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Terry Orr #1
Closing Time
Closing Time is more than an effort to penetrate the great minds of Vico and Joyce; it is a profound and original continuation of their own dialogue.
Mass Market Paperback
First published September 10, 2001
91 people are currently reading
103 people want to read
About the author
Jim Fusilli
48 books47 followersJim Fusilli is the author of nine novels including “The Mayor of Polk Street” and “Narrows Gate,” which George Pelecanos called “equal parts Ellroy, Puzo and Scorsese” and Mystery Scene magazine said “must be ranked among the half-dozen most memorable novels about the Mob.”
Jim’s debut novel “Closing Time” was the last work of fiction set in New York City published prior to the 9/11 attacks. The following year, his novel, “A Well-Known Secret” addressed the impact of 9/11 on the residents of lower Manhattan. Subsequent novels include “Tribeca Blues” and “Hard, Hard City,” which Mystery Ink magazine named its Novel of the Year. “Closing Time,” “A Well-Known Secret” and “Tribeca Blues” were reissued by Open Road Media in October 2018. Lawrence Block provided a new foreword for “Closing Time.”
Jim has published short stories that have appeared in a variety of magazines as well as anthologies edited by Lee Child, Dennis Lehane, Laura Lippman and other masters of the mystery genre. He edited and contributed to the anthologies “The Chopin Manuscript” and “The Copper Bracelet.” His “Chellini’s Solution” was included in an edition of the Best American Mystery Stories and his “Digby, Attorney at Law” was nominated for the Edgar and Macavity awards. The novel “Narrows Gate” was nominated for a Macavity in the Best Historical Fiction category.
The former Rock & Pop Critic of The Wall Street Journal and an occasional contributor to National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” Jim is the author of two books of non-fiction, both related to popular music. “Pet Sounds” is his tribute to Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys’ classic album. It was translated for a Japanese language edition by Haruki Murakami Combining his interests, Jim edited and contributed a chapter to “Crime Plus Music: Twenty Stories of Music-Themed Noir,” published in 2017.
His novel for young adults “Marley Z and the Bloodstained Violin” was published by Dutton Juvenile.
Jim is married to the former Diane Holuk, a global communications executive. They currently reside just north of New York City. Find out more about them at https://jimfusilli.com/.
Jim’s debut novel “Closing Time” was the last work of fiction set in New York City published prior to the 9/11 attacks. The following year, his novel, “A Well-Known Secret” addressed the impact of 9/11 on the residents of lower Manhattan. Subsequent novels include “Tribeca Blues” and “Hard, Hard City,” which Mystery Ink magazine named its Novel of the Year. “Closing Time,” “A Well-Known Secret” and “Tribeca Blues” were reissued by Open Road Media in October 2018. Lawrence Block provided a new foreword for “Closing Time.”
Jim has published short stories that have appeared in a variety of magazines as well as anthologies edited by Lee Child, Dennis Lehane, Laura Lippman and other masters of the mystery genre. He edited and contributed to the anthologies “The Chopin Manuscript” and “The Copper Bracelet.” His “Chellini’s Solution” was included in an edition of the Best American Mystery Stories and his “Digby, Attorney at Law” was nominated for the Edgar and Macavity awards. The novel “Narrows Gate” was nominated for a Macavity in the Best Historical Fiction category.
The former Rock & Pop Critic of The Wall Street Journal and an occasional contributor to National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” Jim is the author of two books of non-fiction, both related to popular music. “Pet Sounds” is his tribute to Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys’ classic album. It was translated for a Japanese language edition by Haruki Murakami Combining his interests, Jim edited and contributed a chapter to “Crime Plus Music: Twenty Stories of Music-Themed Noir,” published in 2017.
His novel for young adults “Marley Z and the Bloodstained Violin” was published by Dutton Juvenile.
Jim is married to the former Diane Holuk, a global communications executive. They currently reside just north of New York City. Find out more about them at https://jimfusilli.com/.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
July 22, 2014
Two years ago, writer Terry Orr was living a charmed life in Manhattan with his wife, Marina, a beautiful and accomplished artist, their young daughter and their infant son. And then in a heartbeat, all their lives were brutally shattered with the senseless murder of Marina and the baby by an insane man named Raymond Weisz.
Two years after the killings, Weisz remains at large. Frustrated by what he believes to be the incompetence and/or inattention of the police department, Terry abandons his career as a writer and becomes a private investigator. He's his own principal client and his obsession is to capture Weisz.
In the meantime, he has a twelve-year-old daughter to raise. The daughter, Bella, is an enormously attractive character, perhaps wise beyond her years and in some ways, perhaps even more mature than her own father. As an example, the two have been separately seeing the same therapist who is attempting to help them deal with their grief. Bella is open to the idea and seems to be making progress; her father not so much.
Happily, the success that Terry and Marina enjoyed in their respective professions has left Terry with enough money to pursue his investigation while at the same time placing Bella in an excellent school and hiring a housekeeper/cook/babysitter to help him raise her.
One evening, Bella convinces her father to take her to an opening at the gallery where her mother's paintings were exhibited. During the show, a bomb goes off, wounding the gallery owner who had represented Marina. Terry begins investigating the bombing and at the same time becomes virtually obsessed with the story of an African-American cab driver who was savagely murdered in a seedy part of town. When the police seem unwilling to devote much time to the crime, Terry takes on that investigation too.
This is a complex and very entertaining novel that works at several levels. It's interesting to watch Terry pursue his investigations, and it's even more fascinating to observe the relationship between him and his daughter. It's clear that he loves her very much, and yet he seems incapable of understanding the danger that his choices pose for Bella. The poor girl has already lost her mother and her brother; she has only her father left. And yet, as much as he loves her, Terry often places himself in considerable peril, risking the chance that Bella will lose him too.
All of the characters in the book, even the minor ones, are very deftly drawn, and Mr. Fusilli, who is himself the pop and rock music critic for the Wall Street Journal has included in the cast a very entertaining music critic.
One of the best things about the novel is the way in which Fusilli has described the city of New York. Interestingly, this book was first published the day before the attacks of 9/11, and in his hands, the city comes brilliantly to life in all its glory and despair. It's obvious that Fusilli knows the city inside and out, and the reader feels like he or she is walking the streets right along side Terry Orr--not always the most comfortable feeling when he's picking his way through abandoned buildings in the dead of night.
For some reason, this novel is apparently not yet available as an e-book, but print copies are still readily available, and anyone looking for an entertaining and thought-provoking read would do him or herself a very great favor by seeking it out.
Two years after the killings, Weisz remains at large. Frustrated by what he believes to be the incompetence and/or inattention of the police department, Terry abandons his career as a writer and becomes a private investigator. He's his own principal client and his obsession is to capture Weisz.
In the meantime, he has a twelve-year-old daughter to raise. The daughter, Bella, is an enormously attractive character, perhaps wise beyond her years and in some ways, perhaps even more mature than her own father. As an example, the two have been separately seeing the same therapist who is attempting to help them deal with their grief. Bella is open to the idea and seems to be making progress; her father not so much.
Happily, the success that Terry and Marina enjoyed in their respective professions has left Terry with enough money to pursue his investigation while at the same time placing Bella in an excellent school and hiring a housekeeper/cook/babysitter to help him raise her.
One evening, Bella convinces her father to take her to an opening at the gallery where her mother's paintings were exhibited. During the show, a bomb goes off, wounding the gallery owner who had represented Marina. Terry begins investigating the bombing and at the same time becomes virtually obsessed with the story of an African-American cab driver who was savagely murdered in a seedy part of town. When the police seem unwilling to devote much time to the crime, Terry takes on that investigation too.
This is a complex and very entertaining novel that works at several levels. It's interesting to watch Terry pursue his investigations, and it's even more fascinating to observe the relationship between him and his daughter. It's clear that he loves her very much, and yet he seems incapable of understanding the danger that his choices pose for Bella. The poor girl has already lost her mother and her brother; she has only her father left. And yet, as much as he loves her, Terry often places himself in considerable peril, risking the chance that Bella will lose him too.
