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36 Righteous Men: A Novel by Steven…
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36 Righteous Men: A Novel (edition 2019)

by Steven Pressfield (Author)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
595439,574 (3.14)3
"New York homicide detectives pursue a serial killer in this apocalyptic thriller. When detectives James Manning and Covina "Dewey" Duwai are called in to investigate a series of bizarre murders, they make a shocking discovery: the legend of the hidden righteous ones, the 36 who preserve the world from destruction, is no legend at all. They are real, and they are being murdered. As the bodies pile up and the world tilts into chaos, Manning and Dewey must protect the righteous ones from a ruthless killer able to beguile his victims and command them against their will"--… (more)
Member:MariaStram97
Title:36 Righteous Men: A Novel
Authors:Steven Pressfield (Author)
Info:W. W. Norton & Company (2019), 360 pages
Collections:Your library, To read, Currently reading, Read but unowned, Wishlist, Favorites
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Tags:to-read

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36 Righteous Men: A Novel by Steven Pressfield

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Showing 5 of 5
Well this was unexpected. I came across this novel while looking for the latest Pressfield's book (Man at Arms). Premise sounded interesting and I decided to give it a try...... and I can say, what a ride.

Entire novel is like a wild child that had "End of Days" and Millenium TV show for parents. Same as its parents focus is on the latest and deadliest popular fear and hysteria - for 1990's it was Year 2000, destruction of everything and end of times (imagine the surprise on Jan 2nd, then 3rd, 4th and then June, August, man oh .... 2001/2/3/....) and as a cherry on top the most ridiculous plot ever - Y2K bug!!!! So now it is global warming, and not in couple of centuries but in a decade from now (because, hey, why waiting next 100 or 1000 years - people want destruction now!!!!! people need drama, they need to feel something because they are bored tbh!!!!). I am getting off topic, sorry.....

So ever fierce and ever destructive natural disasters hit the Earth in [a very] near future. At the same time in NY several mysterious murders take place, and investigation proves that NY murders have chilling similarities with the murders taking place across the world. Working on the case is NYPD elite unit, DivSix, with detectives Manning (old warhorse) and Dewey (rookie) - soon they will find themselves involved in the mystery linked to Judaism and legend of 36 righteous men whose very existence prevents the God from obliterating the humanity and entire world. Problem is righteous men are slowly being killed off one by one by a mysterious person who also insists on constantly taunting detective Manning while offing the people left and right.

So basically these natural disasters and destruction are not actually result of acts of men but Heavenly wrath gaining power because barrier [those 36 righteous men] is getting weaker and weaker by the moment. Now ... that 's a twist, ain't it.

Entire story is told in form of Dewey's report about the murder investigations. This can be off-putting to some because (a) story is told from the first person and (b) conversations and details are given as transcripts. I liked it but I understand it might not be everyone's cup of tea.

Author manages to portray all the characters in a very interesting way. Everything we find about Manning is from perspective of Dewey, his co-workers and his reactions on every clue they come across that are transmitted through his facial ticks and not much through actual conversation. Manning is an anachronism but it is clear that everyone respects him because he is first and foremost a professional. Dewey is rookie women detective assigned to work with Manning. While she is aware her partner is moody, old cop that tries to reject the ever present intrusion of technology in every day life and is not that chatty, she is tech-savvy and representative of the new generation - quick-learner, witty and capable. Together they will try to stop the destruction of the humanity while fighting the bureaucracy and [which is more or less a cliche] screaming and arrogant boss and his cohorts - all of them concentrated on "Russian threat" .... and man, that twist in the middle was magnificent.

New world is not that much different from our own (minus the natural disasters of course) - lots of dispossessed people living in the wild and parks, migrating from one country to another and avoiding being assimilated in the new society so they clash with police and army (that are again controlled by state/corporations - your standard cyberpunk depressing world), whole parts of the NY turned in ghettos, various nationalities looking down on other nationalities (I truly enjoyed Dewey's comments on Asian suburbs) and living in tightly knit communities that think they are better than everyone else. There are riots, social networks spying on everyone and everything and corporations just doing their business as usual, because while many will protest against them everyone can be bought (as I said, not so different from our own world (minus the natural disasters, of course)). Technological impact in society is given in a kind of everyday activities. Reader wont be bombarded with various technological marvels but we get the picture of the world in which both technological wonders and drastic economical divide can be found.

