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mikerickson 's review for:
A Beautiful Crime
by Christopher Bollen
You know, it would be the easiest thing in the world to just say "Be Gay, Do Crimes: Venice Edition!" and call it a review, and I was kind of expecting to do so before I picked this one up, but this was just too goddamn good of a book to be flippant about.
From one of the best opening chapters I've read in a while, I was invested in this meticulously researched novel. I'm one of those people who can spend hours on Google Earth just zooming around for fun, so when the opening scene describes a pier called Ca' Rezzonico being just across the Grand Canal from San Samuele, of course I had to look it up. Sure enough, they're just opposite from each other. Hell, most of this book can be traced to very specific real-world locations, and even the made up ones pull so heavily on certain neighborhoods that I could believe they were real. There are a few mentions to specific works of art as well, and it was neat to look them up and see the exact same thing the characters were describing seeing.
Venice itself surpassed being just a setting and became a character itself in this story with its own desires and needs and flaws. But that's not to say the rest of the cast couldn't hold up on their own; this was actually a very strong roster of people I enjoyed reading about. You had the passionate locals trying to defend their city from hordes of tourists, the young and ambitious couple Nick and Clay who came to the city to pull off a con, and an expertly charismatic antagonist (who oddly enough really reminded me of my father-in-law; it's not often a book character reminds me of someone from my personal life). They all made for an interesting web of interactions, and the house of cards that Nick and Clay constructed to walk away with hundreds of thousands of dollars of another man's money constantly threatened to come crashing down depending on who knew what and when.
One of my favorite characters in this book was dead before it even began (which kind of set the whole plot in motion), and we only visit this eccentric old Manhattan socialite in flashbacks, at the twilight of his life. But he tied into a theme of older generations of gay men passing down specific knowledge and experiences to the younger one so perfectly that the core of the book would've suffered without his absence. All this despite the fact that, again, he was dead before we met him.
The story isn't told in a strictly chronological order, but it never got confusing. This wasn't an especially violent book with shootouts or assassins or anything bloody, but the stakes still felt high. The ending felt realistic and earned; it wasn't a perfect storybook happily ever after, but it was as good as it could have been as a direct result of the choices made by these flawed protagonists. And they were very much different people at the end of this story than they were at the beginning, which is always the sign of a competent writer in my opinion.
If you want a low-stakes thriller that's well-written and has an authentic portrayal of gay culture (both modern and older), this is your book.
From one of the best opening chapters I've read in a while, I was invested in this meticulously researched novel. I'm one of those people who can spend hours on Google Earth just zooming around for fun, so when the opening scene describes a pier called Ca' Rezzonico being just across the Grand Canal from San Samuele, of course I had to look it up. Sure enough, they're just opposite from each other. Hell, most of this book can be traced to very specific real-world locations, and even the made up ones pull so heavily on certain neighborhoods that I could believe they were real. There are a few mentions to specific works of art as well, and it was neat to look them up and see the exact same thing the characters were describing seeing.
Venice itself surpassed being just a setting and became a character itself in this story with its own desires and needs and flaws. But that's not to say the rest of the cast couldn't hold up on their own; this was actually a very strong roster of people I enjoyed reading about. You had the passionate locals trying to defend their city from hordes of tourists, the young and ambitious couple Nick and Clay who came to the city to pull off a con, and an expertly charismatic antagonist (who oddly enough really reminded me of my father-in-law; it's not often a book character reminds me of someone from my personal life). They all made for an interesting web of interactions, and the house of cards that Nick and Clay constructed to walk away with hundreds of thousands of dollars of another man's money constantly threatened to come crashing down depending on who knew what and when.
One of my favorite characters in this book was dead before it even began (which kind of set the whole plot in motion), and we only visit this eccentric old Manhattan socialite in flashbacks, at the twilight of his life. But he tied into a theme of older generations of gay men passing down specific knowledge and experiences to the younger one so perfectly that the core of the book would've suffered without his absence. All this despite the fact that, again, he was dead before we met him.
The story isn't told in a strictly chronological order, but it never got confusing. This wasn't an especially violent book with shootouts or assassins or anything bloody, but the stakes still felt high. The ending felt realistic and earned; it wasn't a perfect storybook happily ever after, but it was as good as it could have been as a direct result of the choices made by these flawed protagonists. And they were very much different people at the end of this story than they were at the beginning, which is always the sign of a competent writer in my opinion.
If you want a low-stakes thriller that's well-written and has an authentic portrayal of gay culture (both modern and older), this is your book.