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Crumbtown
From the acclaimed author of Bringing Out the Dead (“A knock-down spectacular first novel” —GQ), a darkly comic, wildly imaginative, unstoppable new novel.
Crumbtown is disaster zone as neighborhood, crisscrossed by streets called Lemmings, Felony, Sodden; rapidly losing its edges to the river; inhabited by people who know firsthand that “there’s bad luck in the world, and then there’s crumbluck.”
Don Reedy is the poster boy for crumbluck. His ticket out of town was a fifteen-year jail term for a staged armed robbery. His ticket out of jail is a return to Crumbtown. He’s got early parole and a job as a consultant to the TV show based on his own life, but he’s had to give up “all current and future rights to any representations of his life, both fictional and otherwise.” So when he decides to rob the TV robbery—becoming the criminal he never really was—the cameras are rolling, the script-writer is already making the appropriate changes, and the producer figures they’ve got a ten-point rating in the bag. Don, however, is on the run—a ploy complicated not just by the cameras, but by the dual casts of his life and the the fireplug half twins, Tim and Tom, who ran out on him after the first robbery; the still-prone-to-tantrums former child star who plays Don; the real cop/TV cop on Don’s trail with a posse of actor cops carrying real guns; and Rita, the beautiful Russian-born Crumbtown-adopted bartender with a past full of man trouble and a future full of Don—if he can just decide which Don he wants, or needs, to be.
Written with all the immediacy, heart, and richness of character that marked his debut novel, Crumbtown is, as well, furiously satiric—and further proof that in Joe Connelly we have a writer of the first order.
Crumbtown is disaster zone as neighborhood, crisscrossed by streets called Lemmings, Felony, Sodden; rapidly losing its edges to the river; inhabited by people who know firsthand that “there’s bad luck in the world, and then there’s crumbluck.”
Don Reedy is the poster boy for crumbluck. His ticket out of town was a fifteen-year jail term for a staged armed robbery. His ticket out of jail is a return to Crumbtown. He’s got early parole and a job as a consultant to the TV show based on his own life, but he’s had to give up “all current and future rights to any representations of his life, both fictional and otherwise.” So when he decides to rob the TV robbery—becoming the criminal he never really was—the cameras are rolling, the script-writer is already making the appropriate changes, and the producer figures they’ve got a ten-point rating in the bag. Don, however, is on the run—a ploy complicated not just by the cameras, but by the dual casts of his life and the the fireplug half twins, Tim and Tom, who ran out on him after the first robbery; the still-prone-to-tantrums former child star who plays Don; the real cop/TV cop on Don’s trail with a posse of actor cops carrying real guns; and Rita, the beautiful Russian-born Crumbtown-adopted bartender with a past full of man trouble and a future full of Don—if he can just decide which Don he wants, or needs, to be.
Written with all the immediacy, heart, and richness of character that marked his debut novel, Crumbtown is, as well, furiously satiric—and further proof that in Joe Connelly we have a writer of the first order.
- GenresFiction
272 pages, Hardcover
First published March 4, 2003
2 people are currently reading
68 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 8, 2019
This is completely insane, thoroughly ridiculous crime story that is a lot of fun to read.
Set in a quasi dystopian America just slightly worse than ours (think RoboCop), Crumbtown is a decaying metropolis and cultural slum where reality TV has taken over. A host of crazy characters live in Crumbtown but the story revolves around two primary narrators.
The first is Rob Landetta, a down on his luck screenwriter/director (who I found the more original character). He's miserable and desperate like the city itself. Until he runs into (literally) a damsel in distress that leads him to his next great screenplay.
The screenplay Rob writes and the TV show he directs are based on the life of Don Reedy, a bank robber with a heart of gold. He's a familiar anti-hero in an unfamiliar world. The plot hums along nicely and gets tied up neatly.
But it's the writing that really shines. It jumps and jives with a rhythm that reminds you of a crime noir meets an Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. It doesn't make sense, but it doesn't really matter. It feels familiar and fresh at the same time.
Set in a quasi dystopian America just slightly worse than ours (think RoboCop), Crumbtown is a decaying metropolis and cultural slum where reality TV has taken over. A host of crazy characters live in Crumbtown but the story revolves around two primary narrators.
The first is Rob Landetta, a down on his luck screenwriter/director (who I found the more original character). He's miserable and desperate like the city itself. Until he runs into (literally) a damsel in distress that leads him to his next great screenplay.
The screenplay Rob writes and the TV show he directs are based on the life of Don Reedy, a bank robber with a heart of gold. He's a familiar anti-hero in an unfamiliar world. The plot hums along nicely and gets tied up neatly.
But it's the writing that really shines. It jumps and jives with a rhythm that reminds you of a crime noir meets an Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. It doesn't make sense, but it doesn't really matter. It feels familiar and fresh at the same time.
Read
October 14, 2025Abandoned, never finished.
Bought long ago, about 2003 when the book came out. I was buying hardbacks at that time, albeit half price, $11.50. Had high hopes, but soon could not unsee the author’s tendency to repeat certain sentence constructions. “Don kissed her down the stairs to the basement, his mouth never leaving, his hands in her hair, her neck, kissing the buttons down her shirt.”
Lots of “ing” words in the dialogue too. Along the lines of yada-yada, he said, stepping off the curb.
This might perhaps be less of problem for other readers, but it was for me.
22 years later, now that I’ve finally reminded myself why I abandoned this book, I can finally give it away.
Bought long ago, about 2003 when the book came out. I was buying hardbacks at that time, albeit half price, $11.50. Had high hopes, but soon could not unsee the author’s tendency to repeat certain sentence constructions. “Don kissed her down the stairs to the basement, his mouth never leaving, his hands in her hair, her neck, kissing the buttons down her shirt.”
Lots of “ing” words in the dialogue too. Along the lines of yada-yada, he said, stepping off the curb.
This might perhaps be less of problem for other readers, but it was for me.
22 years later, now that I’ve finally reminded myself why I abandoned this book, I can finally give it away.
January 27, 2008
A chore to get through from the start. The characters were tough to follow, some were just not memorable at all, and the plot was so convoluted it was insane. I just felt the author was trying too hard the whole time. Good thing I picked this up in the dollar bin at the grocery store and didn't spend a lot of money. I hear good things about his first book, but I am hesitant to pick it up...
Want to read
February 2, 2008Bought this for a buck at a dollar store. I'm a sucker.
Ostensibly about a legendary bank robber returning to his sucky hometown, it can't decide if it's full of angst or satire, love or loathing.
Since I own it, I can stick it back on the shelf until I'm out of things to read.
Ostensibly about a legendary bank robber returning to his sucky hometown, it can't decide if it's full of angst or satire, love or loathing.
Since I own it, I can stick it back on the shelf until I'm out of things to read.
January 13, 2022
After the excellent "Bringing Out the Dead", which saw Connelly (a former paramedic in a pre-Guiliani NYC) writing about what he knows (being a paramedic amidst the crack and crime epidemic in a pre-Guiliani NYC) wrote this novel, which I suspect was either an unpublished manuscript that predated "Dead" or... a rough draft that should have never seen publication.
Connelly *seems* to be going for a Hubert Selby Jr. type thing, but instead, it reminds me of a (bad) Arthur Nercessian novel and a deservedly forgotten satire of 2000s reality television that Chuck Barris, the host of The Gong Show, wrote called "The Big Question".
Anyway, it's a shame, as the failure of this novel (financially, critically, and artistically) effectively put an end to a promising literary career. I can't imagine many people getting to the end of this book and being impressed.
That said, if Joe Connelly, wherever he is, decides to put out a new book, I'll be the first in line to buy it, such is the visceral power of his first. That couldn't have been an accident, right?
Connelly *seems* to be going for a Hubert Selby Jr. type thing, but instead, it reminds me of a (bad) Arthur Nercessian novel and a deservedly forgotten satire of 2000s reality television that Chuck Barris, the host of The Gong Show, wrote called "The Big Question".
Anyway, it's a shame, as the failure of this novel (financially, critically, and artistically) effectively put an end to a promising literary career. I can't imagine many people getting to the end of this book and being impressed.
That said, if Joe Connelly, wherever he is, decides to put out a new book, I'll be the first in line to buy it, such is the visceral power of his first. That couldn't have been an accident, right?
September 18, 2022
This book was awful, Joe Connelly, as a writer, is terrible. There are a number of issues -- his writing is confusing, the characters are quite unbelievable, the locale would have been demolished years earlier this story, and bottom line, another convict freed to consul on a tv show. It appears Mr. Connelly wrote only 3 books, and that is 3 too many. Onto to something more enjoyable!!!!
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February 26, 2020I have no idea what I just read.
April 13, 2024
Hard to follow the characters and difficult to follow the plot.
September 20, 2007
I've got the hard cover but eh....great read, I'd read it again.
Read
April 23, 2013For some reason I just didn't get into this book. I didn't actually finish it....maybe I'll give it another try later.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews