Shovel Ready: A Novel Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00H87WMLI | Format: EPUB
Shovel Ready: A Novel Description
The futuristic hardboiled noir that Lauren Beukes calls "sharp as a paper-cut" about a garbage man turned kill-for-hire.
Spademan used to be a garbage man. That was before the dirty bomb hit Times Square, before his wife was killed, and before the city became a blown-out shell of its former self. Now he's a hitman.
In a near-future New York City split between those who are wealthy enough to "tap in" to a sophisticated virtual reality, and those who are left to fend for themselves in the ravaged streets, Spademan chose the streets. His new job is not that different from his old one: waste disposal is waste disposal. He doesn't ask questions, he works quickly, and he's handy with a box cutter. But when his latest client hires him to kill the daughter of a powerful evangelist, his unadorned life is upended: his mark has a shocking secret and his client has a sordid agenda far beyond a simple kill. Spademan must navigate between these two worlds - the wasteland reality and the slick fantasy - to finish his job, clear his conscience, and make sure he's not the one who winds up in the ground.
Adam Sternbergh has written a dynamite debut: gritty, violent, funny, riveting, tender, and brilliant.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 6 hours and 51 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Random House Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: January 14, 2014
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00H87WMLI
The dirty hero of this futuristic noir thriller is an ex-garbageman turned contract killer who goes by the name of Spademan. Pay him and he'll ice whomever you want dead, usually with his trusty sharp-edged box-cutter. He's Major League disinvolved with his work. When a customer tries to tell him why she wants her husband dead, he retorts: "I don't want to know your reasons.... I don't care. I'm not your Father Confessor. Think of me more like a bullet. Just point." Later he muses: "I don't know these people. I'm just a bullet."
Spademan lives in New York, but it`s a radically altered city. Two attacks and a dirty bomb, followed by small acts of terrorism --in one of which Spademan's wife died-- have led the rich and mobile to flee the city. Taxi drivers cruise the city with Geiger counters on their dashboards to warn them when they've neared a hot spot. The poor huddle together in tent cities in the Park. The few rich who haven't departed for safer climes hole up in their luxury townhouses where they limn, tap, go off-body, stretching out in coffin-like beds tapped into a virtual reality world that poorer folk can't afford. Nurses tend their wasted bodies, feed liquefied food into them through tubes. It's easy for Spademan to off one of them when a contract comes through: just walk up to the bed, a quick slash across the neck of the sleeping victim, and Bob's your uncle.
Then Spademan gets a new contract: he's being paid to kill the daughter of a high-profile evangelist. He finds her but she's pregnant, eighteen and pregnant, fiver months gone. And who, you may ask, does she think the father is? Her father. When did it happen?
Meet Spademan, a second-generation garbage man in futuristic New York. After a dirty bomb hit Times Square, most residents of Manhattan skipped town. After personal tragedy hit Spademan, he became a garbage man of a different sort. For a price, he'll take out any trash, no questions asked; male, female, doesn't matter. He doesn't care why. One phone call, no follow-up, you'll know the job is done when you find the dead body. But he does have one rule: no children.
And his name's not Spademan.
The cyber-noir debut novel by Adam Sternbergh is fast-paced, gritty, and hip with a hard-boiled antihero in a dystopian setting. New York is desolate, uptown apartments are up for grabs, doormen carry machine guns, Wall Street is no longer the world hub of market trading. And when people can afford to escape reality, they go to sleep in cocoons, complete with IV-infused nutrition, and drift into what's called the "limnophere" and enjoy a better virtual reality. And Chinatown has a more sordid set-up, much like the former opium dens, with multiple cots for the less affluent.
Spademan's new assignment is to hunt down, and dispose of, the wayward daughter of formidable evangelist, T.K. Harrow. She's not a child, so this should be pretty straightforward. But, of course, there are complications.
It is an easy novel to jump into despite the first person narrative and lack of quotation marks, also called speech marks. The first few pages instantly capture the reader's attention as the taciturn Spademan deals with a "client" on the phone. We can easily picture the once-vibrant Manhattan as it deteriorates to its present squalid, unsavory state.
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