All of the characters in the book, even the minor ones, are very deftly drawn, and Mr. Fusilli, who is himself the pop and rock music critic for the Wall Street Journal has included in the cast a very entertaining music critic.
One of the best things about the novel is the way in which Fusilli has described the city of New York. Interestingly, this book was first published the day before the attacks of 9/11, and in his hands, the city comes brilliantly to life in all its glory and despair. It's obvious that Fusilli knows the city inside and out, and the reader feels like he or she is walking the streets right along side Terry Orr--not always the most comfortable feeling when he's picking his way through abandoned buildings in the dead of night.
For some reason, this novel is apparently not yet available as an e-book, but print copies are still readily available, and anyone looking for an entertaining and thought-provoking read would do him or herself a very great favor by seeking it out.
February 6, 2010
I reviewed this series of books as a whole, so the review here is the same review you'll find for those books.
The four book in this series caught my attention walking through a bookstore. So I’m looking at is, reading the jacket copy, and wondering how I have missed this author and this series, because it’s got three things that I really like: a thoughtful, troubled, not always likeable main character (Terry Orr, an author turned private investigator); it’s set in modern day Manhattan — and not an idealized Manhattan, either; and there’s an extended cast of wonderful, very vivid characters.
Hard, Hard City is already the fourth book in this series, so I forced myself to go back and start with the first one. I’ve now read Closing Time and A Well-Known Secret, and as soon as I can get hold of Tribeca Blues and Hard, Hard City, I’ll read those. This review really covers all the ones I've read thus far.
Fusilli is a journalist, and he has an excellent website with lots of interesting essays. The essay “Why I stopped reviewing crime fiction” originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal. It gave me a lot to think about.
In any case, I would recommend these novels, which may not be flawless, but which are pretty damn good all the way around.
We meet Terry Orr at a bad time in his life. He had been a successful author, blissfully married with a young daughter and a two-year old son, when a madman shoves the baby’s stroller off a subway platform into the path of an express train. Terry’s wife Marina, an accomplished artist, goes after the boy to try to save him, and they both die. Terry is left with his ten year old daughter, Bella, some close friends, and a need for revenge that charges right over the line into obsession, and without apology.
These are crime novels with plots. Terry gets involved in the lives of people around him. When there is a crime that touches him, he takes it on, and pursues it. The violent act that changed his own life is a constant backdrop in the first two novels, but it’s not really integrated into the plots themselves.
Fusilli took on quite a challenge, approaching things this way. We’ve got the larger story: a character study of a man in terrible pain, struggling to make sense of things, to keep moving forward; he’s got a young daughter who needs him, after all. (And Bella is, without a doubt, my favorite character in these novels. I like her much more than I like her father.) Superimposed on that we get the individual crime plots in each of the books. Both elements are crucial, but Fusilli balances them far better in the second novel than he does in the first.
I liked the first novel — Closing Time — for its descriptions of Manhattan, and for the characterizations of the people closest to Terry. They were vivid and believable, touching and irritating, intriguing in many different ways. In contrast, the characters who were part of the murder investigation were flatter and felt — I suppose the only word that really works — unpolished. Not badly written, not at all: just distinctly less interesting than the main characters.
But the second novel. The Well-Known Secret gives me the sense of Fusilli as an author who has become comfortable with what he’s trying to do. He branches out a little in his approach in ways that really work for me. The novel starts with a newspaper article, an interest piece written about Terry, his background his losses, his daughter, his new work. I love bringing different kinds of texts into novels, and this is an excellent example of how to do that. It provides the backstory in an intriguing, clean, detached way, something Terry himself could not do as a first person narrator.
More than that, this novel is set post 9/11 in the very neighborhood that was most devastated by the loss of the Twin Towers. Terry’s daughter goes to a school where more than half the kids in her class have lost at least one parent in the attack; they were unable to enter their home for a month, and had to live in a hotel. I got a real sense of what it was like to survive 9/11 in TriBeCa, and to go on surviving it, but without even a touch of pathos. Here and there Terry provides details of what those days were like, simply, powerfully. This novel is worth reading for that aspect alone.
The bad news is, I don’t like Terry much. He is a man in pain, yes. He has suffered terribly, but he also wallows. I wanted to smack him by the end of this novel. So did a few of his fellow characters. This was only partly ameliorated by the absolutely perfect tone and pacing of the final chapter, where Terry goes with Bella to the subway station where Marina and Davy were so violently murdered, for the first time. I won’t say anything more about this chapter other than this: it deserves to be read.
I am sorry I was unaware of Jim Fusilli’s work for so long. I’m hoping there will be many more novels to come.
The four book in this series caught my attention walking through a bookstore. So I’m looking at is, reading the jacket copy, and wondering how I have missed this author and this series, because it’s got three things that I really like: a thoughtful, troubled, not always likeable main character (Terry Orr, an author turned private investigator); it’s set in modern day Manhattan — and not an idealized Manhattan, either; and there’s an extended cast of wonderful, very vivid characters.
Hard, Hard City is already the fourth book in this series, so I forced myself to go back and start with the first one. I’ve now read Closing Time and A Well-Known Secret, and as soon as I can get hold of Tribeca Blues and Hard, Hard City, I’ll read those. This review really covers all the ones I've read thus far.
Fusilli is a journalist, and he has an excellent website with lots of interesting essays. The essay “Why I stopped reviewing crime fiction” originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal. It gave me a lot to think about.
In any case, I would recommend these novels, which may not be flawless, but which are pretty damn good all the way around.
We meet Terry Orr at a bad time in his life. He had been a successful author, blissfully married with a young daughter and a two-year old son, when a madman shoves the baby’s stroller off a subway platform into the path of an express train. Terry’s wife Marina, an accomplished artist, goes after the boy to try to save him, and they both die. Terry is left with his ten year old daughter, Bella, some close friends, and a need for revenge that charges right over the line into obsession, and without apology.
These are crime novels with plots. Terry gets involved in the lives of people around him. When there is a crime that touches him, he takes it on, and pursues it. The violent act that changed his own life is a constant backdrop in the first two novels, but it’s not really integrated into the plots themselves.
Fusilli took on quite a challenge, approaching things this way. We’ve got the larger story: a character study of a man in terrible pain, struggling to make sense of things, to keep moving forward; he’s got a young daughter who needs him, after all. (And Bella is, without a doubt, my favorite character in these novels. I like her much more than I like her father.) Superimposed on that we get the individual crime plots in each of the books. Both elements are crucial, but Fusilli balances them far better in the second novel than he does in the first.
I liked the first novel — Closing Time — for its descriptions of Manhattan, and for the characterizations of the people closest to Terry. They were vivid and believable, touching and irritating, intriguing in many different ways. In contrast, the characters who were part of the murder investigation were flatter and felt — I suppose the only word that really works — unpolished. Not badly written, not at all: just distinctly less interesting than the main characters.
But the second novel. The Well-Known Secret gives me the sense of Fusilli as an author who has become comfortable with what he’s trying to do. He branches out a little in his approach in ways that really work for me. The novel starts with a newspaper article, an interest piece written about Terry, his background his losses, his daughter, his new work. I love bringing different kinds of texts into novels, and this is an excellent example of how to do that. It provides the backstory in an intriguing, clean, detached way, something Terry himself could not do as a first person narrator.
More than that, this novel is set post 9/11 in the very neighborhood that was most devastated by the loss of the Twin Towers. Terry’s daughter goes to a school where more than half the kids in her class have lost at least one parent in the attack; they were unable to enter their home for a month, and had to live in a hotel. I got a real sense of what it was like to survive 9/11 in TriBeCa, and to go on surviving it, but without even a touch of pathos. Here and there Terry provides details of what those days were like, simply, powerfully. This novel is worth reading for that aspect alone.
