Moving Day

by Jonathan Stone

Forty years? accumulation of art, antiques, and family photographs are more than just objects for Stanley Peke?they are proof of a life fully lived. A life he could have easily lost long ago. When a con man steals his houseful of possessions in a sophisticated moving-day scam, Peke wanders helplessly through his empty New England home, inevitably reminded of another helpless time: decades in Peke's past, a cold and threadbare Stanislaw Shmuel Pecoskowitz eked out a desperate existence in the war-torn Polish countryside, subsisting on scraps, dodging Nazi soldiers. Now, the seventy-two-year-old Peke?who survived, came to America, and succeeded?must summon his original grit and determination, to track down the thieves, retrieve his things, and restore the life he made for himself. Peke and his wife, Rose, trace the path of the thieves? truck across America, to the wilds of Montana, and to an ultimate, chilling confrontation with not only the thieves, but with Peke's brutal, unresolved past.

Genres: Fiction, Thriller, Mystery, Mystery Thriller, Crime, Suspense, Book Club

Audio CD

First published May 6, 2014

About the author

Jonathan Stone, author of the Julian Palmer novels, is a graduate of Yale University, where he was a Scholar of the House in Fiction Writing and twice won the English Department's John Hubbard Curtis Prize for Best Imaginative Writing. He works in advertising and lives in Connecticut with his wife and two children.

Reviews

[Kemper · Rating 3 out of 5]

I noticed the ads for this here on Goodreads and thought the premise sounded interesting, but I wasn’t in any great hurry to check it out. Then it was one of those super cheap deals on my Kindle so I figured I’d give it a shot.

And that’s how they get you. Well played, Amazon. Well played indeed.

This does have a great hook for a story. Seventy-two year old Stanley Peke and his wife Rose have accumulated a house full of valuables and memories over the years, but they want to move to a smaller more manageable place in California so they hire a moving company to transport their stuff across the country. After almost everything they own has been packed, loaded and driven off, the Pekes learn that they’ve been the victim of a clever scheme in which a gang of thieves show up before the real movers and take off with an entire house worth of loot.

Next time just buy your friends some pizza and beer to con them into helping you, Stanley.

Most people would cash their insurance check and grieve for the loss of the mementos that can’t be replaced, but Stanley isn’t your average silver fox. He spent his childhood hiding from Nazis in the woods of Poland and came to America after the war with no family and not a penny to his name. The theft of the things he spent a lifetime acquiring as part of his building a family is something that he refuses to abide and when he sees a chance to track down the thief who led the crew Stanley decides to get it all back without involving the cops. However, the ringleader Nick had his own hard-luck upbringing as an orphaned street kid which has left him with a ruthless nature and the firm belief that whatever he steals is now his so the clash between the two strong-willed men become about more than who ends up with the stuff.

This is marketed as a thriller, and there are definitely a lot of those elements and enough action to make it part of that category. But it actually doesn’t read like a thriller for most of the book. A large part of it is spent inside Stanley’s head as he reflects on his past, how it shaped him and the life he’s lived since. Stone was far more concerned with Stanley and Nick as characters than how the plot would be resolved.

That makes the book more ‘literary’ (For lack of a better term.) than what I was expecting, and at first I was pleasantly surprised at the many facets that Stone was exploring with Stanley about being a Jewish survivor of the Nazis who came to America and lived the ultimate immigrant success story.

The problem is that this is all gone over a little too much with clear conclusions drawn and laid out for the reader. Stone wants to make sure we understand every angle and by kicking over every rock he really hasn’t left the reader anything to think about. It’s not a case of full-on anvil dropping although the ending with Stanley leaving the woods while shedding a Nazi uniform was pretty on the nose, but there’s little sub-text left by the end of it.

So it’s got the pieces of a good crime story with an interesting lead character that was aiming to be a bit more than your average thriller, but it is so concerned with making sure that we got the point that it laid out all it’s themes like a road map which left me feeling like someone who considered me slightly stupid had been slowly explaining himself to me for several hours.

Also posted at Kemper's Book Blog.

[Patrice Hoffman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moving Day is a suspenseful thriller about two men who refuse to claim defeat. Almost immediately Stanley Peke thinks there's something wrong with his moving men. He was certain that they arrived a day early to pack up his life. As each item leaves the safety of the house he's shared with his wife for 40+ years, Stanley Peake figures his increasingly unreliable memory is to blame for how he's managed to screw up his moving dates. After spending a night in an empty huge house with his wife, he wakes to a morning quite different from its predecessor.

Stanley opens the door to the true moving men. The (true) moving men reveal to him that his initial recollection of the moving date was accurate and that he's been the victim of a crime. At the age of 72, Stanley finds all the proof of his wealth and accomplishment has been taken right from under his nose. He's unwillingly been forced into the role of being a victim. That's a title he refuses... no matter what.

Unable to resolve his new-found status in life, Stanley decides he is no one's victim, and has escaped threats greater than the present situation, goes on a mission that should result in him getting back all his things. Things... plain ol' perishable items.

I sometimes find it hard to accept that my car is a perishable item. It defines who I am at some moments. After years of driving a car that was embarrassing, at best, having a car that was a current model meant the world to me. Like Stanley, and his nemesis Nick, I figured that item defined who I was/am. I could never be content with the memories provided driving my hamster car with the sunroof open and the music blaring. Any threat to my car was/is a threat to me.

Jonathan Stone introduces readers to two men who are hellbent on proving there's no such thing as surrender. Stanley follows Nick, by clever means, in order to get back his possessions. The only problem is that Stanley never took into account that once Nick got ahold of those items, he felt a certain entitlement to them.

Nick travels the states making victims of wealthy older citizens by posing as a moving man who's been hired to oversee the safe travel of their personal effects. He has made a victim of many unsuspecting elderly citizens he feel doesn't deserve their proofs of life because he's had the bad fortune of being raised without. Nick is scum. Very intelligent scum.

Moving Day forces readers to consider the lengths they will go for their "trophies". Stanley came from a world of nothing, similarly to Nick, yet overcame his obstacles to accumulate a wealth that made chasing these items pointless. It's all about the mere audacity. We hear it in politics all the time. How dare the poor think that they are entitled to healthcare, food, or housing provided by the ones who work hard, all but forgetting how it felt to wonder where their next meal would come from. Too much?

Basically, Jonathan Stone provides readers with a great cat and mouse thriller that begs either character to scream checkmate. Stanley is one of the best "old persons" I've read about in a long time. I mean, this guy is the senior citizens Rambo. Stone allows us a view into his past by making that past an antagonist as formidable as Nick, the thief, is. I loved Stanley.

I don't have many, if any, gripes with this novel. Moving Day is fast-paced, engaging, and fun. Jonathan Stone forced me to consider whether or not the perishables I accumulate really define who I am. What lengths would I go to in order to prove that my worth can be measured by the items I accrue? And most importantly, would it be worth proving at all?

Copy provided by Thomas & Mercer via Netgalley

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written thriller that's as much psychological as physical. 8 of 10 stars

[Jayme C (Brunetteslikebookstoo) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stanley Peke was a 7 year old boy, during the Holocaust. He survived but he lost his family and all of his possesions. So when at age 72, he is the victim of a "con" where a "moving company" steals all of the possessions that he worked hard to attain in America, he fights back. A real "Cat and Mouse" thriller from start to finish!

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the afterword the author says this had been in a drawer for twelve years--it really should have stayed there. I had to look the author up to see if he had other books because this seemed like a first novel to me. Overall it's an overwritten, underpowered novel that doesn't really qualify as a "thriller."

