No One Left to Come Looking for You
Books | Fiction / Humorous / General
3.4
Sam Lipsyte
A darkly comic mystery by the author of Hark and The Ask set in the vibrant music scene of early 1990s New York City.Manhattan’s East Village, 1993. Dive bars, DIY music venues, shady weirdos, and hard drugs are plentiful. Crime is high but rent is low, luring hopeful, creative kids from sleepy suburbs around the country. One of these is Jack S., a young New Jersey rock musician. Just a few days before his band’s biggest gig, their lead singer goes missing with Jack’s prized bass, presumably to hock it to feed his junk habit. Jack’s search for his buddy uncovers a sinister entanglement of crimes tied to local real estate barons looking to remake New York City—and who might also be connected to the recent death of Jack’s punk rock mentor. Along the way, Jack encounters a cast of colorful characters, including a bewitching, quick-witted scenester who favors dressing in a nurse’s outfit, a monstrous hired killer with a devotion to both figure skating and edged weapons, a deranged if prophetic postwar novelist, and a tough-talking cop who fancies himself a retro-cool icon of the homicide squad but is harboring a surprising secret. No One Left to Come Looking for You is a page-turning suspense novel that also serves as a love letter to a bygone era of New York City where young artists could still afford to chase their dreams.
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Author
Sam Lipsyte
Pages
224
Publisher
Simon and Schuster
Published Date
2022-12-06
ISBN
1501146122 9781501146121
Community ReviewsSee all
" 4.5⭐️ This book is a LOT..and I loved it! Definitely not for everyone but it ticked a lot of boxes for me: The 90s setting for sure with a trashy music vibe (I remember those clubs well!) and sense of authenticity fused both with apathy and a search for something meaningful. There’s also a bit of an absurdist quasi-heroic quest and a mystery with a thread to recent..well let’s just say sociological conditions which was a lot of fun.
And then there’s the writing! They don’t make them like this anymore. The prose is snappy and sarcastic, lyrical and loquacious. I started out with the audio but quickly switched over to print realizing I needed to go slow, visually soak in the words and phrasing; savor it. Think. There was a time when writing, even in fiction, used to challenge the reader, and this one gleefully and sardonically does that. So yeah, a lot of 90s nostalgia for a mix of reasons. Plus I laughed a lot!
So I’m not sure exactly why, but while engrossed in this world two of my favorite movies came to mind: Run Lola Run, maybe for a certain tone or sense of place and time, and High Fidelity, probably due to it’s hopeful cynicism (yes also loved the book!). So I’m thinking for the folks that these films resonate with, this book just might too!"