And this brings me to the ending. Now, I understand that happy ending is not always possible (Rosemarie's Baby, Carrie and Omen usually come up as an example in this end-of-the-world genre) but this ending was .... depressing. For me ending looks hurried, all the questions raised, true nature of the mysterious assassin, why all the mocking of Manning ..... nothing is answered. It just ends in a sort of a Doom-game-style finale and then couple of more pages it ends for real (creating more and more questions without clarifying anything) in a most depressive way possible. I just wish ending was more .... substantial? And maybe more on the light side - show that sun above the miles of nuclear and radioactive cloud coverage - Matrix style!

Excellent novel, story flows very fast and you can imagine every scene with your inner eye. For me only downside is ending because it just seems very abrupt.

Recommended to thriller fans. ( )
  Zare | Jan 23, 2024 |
Could not pigeonhole as to genre. The poorest of any Pressfield I've read, and I've read the majority of his works. A few pages into my reading I even wondered if Pressfield himself had written it; the style and subject are so different from his works set in the ancient world. The novel was a page-turner but not worth rereading. ( )
  janerawoof | Jul 11, 2023 |
The fate of the world hangs in the balance in this futuristic noir thriller.
New York homicide detectives James Manning and Covina "Dewey" Duwai have been called in to investigate a string of brutal and bizarre murders with apocalyptic warnings carved in blood. Their NYPD bosses dismiss this stuff as preposterous. But when Manning and Dewey apprehend a defrocked rabbinical scholar fleeing one of the crime scenes, they are brought face-to-face with the shocking truth: the Jewish legend of the hidden Righteous Men, the 36 who protect the world from destruction, is no legend at all. They are real, and they are being murdered one by one. Manning and Dewey must save the last of the Righteous Men from a killer who may or may not be supernatural and who won't stop until he has brought about the End Times for the entire human race.
  paswell | Sep 3, 2022 |
This is a page-turner, partly due to the story and partly due to the writing style used by the author. Dialogue is presented script-style and the overall narrative reads like a police report, which it mostly is, being told by Dewey, a junior detective in 2034 New York City. Climate change has reached crisis-level and now someone is killing environment activists in New York as well as other locations across the globe. Dewey and her older partner Manning are assigned to the taskforce investigating the murders. The killer leaves no trace behind, other than a mysterious mark between the victims' eyes that can be seen only after the skin is pulled back during an autopsy. A mysterious woman provides a clue that sets Manning and Dewey off on an investigative direction that puts them at odds with their supervisor. The deaths seem connected, according to the woman's info, to the Jewish myth of the 36 Righteous Men -- their identities hidden -- whose existence is keeping God from destroying humanity. Now, it seems, some supernatural creature has identified them and is killing them to bring about Armageddon.

The urgency to keep the remaining righteous men alive is matched by a global ecosystem spiraling out of control. The sections dealing with excessive heat and storms feel all too real. The story might be fiction, but it's a cautionary tale. This could be our future, perhaps sooner than Pressfield assumed. ( )
  ShellyS | Nov 20, 2021 |
This book is difficult to categorize. Police procedural? Urban fantasy? Existential Horror? Dystopian Romance? Environmental Prophecy? The novel borrows from many popular genres but transcends them all. I'm a Pressfield fan and pre-ordered the book immediately. It arrived a couple days ago and I read it practically at one sitting. So yeah - I liked it. A lot. ( )
1 vote MarcHutchison | Jul 11, 2021 |
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"New York homicide detectives pursue a serial killer in this apocalyptic thriller. When detectives James Manning and Covina "Dewey" Duwai are called in to investigate a series of bizarre murders, they make a shocking discovery: the legend of the hidden righteous ones, the 36 who preserve the world from destruction, is no legend at all. They are real, and they are being murdered. As the bodies pile up and the world tilts into chaos, Manning and Dewey must protect the righteous ones from a ruthless killer able to beguile his victims and command them against their will"--

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