Paul Bryant’s Reviews > City on Fire > Status Update

This is beginning to depress me. Hallberg is in love with every detail of his characters' lives and really, a lot of these characters are fairly dull, like the financier Keith lamplighter or his wife Regan. We've seen these people many times before. To adapt Dr Johnson, if you read City on Fire for the story you would hang yourself. I believe there is a story somewhere but it's on the burner behind the back burner.

well, this is turning, surprisingly, into an amiable saunter of a book, like a really slow-paced Robert Altman film where every character has to have a carefully sketched out detail-crammed back story. Sure isn't what you could call plot-driven.