Citizen Vince

Jess Walter has that "magic something" that puts him a notch above most contemporary novelists. There are so many ways in which this novel about a small time criminal living in Spokane, WA in a witness protection program could have gone wrong. Basic plot elements, style and charachters could easily have led this book straight into the immense garbage bin where not-that-good crime novels belong. But Walter adds his secret ingredients and this potentially weak noir story becomes a unique, brilliant, powerful, living and breathing work with the complexity and the cohesion of the best novels ever written.

Some reviewers said this is a book about citizenship as a conquer, and they are right. Some other reviewers said this is a book about show more redemption, and they are also right. Someone else said this book cannot be categorized or clearly labeled under a genre. I agree with that, too.

What elevates this book, in my opinion, is:
- the unusual level of depth (many memorable sentences and moments when you think "wow, that is actually right"!)
- the ability to make his charachters jump out of the page and be true and alive. You know how sometimes you feel a charachter in a book is being played by a b-movie actor? Well, it's as if Walter's charachters were played by some of the best actors who ever lived.
- the smart, omnipresent sense of humour.
- and, of course, the political sub-plot, centered on the presidential elections of 1980 and the meaning that political participation can add to an individual's life. Now, let's talk about this for a second. Too often I've seen authors trying to give me the "sub-plot" thing, while in reality what they were doing was just patching together different pieces of thoughts and failing miserably. One perfect example of this kind of failure, even if I only saw the movie, is "Killing them softly", movie with Brad Pitt. They tried to infuse that film with a "political sub-plot", failing in a spectacular way. Tv screens with Obama speeches in the background of many scenes, and a final cynical comment made by one charachter, do NOT make a political subplot. In "Citizen Vince", Everything converges to that focal point: the relationship between the individual citizen and the wider community, expressed in the right to vote. The meaning of your life as part of a much wider thing, the responsibility that comes with that and the privilege that it is to be a part of the democratic process, without any excessive patriotism or idealism, with all the proper doubts and questions posed at the right time, but with a message that comes out loud and clear despite the apparent simplicity of the plot.

Wow. To know that I will never be able to write like Jess Walter is a childish but really painful thought! show less

Up until the 1980 presidential election, Vince Camden has never voted. Because Vince isn't really Vince. That's the name he chose when he was relocated from NYC to Spokane, Washington, as part of the Witness Protection program. "Vince" has a sparkling clean record, but Marty earned his first felony shortly after turning 18.

Given a second chance and a legitimate job as the manager of a donut shop, Vince has slipped back into his old scams in his new town, but an unexpected appearance from a dangerous character from his past has Vince questioning what he wants from life and the choices he's made to get himself where he is.

As Vince runs both away from and back toward his past, the pace of this novel never slows, all while developing show more characters that nearly step off the page, especially the title character. I love that crotchety Detective Alan Dupree from [b:Over Tumbled Graves|158700|Over Tumbled Graves (Caroline Mabry, #1)|Jess Walter|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1401907485s/158700.jpg|2136276] appears in his earlier life as a rookie cop.

Spokane plays an important role again, as it did in Walter's earlier novels, with NYC making an iconic appearance as well. The struggle between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan also plays a crucial role in the novel, portraying how American voters could have changed so drastically in four short years.

Five full stars. I have a huge literary crush on Jess Walter with his perfect blend of style and substance. show less

Jess Walter has that "magic something" that puts him a notch above most contemporary novelists. There are so many ways in which this novel about a small time criminal living in Spokane, WA in a witness protection program could have gone wrong. Basic plot elements, style and charachters could easily have led this book straight into the immense garbage bin where not-that-good crime novels belong. But Walter adds his secret ingredients and this potentially weak noir story becomes a unique, brilliant, powerful, living and breathing work with the complexity and the cohesion of the best novels ever written.

Some reviewers said this is a book about citizenship as a conquer, and they are right. Some other reviewers said this is a book about show more redemption, and they are also right. Someone else said this book cannot be categorized or clearly labeled under a genre. I agree with that, too.

What elevates this book, in my opinion, is:
- the unusual level of depth (many memorable sentences and moments when you think "wow, that is actually right"!)
- the ability to make his charachters jump out of the page and be true and alive. You know how sometimes you feel a charachter in a book is being played by a b-movie actor? Well, it's as if Walter's charachters were played by some of the best actors who ever lived.
- the smart, omnipresent sense of humour.
- and, of course, the political sub-plot, centered on the presidential elections of 1980 and the meaning that political participation can add to an individual's life. Now, let's talk about this for a second. Too often I've seen authors trying to give me the "sub-plot" thing, while in reality what they were doing was just patching together different pieces of thoughts and failing miserably. One perfect example of this kind of failure, even if I only saw the movie, is "Killing them softly", movie with Brad Pitt. They tried to infuse that film with a "political sub-plot", failing in a spectacular way. Tv screens with Obama speeches in the background of many scenes, and a final cynical comment made by one charachter, do NOT make a political subplot. In "Citizen Vince", Everything converges to that focal point: the relationship between the individual citizen and the wider community, expressed in the right to vote. The meaning of your life as part of a much wider thing, the responsibility that comes with that and the privilege that it is to be a part of the democratic process, without any excessive patriotism or idealism, with all the proper doubts and questions posed at the right time, but with a message that comes out loud and clear despite the apparent simplicity of the plot.

Wow. To know that I will never be able to write like Jess Walter is a childish but really painful thought! show less

Jess Walter's 2005 novel "Citizen Vince" won an Edgar Award for best crime novel of the year. I don't know of any award for best political novel of the year, but if there were, "Citizen Vince" might have won that, too.

Vince Camden's real name is Marty Hagan. He's an ex-con who was convicted of his first felony in his teens and has never been eligible to vote in his life. Yet he's now living in Spokane under a new identity in the witness protection program, and with the new identity, his felonies are erased and a card arrives in the mail making him a registered voter. Never mind that Marty, now, Vince, continues to work the old credit card scam he did back in New York. He just hasn't been caught yet.

But Vince learns Ray Sticks, a show more notorious mob hit man, is looking for him. Assuming the New York mob has found him and is trying to settle old scores, Vince returns to New York to try to buy his life back. The mobster takes his money but tells Vince the actual price is to kill Ray Sticks, who also turns out to be in the witness protection program.

All this takes place in late October and early November in 1980, when Ronald Reagan is challenging Jimmy Carter for the presidency. Vince may be battling for his life, but he's also, for the first time in his life, fascinated by the upcoming election. In a key scene, with Vince and Beth, his prostitute girlfriend, in grave danger, he manages to talk Sticks him into letting him vote.

The novel has a bit of the grit and the unpredictability of an Elmore Leonard story, yet "Citizen Vince" also reads like a literary novel. Jess Walter could have won an award for that, as well. show less

After a couple of gripping, character-driven crime novels in which he effectively de-romanticized serial killers, Walter should hit big with this charming noir about a small time NYC crook relocated to Spokane from the Big Apple after turning state’s evidence against the mob. He can be found each morning before dawn at Donut Make You Happy, frying dough and setting up the till. No, it isn’t a glamorous lifestyle, but it helps him unwind after a night of poker at Sam’s Pit, and the dough sweetens his take from the stolen-credit-card ring and drug dealing. Free of the big-city criminal rat race, his deepest preoccupations now are counting how many dead people he knows—more than living ones, it turns out—and figuring out whether show more to vote for Carter or Reagan in next week’s election. Life can’t get much better, until a visit from a certain business associate of the Gottis raises the stakes, and Vince’s bluff is called. Walter’s dialogue is on a par with Elmore Leonard’s, with flashes of humor and warmth that give this book a lighter feel than his prior novels’ haunting explorations of evil, making this a fine introduction to a local treasure for fans of intelligent crime, psychological suspense, and gripping literary fiction. And you gotta love the setting (Steve Oliver’s Dead Men was another recent Spokane noir). Writes Walter, “The city I write about is a grimy place. I loved Seattle when it was grimy because it seemed so true. And one thing I will say about Spokane, it’s true.” Yes, I too miss the grime. Together with Portland’s Lono Waiwaiole, Walter is putting Northwest noir on the map. show less

Vince is a New Yorker transplanted to Spokane, and the place has grown on him. He leads a quiet life, managing a donut shop, doing a little credit card fraud on the side, and staying out of trouble - until someone out of his pre-Witness Protection past decides to kill him. He heads back to the city to sort things out, pursued by a rookie detective (who, all grown up, appears in Over Tumbled Graves). This tale of small-time criminality is played out during the Carter - Reagan election of 1980, and Vince becomes obsessed with something he's never done before - vote in an election. As a felon, he's outta luck, but with his government-created false identity he can register and vote for the first and probably only time in his life. There's show more an optimism and sweetness in this book that's hard to describe. Really well done. show less

I'm humbled. This book is smarter than me, and yet it never went too far over my head. As a reader I rarely detect all the levels of meaning in a complex book, but in this case I felt that they were readily accessible, and I count that as a *major* plus.

I have to admit that Vince was slow to develop for me...and in the first few chapters I was puzzling over how this won an Edgar simply because the crime seemed so beside the fact. Kind of like giving My Friend Leonard an Edgar. But by the end I would have been glad to invite vince into the house. To babysit the kids, even. Same with DuPree...even, possibly, with Charles. Give me this bunch of characters over any of the squeaky-clean genre heros any day.

Mob stories don't generally do a show more whole lot for me, but in this case I thought it made an excellent structure to hang Vince's development on. The mob, after all, is a culture where virtue is either meaningless or twisted into an unrecognizable form - just like politics! Bringing in that Carter/Reagan election was brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, and I'm more than a little jealous that I didn't think of getting some investigative journalism experience before trying to write fiction.

Carter's introspection near the end of the book was just about the saddest thing I've read lately. You know, I just had a thought; why don't we give the teenagers this treatment of that election rather than what they've read in the history books - it's probably closer to the bone and certainly more memorable. show less