( Format : Audiobook )
"A crazy nightmare."
A totally absorbing tale of the lives of a group.of youngsters with little else going for them, drawn together in close friendship through a club, the Bicycle Gang. Their story is told by one of the member, Dennis Wilson, known as Sticks, who joined the gang aged 12, married and became a father at 16, divorced at 17, returning to his hometown and his friends after being drafted. Moving between the present and an ongoing murder investigation of one of the gang's most loved members, and the past life stories of each of the 'family' of members, the whole sad story feels both real and inevitable. These characters became real people generating genuine emotional responses in this reader.
Only one irritation with this audio - why, when the story is told by an insider, Sticks, as both boy then man about a group comprising, with one exception, of youths is the book's narrator female? Seems silly to me. Cassandra Arnold did a reasonable job of reading but it jarred each time she referred to herself as Sticks. Perhaps it is because she narrated the earlier book in this series, the Faye-Lynn Johnson Mysteries, Johnson being a detective who also appears in this book.
My thanks to the rights holders of The Bicycle Gang, who, at my request, freely gifted me with a complimentary copy.
This is a riveting stand alone read and recommended