The base concept is fairly interesting. An old couple gets taken by some con men who pretend to be their movers and steal their stuff. Except the old man, Stan Peake, refuses to let the thieves win. Instead he uses a tracking device to hunt down the stolen items and retrieve them. But that's only the first act. The second act takes a bizarre turn as the thief-turned-victim tries to steal back the stolen goods stolen from him with the help of Neo-Nazis.

In the first act, Stan and his wife Rose very leisurely follow the criminals. This is punctuated with a lot of navel gazing as Stan ruminates how surviving the Nazi occupation of Poland. The fact he's a survivor is pounded time and time again until I really got sick of hearing it. As for the thief, the author throws in something about him being bisexual for no reason and it contributes nothing to the story. Stan's son is tossed into the plot almost as an afterthought while the Neo-Nazis don't even get names.

Besides the lack of pacing the author seems to have no concept of point-of-view, randomly switching from one character to another so the scene is never really anchored. Overall it's the kind of sloppy execution you'd expect from a story that had been rotting in a drawer.

That is all.

[✨Susan✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Great mind trip. "
This was not at all what I expected. I thought it would be some type of caper but not at all as in depth as it went. The thief and victim are more alike than they think. Both are smart and both have learned to outlast and survive. An intense, interesting story that was a great back and forth mind and physical adventure. The old adage may apply, "never under estimate the old bull". Christopher Lane's voice was a great match for the main character.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book should have been titled, "Property Stolen, Waxing Philosophical". Not impressed with this one, just sort of "meh". The premise sounded good, sounded believable, and should have resulted in a better story, IMO.

[Max Everhart · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are thrillers that focus primarily on plot, narratives that, by in large, burn fast and hot and fizzle out quickly. And these can often be very enjoyable, the literary equivalent of eating a Big Mac when you're hungry: it's fast, tastes great . . .but it leaves you hungry again half an hour later.

And then there are slow-burning, perspective-shifting thrillers like Moving Day by Jonathan Stone. This novel is equal parts crime thriller and (unintended) master class in fiction writing. But more on that later. First: the plot.

Peke is a wealthy seventy-two year old retiree who is moving from New York to the beaches of Santa Barbara, California, and on the day before the scheduled move, a seemingly legitimate moving company shows up and transports his belongings to the new home. But then the following day, the actual movers show up, and Peke and his wife realize they've been robbed. Peke, a Holocaust survivor, manages to track his down his belongings and recovers them. Nick, the sadistic thief behind the caper, then raises the stakes by kidnapping Peke in exchange for the stolen goods. What I dig about this plot is the utter low-tech-ness of the crime itself. Nick is that unicorn rare criminal who has intelligence, patience, and discipline, which makes him the perfect adversary to Peke, who also possesses those qualities.

For my money, the character development and the never-ending supply of brilliantly written passages are what make this book so satisfying. Stone manages to capture the internal worlds of a career criminal and a Holocaust survivor, and this frequent shifting of perspective adds layer upon layer of meaning to the narrative. Below I've quoted a few fantastic passages from the book, so you get an idea of what I'm writing about.

From a passage where Peke discovers outside the thief's hideout a large pile of trash: "He feels that simple realization like a weight on him. Amid the exhilaration and excitement of retrieving his belongings, a sudden weight of brooding. . .This is where it will end up for the thief, too. Their odd communion. Meaninglessness piled high."

From a passage where Peke remembers being in Poland evading the Nazis: "He watches the bug. . .He looks at it. Watches it scoot frantically around on his broad, ancient, creviced palm, looking for a path, an exit. . .Then, impulsively, he slaps the black bug into his mouth, bites down a few times, hears and feels the unmistakable crunch in his jaw, then swallows."

Paragraphs like these are everywhere in this book, and Moving Day is worth reading for the pure joy of language alone.

Bottom line, this thriller inches along at a snail's pace, builds the tension very, very slowly, yet very, very effectively. You live and breathe in Peke's world, in Nick's world, and that level of realism makes for a highly readable book. Put another way: Moving Day is no Big Mac, and Jonathan Stone is no short order cook. Moving Day is a complex entree with a multitude of tastes and textures, and Jonathan Stone is a master chef.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each month, Amazon Prime offers, for free, a choice of 1 of 4 books to be published the following month. Usually, I choose the "dysfunctional family" category but, since May's selection didn't intrigue me, I decided to try the "thriller" category. And have discovered an author of imagination and style and new to me!

Usually, a thriller features: guns blazing, bombs blasting, cars banging. Then there's Jonathan Stone's definition of a thriller: a seemingly simple, well-planned theft of goods that goes smoothly...at first. However, the band of thieves have tangled with an old man scarred by the worst kind of terror years before the thieves encounter him and their action looses in him a primal need for revenge which leads to a personal resolution of his past. An old man's cunning brings us half way through the story before physical violence occurs. Believe me, by then you are rooting for its use by the good guys!

This is not a book to be read while multitasking; however, concentration to the story will be rewarded. Not only will you be intrigued by the plot development but you will wonder at the mind that can think up this series of monumental surprises!

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

A life revealed through thrills

This is not the thriller that you might anticipate. Huge amounts of internal dialogue. And, it is this dialogue that counts. You must be patient as you read.

Moving Day is one of the most rewarding stories I have experienced in a long time. The characters are iconic, the psychology is soundly fascinating. It will make you think; seeing the ways of the survivor, the parts of the self, that, long–surviving, emerge in the present—always in the presence of intelligent self-awareness, which is, by its very nature, honest.

It is a thriller in the physical sense: human characters, actions, locations, things, stories. It is a thriller in the psychological sense: childhood survival, chosen lives, unsurprising human emotions. Death comes unnaturally, but consequentially. Life comes with engagement, and a savoring.

Not a parable, but a vignette of darkness and light; carefully, soulfully, and empathetically crafted by a gifted author.

[Robin Tauer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Survival

What a beautifully written story. Like any good thriller, this story is filled with the unexpected and the expectation of danger. But this story is so much more. While the plot is winding and unwinding, the characters are revealed in a way that most thrillers never attempt. The psychology of survival is presented here more acutely than I have ever experienced. From beginning to end the struggle is with the past history and present instinct of each character to survive, from their past and in their present conflicts. It is the timeless question of man's inhumanity to man, looking, as always, for the answer or resolution that cannot be solved.

[Texx Norman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a Kindle, one that is just for reading, and I saw Moving Day for sale for only 99 cents. I figured it would be dull and forgettable, but since I'd never sampled one of these 99 cent books I thought I'd give it a try. The protagonist is like 71 years old, and me, 64 thought I'd like to read about an old guy hero. I'm starting not to relate to the 30 year old hero how has a small prostate and lots Low T problems. Well, I finished MOVING DAY by Jonathan Stone, and I have to say I thought it was just great. There was this cleaver inciting incident: criminals pose as movers and steal a wealthy older couple’s entire house's content. I couldn't imagine how the protagonist could track down and get his stuff back, but he did. The plot is good. It is a thriller and, at least for me, it qualified as a page turner. But this book was more than a neat idea, or a thriller, and more than just a great book for senior guys like me to read. MOVING DAY is not only a good read; the writer has attacks of poetry from time to time. I think one of the things I liked most about this novel are the writer’s times when the narrative of a character’s thoughts becomes very, very close to being poetry. For example [the line breaks are mine turning the passage into found poetry]:

a scared silence
growing in tone
enlarging somehow
a silence sacred,
but common,
natural,
a quiet silence
is preferable to talk.

OR consider this short passage:

I want everything
because I don’t know
what I want and
no matter what I get,
or what I take
it is never fulfilling.
Does calm come from
clarity of thought, or
the simplicity of
human connections perhaps?

The doubts and reflections,
the ruminations said in
dulcet tones
the times, the many times
of disconnections
or irremediable separateness
from each other. . .

Another aspect of the writing I found delightful was this play of story lines. There is some parallelism going on, where the story takes our protagonist full circle. The similarities of the old man’s current and childhood experiences develop a sort of synergy. When the protagonist was a 7 year old Jewish boy he was forced to hide from the Nazis and survive against all odds by luck and resolve. The author takes specific incidents from that 7 year old child and the lessons learned then provide the old man with experience and a tactical advantage over unscrupulous pudding headed adversaries that outnumber him.

Jonathan Stone is gaining success and that is as it should be. When you have a talent and you have the determination to learn your craft, and if you can keep at it with very little positive feedback, the plight of most writers, and if you can get to the place where you tell a good story and your telling is not just good, but it raises the bar for readers and envious writers alike, well you have earned our attention and it should be rapt attention.

[Eric Wallace · Rating 1 out of 5]

Don't be fooled by the subtitle suggesting this is "a thriller". You're not likely to be thrilled--at least not for the first half of the book, since almost nothing happens in the way of action. Instead, you're given an insipid recounting of the thoughts and minds of characters who are busy not doing anything. The characters aren't talking to each other either, so there's little dialog to get in the way of the inner monologues in this plodding character study.

Now, you might fear the author is breaking the old writing rule of "Show, don't tell"--but never fear, reading the characters' minds doesn't tell you much either. It seems that Stone (the author, not the mineral) is attempting to create suspense by hinting at a big reveal to come. You see, the protagonist has a dark secret from his past (mini-spoiler: he's a Holocaust survivor) that he hasn't even told his wife. It seems he hasn't even fully informed himself, since somehow the stream-of-consciousness thoughts we readers must swim through never quite clarify what he's so afraid/ashamed of. Maybe he's forgotten his own secret, despite his insistence that his mind remains sharp at 72 years of age.

Perhaps I'm being too harsh; maybe the book gets really exciting at the end. (Hand-to-hand combat with an elderly man! Illegal drugs--for blood pressure management--smuggled from Canada! Suddenly he remembers every detail of his previous life in Shirley MacLaine's body! He gets his stuff back!) But I'll never get there to find out, because this book just can't get moving.

[exncgal · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really, really wanted to like this unusual story. And I did, for the first half of the book. Go, Peke - get your stuff back!! But at some point after the Pekes got to Santa Barbara, the story took an odd - contrived? - turn for the worse. I stopped believing and started skimming. Here are some of the things that bugged me:

1. Potential insurance fraud? I assume they'd gotten a big fat check from their insurance company, and yet got their stuff back... so they shouldn't have kept the money.
2. Peke's semi-Nazi history: wasn't clear to me, even at the end, whether he had faked a Nazi allegiance to survive as a child, or if he truly was on the other side of the war
3. Nick's bisexuality: his narrated chapter on that struck me as a pathetic attempt to make the character human.
4. What the heck was Daniel's business that he had access to a moving truck, crew, and ex-military expertise??
<\spoiler>

I can think of really only one thing I liked: the chapter numbers looked like interstate road signs. It's pretty telling that that is the only good thing I can think of right now.

3 stars for the first half, 1 star for the second half.

[Urs · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got this book as one of the kindle first free reads for Amazon Prime subscribers. In this book, a seventy something, Stanley Peke, and his wife plan to move more south, but their items are stolen by a fake moving company. Peke ultimately decides that he will get his things back.

It is really deceptive to call this book a thriller, especially with “thriller” being part of the actual title. There was nothing thrilling about this book. It took twenty chapters before any action happened.

There is a lot of stream of consciousness style writing here. While it may be intended to give little more insight to the character, which it really does not, it bored me for the most part. There was more of the characters thoughts than there was action.

This story seems to be more about a Jewish man coming to terms with his past experiences with surviving the Holocaust than it is about being thriller. There is no problem with that, but a book should not be marketed as a thriller if that is the case.

If you are expecting a thriller, then look elsewhere.

[Chrissie Whitley · Rating 1 out of 5]

The uniformed men. The empty house.

I chose this book through Kindle First two years ago, and this year I'm determined to whittle down and read through the growing electronic "pile" of books I've accumulated but have never read. That makes for some tough reads. This book was, frankly, an exhausting read. If I were the kind of reader who allows herself to DNF, this would've been one. I wanted to like this one, I really did. I still find the premise intriguing, but ultimately, it was not handled properly here at all.

The uniformed men. The empty house.

With almost ⅞ of the book being dialogue-free, we are left with an amazingly repetitive narration by different characters' points-of-view, sort of. Third person at its worst. The majority of the book contains only short, choppy blips of sentences. They endlessly repeat certain points. The main character — the victim, our beloved protagonist — is seventy-two. He's seventy-two. He's only seventy-two. He's no longer any other age, especially the seven-year-old age he was back in Nazi-infused Poland. He's seventy-two. If you still don't have it, don't worry, this is a pervasively worn-out pseudo-mantra. He's seventy-two. Between that and the other repeated phrasing (The uniformed men. The empty house.), it was an eye-rolling experience.

Page 2: At seventy-two, he is physically robust, the envy of his friends...

Page 8: He is seventy-two, she seventy, and though they...

Page 35: That is what any cautious, just-victimized, seventy-two-year-old man would do.

Page 36: His seventy-two-year-old heart ticks a little faster.

Page 61: Except that he is seventy-two and she is seventy.

Page 89: A seventy-two-year-old man who has lived several lives already...

Page 91: And really, what is this seventy-two-year-old Jew doing in the land of outlaws?

Page 94: He is seventy-two years old.

Page 97: The seventy-two-year-old man turns.

Page 122: It takes a few moments for his seventy-two-year-old eyes to adjust...

Page 127: Yes, he is a strong and healthy seventy-two,...

Page 145: —could hardly be expected of a seventy-two-year-old survivor.

Page 154: But talking about...a seventy-two-year-old man.

Page 159: He's seventy-two, you say?

Page 164: ...snuck by them, and at seventy-two,...

Page 217: ..and a seventy-two-year-old Jewish war survivor...

Page 232: ...closed circle of seventy-two years.

Page 264: felt himself shuttling oddly, uncontrollably, between his seventy-two-year-old and his seven-year-old selves.

Page 269: Stanley Peke curls into his seventy-two-year-old body...


The uniformed men. The empty house.
The uniformed men. The empty house.
The uniformed men. The empty house.
The uniformed men. The empty house.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read through several reviews and am impacted by the diverse feelings for this book. Although this is a generalization, and I hate generalizing, I found the reviews to reflect 2 categories of readers those that did not like it because of the characters and those that loved it because of the usage of the words to describe the inner and outer turmoils of those same characters. If you are not a fan of stories where the dialogue is mostly internal and reflective you will not like this book. The book opens bare the thoughts and feelings of two strong characters in Peke and Nick.

Jonathan Stone delves down into the essence of the 2 antagonists in this story of wills. The internal dialogue of these characters is where the meat of the story is, Peke and Nick having different life experiences share this view of possession's equally. Both men feel an ownership of things unlike others because in each of their pasts, their things have been taken from them in the most fundamental ways possible. In Peke it is his far past in Nazi occupied Poland when his things are taken from him both spiritual and physical. The things he has earned throughout his life are what he has to show for Making it. His feeling of ownership of the stuff in his life is casual they are there they are part of him, like breathing he does not acknowledge his ownership until he they are not there. No one can take from him what he earned. He will do whatever it is to take his things back.

Nick had lost his things years before while being raised an orphan in the care of the state. He is intelligent and driven, acknowledging his addictive personality that drives him to accumulate his stuff. He now has the skills to take what he wants and the intelligence to come up with a fool proof way to do it. Having taken Peke's stuff Nick does not at first realize what he has tangled with.

Because neither man can leave well enough alone and acknowledge they have been taken we are in for a roller coaster ride as one collision leads to another.

A must read for those who enjoy the language of a good story teller to describe the internal workings, thoughts and feelings of the characters.

[Johnny Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, well well..., what to say about this odd, captivating little story? Yes it has humor, a touch of intrigue, a bit of suspense about a 72 year old rich man who has his entire home ripped off by a bogus moving company--- and then the story goes on about how and what Stanley does-- but to me it has larger character story-- about a 72 year old Jewish man confronting his demons and memories of his past-- you get glimpses of the horrors he lived through and the survival methods he as a 7 year old had to endure-- You see his anguish rise slowly but building throughout the story-- Don't read this as anything else but the interaction of two bold characters from two entirely different histories ….
The story ends with you pondering for days on the true meaning of the book--Enjoy

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has everything. This book has nothing.

It is also filled to the brim with statements like that. thing like, "He is acutely aware of them, but at the same time not aware of them at all,". So many that it actually became frustrating for me to read. Someone else used the word overwritten, and I think that fits perfectly. When the story is moving along, its very good, but there are parts that drag along and bring the whole thing down. I did enjoy the story and liked the ending quite a bit.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this in one day, then my husband also read it in one. I found myself saying "oh NO, he did NOT just do that," and wasn't talking about the same character each time! At times, I wished I could SEE it, because I just couldn't read fast enough to get to the rest of the story. This book had everything, wonderful characters, action, thrills, intelligence - the highest compliment I can give it is that I wish I could read it again for the first time! I REALLY hope this is made into a movie!!!

[Roger Bultot · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good story, but...

Entertaining, but elaborately labored in psychological analyzing. Ponderous at times and repetitious in childhood flashbacks; once would have been enough, but the childhood flashbacks become tiresome.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

LOVED this book. An unexpectedly wonderful read. Well-written, interesting characters, original.

[Cathy Cole · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an epic struggle between a thief who loves to annihilate his victims, and a victim who refuses to give in to that fate. Although I wish there had been a bit more about Nick the thief in Moving Day, I realize that Stanley Peke is the real focus of this book; it is his story that must be told. As Stanley and his wife Rose drive across country to locate their stolen belongings, Stanley's past is slowly uncovered a bit at a time, and we see how his traumatic childhood has closed him off from everyone around him-- even the family he loves deeply.

Moving Day succeeds on so many levels: as the story of the theft and attempted recovery of valuable art and antiques, as the road trip tale of an elderly couple who've never seen the interior of the country, as a glimpse into how some people live their lives in remote sections of states like Montana, but most of all as a nuanced and deeply moving character study.

This is a compelling book that's marred by only one thing: the author's writing style relies far too much on sentence fragments. Sentence fragments work in small doses, but most pages of Moving Day have several. Sentence fragments that are lists, sentence fragments where the same phrase is repeated, or one word in the phrase is changed and then repeated. It almost became too much for me to deal with because those fragments chopped the flow of the narrative to pieces. But no matter how annoying it was, the story fascinated me, and I had to know what happened.

I'm glad I kept reading, and I'm glad I know what happened to Stanley and Rose. I just wish the experience hadn't been such a chore.

[Darlene Quinn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Since the constant references to a man of 72 and his wife of 70 were described as they might have been in my grandmother's day, I looked up the publication date which was 2014. Therefore the author immediately lost a great deal of credibility. The couple was described as too old to be expected to remember normal everyday parts of living and pretty much at the end of their lives. The writing, for the most part was very good. While somewhat predictable in the opening scene, it had so excellent page turning suspense. I'm no sure if it was the constant references to the elderly couple which was like nails on a chalkboard or some parts that did not move with the speed that I most admire, that prevented me from connecting with the characters and enjoying this as much as I wanted to. However, had it not been an audio book, I would have set it aside quite early. People are now living well into their 80's and 90's, and baring illness enjoying active productive lives. That was not true in my grandmother's time. She passed away at the age of 74--her brain complexly in tact, however, I never remember her being young although she was only 35 years older. Life was different at that time. She did not drive and although she had many friends at church, I don't remember her going out and getting together with friends. Life was different then, and somehow this novel stayed in that time warp.

