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Suspects
In a tale set in a typical American town, the author of Little Big Man uses humor and irony to weave together a story of murder, dysfunctional families, friendship, torn loyalties, and the American dream.
294 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1996
13 people are currently reading
59 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Berger
235 books140 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Thomas Louis Berger was an American novelist, probably best known for his picaresque novel Little Big Man, which was adapted into a film by Arthur Penn. Berger explored and manipulated many genres of fiction throughout his career, including the crime novel, the hard-boiled detective story, science fiction, the utopian novel, plus re-workings of classical mythology, Arthurian legend, and the survival adventure.
Berger's use of humor and his often biting wit led many reviewers to refer to him as a satirist or "comic" novelist, though he rejected that classification.
Thomas Louis Berger was an American novelist, probably best known for his picaresque novel Little Big Man, which was adapted into a film by Arthur Penn. Berger explored and manipulated many genres of fiction throughout his career, including the crime novel, the hard-boiled detective story, science fiction, the utopian novel, plus re-workings of classical mythology, Arthurian legend, and the survival adventure.
Berger's use of humor and his often biting wit led many reviewers to refer to him as a satirist or "comic" novelist, though he rejected that classification.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
March 31, 2012
A young woman and her daughter get brutally murdered in the middle of the afternoon in a sleeper community. A couple of homicide detectives try to solve the mystery of who killed them.
I could have put this book in the mystery shelf, and maybe it belongs there. The driving force in the book is who killed the woman and the kid, but as the book begins to move on the woman and the kid sort of become an almost secondary part of the novel. Instead it's a fairly funny absurd novel about suburbia, but a much darker version of suburbia than what most of us would think about. The world Berger has placed the novel in would be the suburbia of say Revolutionary Road or "Desperate Housewives", but where people are regularly massacred in liquor store hold ups, cops are always ready for the possibility of being car jacked and these acts of violence are met with fairly normal emotions but they are lacking the 'this isn't supposed to be happening here', kind of feeling that anyone who grew up or lived in suburbia knows accompanies just about any kind of act like these. It felt more like the acceptance you'd expect during the dark days of crack era New York, or being borderline to Compton in the 1980's.
The book felt like a mix between Robert Coover's John's Wife (mostly in the way the murdered woman was presented) and Stanley Elkin's The Living End.
This is the second Thomas Berger novel I've read. Neither of them have totally changed my world or been the type of book that I've wanted to grab the nearest person (ok, Karen) and shove it into their hands and say, "Read this! Read this now!". But, after two books now I'm starting to think of him as belonging in the Stanley Elkin category of authors that are undeservedly sort of forgotten. Maybe it's the way that Thomas Berger's more recent books are packaged, but when I'd seen them on the shelf they never screamed read me, read me, I've got the good stuff here. They seemed to be stodgy middle aged white novels, you know something written by someone who makes John Updike seem edgy and Philip Roth the master of comedic subversion. Sort of a second string author to the perennial safe mainstream literary novelists (I mean white male aging here). Instead this is probably funnier than most of Tom Robbins novels, as strange but in a more controlled way than the 'masterful satires' of Mr. Fight Club, and close to being as much fun and on par with Stanley Elkin.
Good stuff, and another hidden treasure of an author that I'd noticed for years at work but never had the inclination to try (like Cynthia Ozick, or Joan Didion). Thank you, Jonathan Lethem, for the great essay on Thomas Berger and making me aware of another great writer.
I could have put this book in the mystery shelf, and maybe it belongs there. The driving force in the book is who killed the woman and the kid, but as the book begins to move on the woman and the kid sort of become an almost secondary part of the novel. Instead it's a fairly funny absurd novel about suburbia, but a much darker version of suburbia than what most of us would think about. The world Berger has placed the novel in would be the suburbia of say Revolutionary Road or "Desperate Housewives", but where people are regularly massacred in liquor store hold ups, cops are always ready for the possibility of being car jacked and these acts of violence are met with fairly normal emotions but they are lacking the 'this isn't supposed to be happening here', kind of feeling that anyone who grew up or lived in suburbia knows accompanies just about any kind of act like these. It felt more like the acceptance you'd expect during the dark days of crack era New York, or being borderline to Compton in the 1980's.
The book felt like a mix between Robert Coover's John's Wife (mostly in the way the murdered woman was presented) and Stanley Elkin's The Living End.
This is the second Thomas Berger novel I've read. Neither of them have totally changed my world or been the type of book that I've wanted to grab the nearest person (ok, Karen) and shove it into their hands and say, "Read this! Read this now!". But, after two books now I'm starting to think of him as belonging in the Stanley Elkin category of authors that are undeservedly sort of forgotten. Maybe it's the way that Thomas Berger's more recent books are packaged, but when I'd seen them on the shelf they never screamed read me, read me, I've got the good stuff here. They seemed to be stodgy middle aged white novels, you know something written by someone who makes John Updike seem edgy and Philip Roth the master of comedic subversion. Sort of a second string author to the perennial safe mainstream literary novelists (I mean white male aging here). Instead this is probably funnier than most of Tom Robbins novels, as strange but in a more controlled way than the 'masterful satires' of Mr. Fight Club, and close to being as much fun and on par with Stanley Elkin.
Good stuff, and another hidden treasure of an author that I'd noticed for years at work but never had the inclination to try (like Cynthia Ozick, or Joan Didion). Thank you, Jonathan Lethem, for the great essay on Thomas Berger and making me aware of another great writer.
April 4, 2021
This is not the best Berger book I have read recently, see the Feud but Berger is too skilled to ever write a bad book.Suspects is closer to a mystery than the average Berger book.
There are a large number of characters and the novel moves deftly from police officers to suspects and back. I guessed whodunnit a little early in the read but that did not detract from the story.
Most people in Berger’s novels behave badly some or most of the time but many are also capable of redemption. The best part of the book is the end where Berger sticks the landing.
There are a large number of characters and the novel moves deftly from police officers to suspects and back. I guessed whodunnit a little early in the read but that did not detract from the story.
Most people in Berger’s novels behave badly some or most of the time but many are also capable of redemption. The best part of the book is the end where Berger sticks the landing.
June 17, 2022
This is one of Berger's better later works. But this comes with a caveat: those who pick this up without being familiar with most of Berger's work throughout his career will be disappointed in it. The publisher, whose job is merely to sell as many copies of a book as possible, didn't do Berger and his potential new readers any favors by advertising this as just another mystery/cop procedural. If you read this book expecting a thriller you won't get that. But one thing Berger was interested in was messing with genre conventions and that's what makes this a very good book indeed.
Berger uses the conventions of the mystery/cop novel genre as a way of critiquing some attitudes of both the public (who rely on police while often despising them at the same time) and of some members of the police forces as well. Most (if not all) of the police in this book are _very_ flawed individuals: they are short-sighted, rely on mistaken assumptions and routines (always punctured by Berger's narration and his characters/plot), and often sexist and racist as well. (Berger's main "series" of early novels, the Reinhart books, were early anti-racist works, and Berger often relied on racist assumptions in his readers to surprise and shock them into thinking about those assumptions.)
One of the cops thinks to himself toward the end of the novel that fine moral distinctions are not something that police work finds useful. Instead these cops attack almost every problem with a jackhammer rather than a fine investigative touch or a more subtle interrogation. They ignore inconvenient facts, assume the worst of the victim's husband and brother-in-law...and all of this is _very_ consistent and true-to-life, unfortunately. It's a very refreshing critique of policing written 25 years before BLM and, frankly, more people should read this and think about the issues raised (including the police themselves).
Berger uses the conventions of the mystery/cop novel genre as a way of critiquing some attitudes of both the public (who rely on police while often despising them at the same time) and of some members of the police forces as well. Most (if not all) of the police in this book are _very_ flawed individuals: they are short-sighted, rely on mistaken assumptions and routines (always punctured by Berger's narration and his characters/plot), and often sexist and racist as well. (Berger's main "series" of early novels, the Reinhart books, were early anti-racist works, and Berger often relied on racist assumptions in his readers to surprise and shock them into thinking about those assumptions.)
One of the cops thinks to himself toward the end of the novel that fine moral distinctions are not something that police work finds useful. Instead these cops attack almost every problem with a jackhammer rather than a fine investigative touch or a more subtle interrogation. They ignore inconvenient facts, assume the worst of the victim's husband and brother-in-law...and all of this is _very_ consistent and true-to-life, unfortunately. It's a very refreshing critique of policing written 25 years before BLM and, frankly, more people should read this and think about the issues raised (including the police themselves).
March 30, 2025
It’s a mystery how this guy could wind up so very nearly forgotten. He is so very, very much more than the one book he is remembered for—Little Big Man. I’m not disparaging that book. It’s good; it it just isn’t his best.
This isn’t his best either, but it is far and away better than 90% of what‘s out there. Like all Berger books, it is about so much more than what it’s ’about.’ If you want to read.berger at his best, you cannot go wrong with Sneaky People. It is BRILLIANT!
Just one nit. The blurb mentions humor…there’s no humor. There’s murder and infidelity and lots more, but no humor.
This isn’t his best either, but it is far and away better than 90% of what‘s out there. Like all Berger books, it is about so much more than what it’s ’about.’ If you want to read.berger at his best, you cannot go wrong with Sneaky People. It is BRILLIANT!
Just one nit. The blurb mentions humor…there’s no humor. There’s murder and infidelity and lots more, but no humor.
December 7, 2017
Zany and spiky... a Carl Hiaasen minus the cheddar popcorn. I liked it very much.
April 19, 2018
It's hard to find a bad book by Thomas Berger. This will never be my favorite of his, but it had the seamless, reliable workmanship that I've come to expect from him.
August 6, 2022
I liked this book but there was a lot of different story lines happening a once. But it all worked and had some twists, and the murderer wasn't who I thought.
March 20, 2018
I don’t recall seeing the word “remake” ever being applied to a novel, but Suspects has features of being a remake of Berger’s 1967 novel Killing Time. Both books begin with the discovery of a multiple murder involving a mother and daughter, which is then investigated by a duo of detectives consisting of an older man with a string of failed marriages and a younger with a wife and kids who is having an extramarital affair. Both novels also tell their story primarily from the point of view of the prime suspect in the murders, alternating with that of one of the detectives, with occasional glimpses into the lives of other characters. However, in the earlier novel, Berger seemed concerned with using his story to present some abstract ideas about the nature of time and our perceptions of it. In Suspects Berger concentrates on the thoughts, emotions, and behavior of his characters; any abstract ideas he might be trying to present, perhaps about community, interdependence, and the compromises and betrayals humans make in dealing with their ultimate isolation from one another, are completely embodied in the engaging story and the very convincing actions of his characters. The story is laid out as a murder mystery or a police procedural, but it subverts, or perhaps merely ignores the conventions of, these forms by neither dropping “clues” for the reader as to the killer’s identity nor allowing the forensic or investigative work of the police to lead to the solution of the crime. The story is ultimately about a handful of human beings and their interrelationships, emphasizing the importance of how life is lived rather than how it happens to meet an end.
Previous: Robert Crews
Next: The Return of Little Big Man
Previous: Robert Crews
Next: The Return of Little Big Man
March 10, 2013
This is not a very compelling thriller. Like Berger's previous police thriller, Killing Time, it meanders, not sure who it is following or what it is about. Neither are any of the characters particularly interesting. The two homicide detectives are your typical veteran/rookie combination, the veteran a crumbling alcoholic, the rookie a married man having an affair with a younger officer. This is all stuff that has been done before and better by Ed McBain. The suspects are the husband of the victim and his loser brother, and a large section of the book follows the brother as he skips town and takes up with a woman truck driver. This section is plodding and could not be less involving. When the resolution comes, the perpetrator turns out to be arbitrary, his confession coming out of left field. Berger slipped up with this one.
November 27, 2020
Just reread this after having read it upon publication 24 years ago. It stands up beautifully. A great police procedural--but better than the usual ones, because you get Thomas Berger's sentences to tell it.
September 9, 2008
bizarre story...Berger has a weird imagination...
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews