There is no way to write a book review of Night Train without spoiling the ending. If you plan on reading this novel, do not read this review."I am a police. That may sound like an unusual statement - or an unusual construction. But it's a parlance we have. Among ourselves, we would never say I am a policeman or I am a policewoman or I am a police officer. We would just say I am a police. I am a police. I am a police and my name is Detective Mike Hoolihan. And I am a woman, also."And so it begins: Martin Amis's ostensible twist on a modern-day police story or a who dunnit. Mike Hoolihan is a hardened veteran, a gruff, chain-smoking recovering alcoholic and still something of a sex addict who has seen everything there is to see in the world of homicide. It takes a lot to unnerve her, but Jennifer Rockwell's death affects her deeply. Jennifer is the daughter of Mike's dear commanding officer, Colonel Tom. Mike gets a call telling her Jennifer is dead - an apparent suicide - and a request to inform Colonel Tom and his wife. Hoolihan breaks the news and then investigates. The death has the markings of suicide, but how could it be? Jennifer Rockwell had everything: beauty, love, brains, and happiness. Mike recalls all the times she spoke to Jennifer at social events, and how Jennifer always made an attempt to talk to her, and everyone else, in a sincere and intelligent way. She always left you with something. Hoolihan thinks that if Jennifer's death really was a suicide, she must have left clues - and she did. Jennifer had read a book on suicide and was scoring lithium on the street. She had started to lose her mind, but was too afraid - or too perfect - to tell anybody. For a long while, the reader thinks, and hopes, the death could not be a suicide. But it is. The case torments its investigator, perhaps more than the reader is at first aware. Detective Hoolihan admits to being bothered, but we do not know how bothered until - perhaps - the last page. Amis closes the novel with an enigmatic paragraph, a reference to the night train coming. The night train is a recurring theme, a symbol for suicide. And there is a man on the stairs coming for Hoolihan, but who is it? Dr. No, the pathologist who she was flirting with earlier? Colonel Tom coming to get a clarification regarding Mike's hasty phone call explaining that Jennifer definitely offed herself? Or is it an allusion? Is it death coming to take her? Has the entire novel been a suicide note in disguise? Amis leaves you wondering.Night Train is a fast-paced novel, a page-turner. It touches on everything from forensics, to cosmology, to suicide and related statistics. Mostly, the book is highly realistic. My only reservation is that you sometimes hear Amis speaking through Hoolihan much like you hear Woody Allen speaking through the female characters in his movies. Hoolihan is a cop, in the United States, and she usually "sounds like" one, but occasionally she uses British English and is a little too literary in her analysis. Amis slums somewhat to provide realism, but this seems strange coming from him. There are cliché cop similes for instance, but Amis is famous for his devotion to originality and his disdain for cliché. He has written an anthology of book reviews and literary criticism called The War Against Cliché. So, Night Train has a design flaw, but not a big one. I tore through the book in a couple of sittings and when I was not reading it, I was thinking about it. Amis has that "voice," that intangible quality that transcends skill and style and propels the reader along. (I think it is unusual when someone reads a book fast, only to say they did not enjoy it. I always imagine a diner devouring a steak in five minutes and then complaining to the waiter it was no good.)Fans of Martin Amis say Night Train is one of his weaker novels, but if that is the case his stronger ones must be stellar. Troy Parfitt is the author of Why China Will Never Rule the World
44-year-old female detective and recovering alcoholic, "Mike" Hoolihan, takes on the job of investigating the apparent suicide of Jennifer Rockwell, the only daughter of police brass, Colonel Tom. Tom is a powerful father figure for Mike: he saved her life by getting her off the booze. Now he wants her to explain what happened to his daughter. Jennifer had everything anybody wants: beauty, wit, health and a stimulating career. So the discovery in her orderly apartment of her naked body with three shots to the head strikes Hoolihan not just as a shock, but as an endlessly troubling mystery. As she attempts to solve it, Amis takes us down the well-worn paths of the traditional detective story: the crime scene, the autopsy, the interviews with Jennifer's doctor, lover and colleagues, mostly set in offices, bars and smoky police cells. The resolution is original while still remaining reasonably faithful to classic crime conventions. As Borges once observed, the American detective story is generally a disappointment precisely because its solutions don't satisfy the curiosity the plot has stirred. But Amis, to my mind, nails it. The ending is incredibly bleak and quite unexpected, though some readers will undoubtedly find it ambiguous... So much of the criticism of this startling little novel misses the mark by holding it to a standard it doesn't attempt to meet. The one thing we can be sure Amis is not doing here is attempting a conventional noirish crime novel. Rather, he borrows the conventions of one genre and uses them for something else: in this case, he takes the "detective story" as the narrative architecture for an existential drama, much like Paul Auster did in "The New York Trilogy". As "a police", Mike needs to be interested in the what and the how, and less in the why. But as Amis shows, the why is everything. The why is our central dilemma. I read "Night Train" in one sitting and enjoyed it immensely. I suspect the hatred it inspires has more to do with the average crime buff's disappointed expectations and/or the corrosive and now-automatic distaste many critics have for Martin Amis, and less to do with the book itself.
What do You think about Night Train (1999)?
"We're all still walking, aren't we? We're still persisting, still keeping on, still sleeping, waking, still crouching on cans, still crouching in cars, still driving, driving, driving, still taking it, still eating it, still home-improving and twelve-stepping it, still waiting, still standing in line, still scrabbling in bags for a handfull of keys.Ever have that childish feeling, with the sun on your salty face and icecream melting in your mouth, the infantile feeling that you want to cancel worldly happiness, turn it down as a false lead?"..."Bills and wills, deeds, leases, taxes -- oh, man, the water torture of staying alive."..."The revolution is coming, Detective. And it's a revolution of consciousness. That's what Jennifer believed."Damn didn't expect to lose my heart to this book. It was an anti-mystery that flouted and mocked its own conventions and it was pure sweet noir, told by a big broad lady with a man's voice and blue eyes that've seen everything but still can admit that this deal with Jennifer, that was the worst.
—Susanna Rose
in The Atlantic“O Comboio da Noite” do escritor britânico Martin Amis (n. 1949) foi editado em 1997 e revela-se uma excelente novela “policial” que se centra na investigação da misteriosa morte de Jennifer Rockwell.A detective Mike Hoolihan é chamada a investigar o assassinato da sua amiga Jennifer, filha de Tom Rockwell, um chefe destacado do Departamento Criminal da Polícia. O texto de Martin Amis divide-se em três partes: “Sinais de Fogo”, “Felo de se” e “O ver” numa construção narrativa sombria, focada prioritariamente nas questões directamente relacionadas com a motivação humana, subjacente à obscuridade e à complexidade dos seus diferentes comportamentos.No decorrer da investigação criminal da morte de Jennifer, a detective Mike tem que lutar com os seus fantasmas existenciais, com o seu passado de alcoolismo e com uma infância caracterizada pelo abuso sexual.(view spoiler)[A relação de amizade “existente” entre Mike e Jennifer, com comportamentos opostos sobre a vida emocional e sexual, é caracterizada pela ambiguidade, mas essencial para a caracterização das personagens e que coloca questões determinantes sobre o seu “assassinato” ou o seu inexplicável “suicídio”. (hide spoiler)]
—João Carlos
Night Train is Amis fils’ strange diversion into the wastes of hard-boiled/noir fiction. Anytown USA in the mid-90s, and Detective Mike Hoolihan (gritty, ex-alky, female) is put to work to solve the apparent suicide of the brainy, beautiful Jennifer Rockwell. Surprisingly, Amis does a fairly convincing job of interloping into Cain-MacDonald-McBain territory – the attitudes, the atmosphere, it’s all there – and the early chapters are full to bursting with the the pure pleasure of genre writing. Who knew wisecracking cops could give so much warmth and familiarity and comfort! But then it takes a subtle turn towards cosmology and metaphysics, and as the mystery unravels, it becomes rather less compelling. Maybe Amis should have stuck to the template, maybe the absence of a true-blue villain is to blame, or maybe this was simply Amis' idea of bending the conventions of the genre. But there is not enough conviction here, not enough meat to the bones. He tries to inject some gravitas by bringing in mental illness and cogitations on suicide, but coming from him it doesn’t really feel heartfelt. Especially since the profile of the murder victim is of a piece with the well-known and gratuitous misogyny of the Amis clan. Harsher critics have called it smug and self-conscious; I wouldn't go so far but I can see why they see it that way. Too, another annoying verbal tic: Amis’ peculiar use of the word “too” (see above usage). All in all, a book that promised much but fizzled out.
—Zuberino