[Diane Lybbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! This was a very exciting book. An elderly couple find themselves targeted by an elaborate scam. They are selling their house in New York and moving everything to California. They have accumulated wealth, fine furniture, fine art, etc. When the moving truck shows up a day earlier than planned, they figure they got the date wrong and proceed to arrange for all of their worldly belongings to be loaded into the truck. BUT this truck is not from the moving company, and they soon discover that everything they own has been stolen. This story, told alternately from the viewpoint of Stanley (the homeowner) and Nick (the ringleader thief) takes off and keeps going. Stanley is not going to take this lying down and cleverly finds out where their things are. He arranges to 'steal' everything back. Then the cat-and-mouse game really begins, pitting the old man and the thief against each other. Alternately a game of wits and a game of violence, the book is a non-stop roller coaster ride!

[Stefania · Rating 2 out of 5]

Noia, noia, noia. Sono arrivata alla fine solo perché mi disturbava lasciare una storia a metà dopo averla iniziata, e soprattutto perché ancora speravo diventasse un minimo avvincente a un certo punto. Invece mi sono ritrovata a saltare paragrafi per arrivare al finale il prima possibile. Non c'è un mistero da risolvere, non c'è suspance, forse solo nelle ultimissime pagine la storia ha un ritmo decente, prima di allora è solo un susseguirsi di scene preparatorie di un'azione che non arriva mai. Farei fatica a definirlo un thriller.

[J Hoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book that explores deep questions - historical, philosophical and psychological. Very good as a meditation and good as a thriller, though if all you are looking for is action and suspense it may be too wordy and desultory for your tastes.

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m glad for having ignored the negative reviews about Moving Day, most of which seem to be focused on this book having been incorrectly advertised as a thriller. This is a terrific story, but is predominantly a psychological tale. It is a story of redemption, of healing, of wounds from one’s past turning out to be the motivation for both good and evil.

The story unwinds slowly (undoubtedly adding to the frustration of those anticipating a thriller with internet influenced pacing) as we spend a considerable amount of time inside the mind of Stanley Peke, a 72 year old man and a survivor of the Holocaust. He and his wife have been victimized by a clever thief and his crew posing as the movers that the Pekes were expecting (but a day early). Roaming his now empty home and realizing the immensity of the loss (never mind insurance reimbursement) has revivified Peke’s horrific childhood, his becoming orphaned and roaming the woods like a feral animal in order to survive the Nazis’ occupation of Poland.

The story also provides insight into the mind of the thief, also an orphan, a product of the streets. His greed, ruthlessness and sociopathy make for a memorable villain against which Peke will battle.

The plot is clever and rather unusual as Peke charts a course to retrieve his stolen property. But in the end, this book is much less about the property and much more about Peke’s retrieval of his soul— which in many ways was stolen during his childhood.

The problems with the book are few— we are asked to suspend disbelief several times throughout— but what fiction novel doesn’t? And as one reviewer pointed out, the author has spent a great deal of time spelling things out for the reader, leaving little to the imagination. Nevertheless, I found myself deeply interested in the battle of wills between Peke and the thief, who becomes his persecutor and ultimately, and quite unwillingly, the agent of his redemption.

Mediocre ratings might prevent people from giving this book a try, and that would be a crime. Just know that this tale will play out in an intellectual realm for the majority of the book, and when things become physical, the pace suddenly shifts to high gear. A rewarding read that I recommend.

[David Highton · Rating 3 out of 5]

A slightly quirky thriller about a succesful business man who came to the US from Poland as a child after the war who gets fooled by thieves who are counterfeit removal men, and how he seeks redemption.

[Amy Robidas · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. Loved the first chapter, but story went nowhere. Much to slow to be called a thriller.