Synopses & Reviews
Violence is no stranger to Brooklyn's Troutman Street, a place where whores, junkies, businesses, cars, and dreams go to die. But here, in a junkyard on Troutman Street, three men search for redemption.
Stoney wakes up with a hangover every morning. He loves his family, but they're terrified of him. One more DWI and he'll do time that he can't afford. His partner Tommy would run their "business" right into the ground -- or make them a fortune; no way to tell which.
Tommy Roselli, a.ka. "Fat Tommy," a.ka. "Tommy Bagadonuts" knows the best restaurants in New York and how much to tip the maître d' in each one. He knows who to call if he really wants you sleeping with the fishes. If you met Tommy, you'd remember him. But he'd remember you, your phone number, your wife's name, and what his chances with her are.
Tuco has a gift, one that will come in handy for Stoney and Tommy when people start dying on Troutman Street. But as he learns to use it -- struggling to walk the line between family, friends, and the law -- he almost forgets the first rule of Troutman Street: Watch your back.
Review
"[C]rackles with enough good lines to have been saved up for a lifetime." Tampa Tribune
Review
"[A] group portrait of despair so deep that getting killed just doesn't seem like that much of a risk. An indelibly etched mood piece for readers who don't insist that every action needs to provoke an equal and opposite reaction." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"In his first novel, Norman Green sketches such indelible portraits of Tommy, Stoney and Tuco that the reader is drawn into their world and starts to care about them more than the plot." Dana Kennedy, The New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
This is the story of three men: Fat Tommy Roselli, also known as Tommy Bagadonuts, whose flamboyant style and open heart belie his sharp eye for a quick deal; Stoney, Fat Tommy's partner in a shady junkyard business on Troutman Street, whose cynicism and brutality almost save him from his alcoholism; and Tuco, their young, street-smart apprentice, whose bravado and cunning hide his innocence, his insecurity, and his desperate desire to belong.
All three are on an inevitable collision course with violence, on "a one-way street that runs from nowhere to nowhere." All three are in search of redemption and for each of them, there seems to be only one way out.
About the Author
Norman Green reports this about himself: "I have always been careful, as Mark Twain advised, not to let schooling interfere with my education. Too careful, maybe. I have been, at various times, a truck driver, a construction worker, a project engineer, a factory rep, and a plant engineer, but never, until now, a writer." He lives in Emerson, New Jersey, with his wife, and is hard at work on his second novel.