The bad news is, I don’t like Terry much. He is a man in pain, yes. He has suffered terribly, but he also wallows. I wanted to smack him by the end of this novel. So did a few of his fellow characters. This was only partly ameliorated by the absolutely perfect tone and pacing of the final chapter, where Terry goes with Bella to the subway station where Marina and Davy were so violently murdered, for the first time. I won’t say anything more about this chapter other than this: it deserves to be read.
I am sorry I was unaware of Jim Fusilli’s work for so long. I’m hoping there will be many more novels to come.
May 5, 2015
What a pleasant surprise! Some years ago I started reading a book by Jim Fusilli - I think it was "Hard Hard City" - and despite really trying, I failed to get past about page 40. So I had been apprehensive before starting his "Closing Time". In addition, when I opened the book I noticed an epigraph from Friedrich Nietzsche. Uh-oh! Yet the novel has proved quite readable, and while not exactly captivating, it is rather well written, and Mr. Fusilli does not shy away from sharing sharp sociological observations with the reader.
Terry Orr, a writer and a father of a precocious twelve-year old, Bella, cannot come to terms with death of his beloved wife and baby son at the hands of a maniac two years earlier. (By the way, can anyone seriously believe that it is possible to fully recover after such an unimaginable tragedy? I doubt it). One night, out for a run, he finds a dead livery cab driver, victim of an assault. Soon after that incident, when he and Bella attend a party in an art gallery owned by Judy, his late wife's friend, the gallery is bombed, and he saves Judy's life. Obsessed by his own revenge drive, Terry becomes sort of a private investigator, working on the cases of the cabbie's killing and gallery bombing, while trying to raise his daughter as best as he can.
Best thing about "Closing Time"? Definitely the portrayal of New York. The author has a great sense of the place and conveys it beautifully in the novel. The conversation with the vice principal of the exclusive school for minority students is another highlight - it shows particular complexities of the racial divide that we normally do not see. Raising a precocious daughter is a tired cliché, but the thread sort of works here, unlike in most other books, and the snobbish world of haute art galleries and their denizens is depicted with flair.
The downside? There are too many characters in the novel, and the author has a pretentious manner of using more complex stylistic devices than needed to forward the plot. Readers who - unlike me - enjoy fast moving plots will be disappointed and may think the book boring. Overall - a good crime novel, psychologically and sociologically solid, though not in any way exceptional.
Three stars.
Terry Orr, a writer and a father of a precocious twelve-year old, Bella, cannot come to terms with death of his beloved wife and baby son at the hands of a maniac two years earlier. (By the way, can anyone seriously believe that it is possible to fully recover after such an unimaginable tragedy? I doubt it). One night, out for a run, he finds a dead livery cab driver, victim of an assault. Soon after that incident, when he and Bella attend a party in an art gallery owned by Judy, his late wife's friend, the gallery is bombed, and he saves Judy's life. Obsessed by his own revenge drive, Terry becomes sort of a private investigator, working on the cases of the cabbie's killing and gallery bombing, while trying to raise his daughter as best as he can.
Best thing about "Closing Time"? Definitely the portrayal of New York. The author has a great sense of the place and conveys it beautifully in the novel. The conversation with the vice principal of the exclusive school for minority students is another highlight - it shows particular complexities of the racial divide that we normally do not see. Raising a precocious daughter is a tired cliché, but the thread sort of works here, unlike in most other books, and the snobbish world of haute art galleries and their denizens is depicted with flair.
The downside? There are too many characters in the novel, and the author has a pretentious manner of using more complex stylistic devices than needed to forward the plot. Readers who - unlike me - enjoy fast moving plots will be disappointed and may think the book boring. Overall - a good crime novel, psychologically and sociologically solid, though not in any way exceptional.
Three stars.
February 19, 2019
Good writing. Lots of description of main areas of NYC. Great biplay between main characters. I'll read another.
March 16, 2020
New for me. Complex characters. Very New York.
January 18, 2022
A keeper!
