Train draws most comparison with is Raymond Chandler, for whom Amis has a well-known contempt. The book's best lines -- "Guys? She combed them out of her hair" and "You wouldn't pray for a body like that -- but something was wrong with it. It was dead." -- sound much more like Chandler than like Leonard, as does Mike Hoolihan's Philip Marlowe-like narration. "Suicide is the night train," she tells us, "speeding your way to darkness ... this train takes you into the night, and leaves you there." To which Marlowe might have replied, "What did it matter where you lay once you are dead? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you weren't bothered by things like that." -- Salon

Library Journal

This intriguing new work from the ever-gritty, disturbing Amis is a sort of anti-police procedural, following all the rules and then blowing them away at the end to reach for something different. Detective Mike Hoolihan is a tough woman, on the force for years and currently recovering from the alcohol abuse that can go with a high-stress job. Now she has her toughest assignment yet. Jennifer Rockwell, the picture-perfect daughter of top cop Colonel Tom, has deliberately blown out her brains, using not one but three bullets, and the colonel is convinced it's murder. Hoolihan investigates, finds odd little facts (lithium use, a pick-up in a bar), and concludes that Jennifer was leaving clues to something. Tension builds as the reader awaits impatiently for the revelation of some dark secret, and at first it is a disappointment when none comes. But soon the anti-climax starts to feel right: beyond thrills, we've learned something important about how the human psyche really works.

Library Journal

This intriguing new work from the ever-gritty, disturbing Amis is a sort of anti-police procedural, following all the rules and then blowing them away at the end to reach for something different. Detective Mike Hoolihan is a tough woman, on the force for years and currently recovering from the alcohol abuse that can go with a high-stress job. Now she has her toughest assignment yet. Jennifer Rockwell, the picture-perfect daughter of top cop Colonel Tom, has deliberately blown out her brains, using not one but three bullets, and the colonel is convinced it's murder. Hoolihan investigates, finds odd little facts (lithium use, a pick-up in a bar), and concludes that Jennifer was leaving clues to something. Tension builds as the reader awaits impatiently for the revelation of some dark secret, and at first it is a disappointment when none comes. But soon the anti-climax starts to feel right: beyond thrills, we've learned something important about how the human psyche really works.

School Library Journal

"Suicide is the night train, speeding your way to darkness." Detective Mike Hoolihan is a case-hardened policewoman, but this case is different. The dead woman is Jennifer Rockwell, the daughter of Mike's friend (and boss), Colonel Tom Rockwell, head of criminal investigation. Even though all the evidence points to suicide, Colonel Tom asks Mike to take another look. Everyone agrees that Jennifer had everything; she was beautiful, a brilliant astrophysicist with a promising career, in love with a professor at the university. Why suicide? As Mike probes the secrets of the deceased woman's life, she is forced to re-examine her own, and the decision she makes at the end of her investigation says as much about her as it does about Jennifer, or Colonel Tom. The author's portrayal of the conflicts and complexities of a criminal investigation is utterly convincing, the dialogue is authentic, and the writing is both spare and powerful. -- Molly Connally, Kings Park Library, Fairfax County, Virginia

Time Magazine

One of the most gifted writers of his generation.