Clever, bittersweet, fast paced. A few twists and turns to keep you guessing. Very good character development. All in all worth your time
Clever, bittersweet, fast paced. A few twists and turns to keep you guessing. Very good character development. All in all worth your time
May 12, 2010
It's after midnight and a novice private investigator, out for a late-night run, discovers the battered body of a livery cab driver in downtown Manhattan's meatpacking district. Two days later, he witnesses a bloody explosion at a gala opening at a SoHo art gallery.
Unrelated incidents? Not to Terry Orr. A single father to a remarkable twelve-year-old daughter, Terry is still devoted to his beautiful Italian wife, a painter of immense talent, whose life ended abruptly during a brutal event that also took the life of their infant son. Sparked to action by violence and deception, he begins to understand that he's been given a chance to confront his tragic past by learning the skills of the PI trade, and finding the madman who forever changed his life. And, perhaps, to realize fully what it means to be the father of a young, loving daughter.
But the person who took the life of the cab driver isn't so easy to find, and Terry must chase the killer into the upper reaches of Harlem. Beating back his own demons in both his therapist's office and the basketball courts of Houston Street, he finds that redemption can come in the form of a game of horse with the daughter who views him as a hero. So focused is he on the world's injustices, he can barely see the girl who will do anything for her hurting, tormented father.
Unrelated incidents? Not to Terry Orr. A single father to a remarkable twelve-year-old daughter, Terry is still devoted to his beautiful Italian wife, a painter of immense talent, whose life ended abruptly during a brutal event that also took the life of their infant son. Sparked to action by violence and deception, he begins to understand that he's been given a chance to confront his tragic past by learning the skills of the PI trade, and finding the madman who forever changed his life. And, perhaps, to realize fully what it means to be the father of a young, loving daughter.
But the person who took the life of the cab driver isn't so easy to find, and Terry must chase the killer into the upper reaches of Harlem. Beating back his own demons in both his therapist's office and the basketball courts of Houston Street, he finds that redemption can come in the form of a game of horse with the daughter who views him as a hero. So focused is he on the world's injustices, he can barely see the girl who will do anything for her hurting, tormented father.
March 15, 2010
I had such high hopes for this book, especially after seeing the cover praise from some of my favorite authors such as Harlan Coben and Robert B. Parker. But I just didn't care about any of it. The main character's wife and son are killed in NYC in a horrific manner (one that I'm surprised doesn't happen more frequently), and the book finds he and his daughter picking up their lives in the aftermath of the tragedy. Even his precocious daughter, Bella, inspires no sense of loyalty. This is the first of at least a 4-book series, and I will not be looking for the rest of them.
September 18, 2014
PI Terry Orr, still grieving over the recent deaths of his wife and infant son, and trying to be a good dad to his 12-year-old daughter Bella, gets involved in solving the murder of a cab driver and the bombing of an art gallery in NYC. The descriptions of the gritty atmosphere in New York -- its veritable underside -- were very good, but the plot was a little weak.
March 8, 2015
I had high hopes for this book. A hard boiled detective drama showing the underlings of the city in an interesting , noirish way. And, at times, I got it. However, those times were few and far between. I'll skip the rest of the series. Thanks. Now, write a novel with Andre Turner as the main character and I may read.
June 29, 2009
I never learn. The minute I read the eroticized description of a meal, I should have known this was not for me. I like my writing lean. And I don't want to be always aware of the author behind the curtain.
October 2, 2009
Decent start to a series although the main character is so grief-stricken, his emotions often over-power everything else that is going on in the story...maybe that's the point but it gets a little tedious.
June 2, 2011
Many of the people in my mystery book club found this first novel confusingly plotted and poorly written. I would not go that far, but I didn't find myself engaged by it at any time. It seemed derivative in some places and far-fetched in others. I hope the series improved from there.
June 3, 2010
RATING: 3.75
July 24, 2011
Unique view of city dweller's insights within the fiction. Wish he didn't use "Christ" so offensively. True to character? not so sure.
April 24, 2018
Badly written, and the mystery is not that thrilling. If you’re looking for a good crime story, my advice is to look elsewhere.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews