Freedomland

The first page-turner I've read this year, Freedomland follows a police detective and an up-and-coming reporter on the frontlines of a racially charged kidnapping case in a poor New Jersey town. Price's characters are well-drawn (I could read another 3 books with Council and Haus bouncing off of each other), and the plot almost never lets up. I gave Price's other novel Lush Life five stars last year - Freedomland is so good that I feel like I might have to knock Lush Life down to four.

I don't own this book, but I feel a need to review it. Warning - I will spoil virtually everything, so don't read it if you acutally want to read the book. Price has a good premise, but he can't seem to actually deal with the effect of it. From reading the back of the book, almost everyone can see two obvious endings. But Price seems disturbed by both, so he opts out and gives us a third ending. And it's not that it's a third ending at all - it's that it takes away the whole premise of the book. This is cheating. The premise, at the time it was written, was obviously supposed to be inspired by the Susan Smith case. A woman claims she has been carjacked, and her son was in the back of the car. This had a new resonance to me at the time, show more because of all the missing persons cases that have turned out to not be real. Almost everyone who reads it will think that the woman, Brenda Martin, killed her son and is trying to hide it. Not really. He's dead, but it was an accident and she for some reason dumped the body. When it was first revealed that he had died of an overdose of Benadryl, I assumed later we would find another cause of death, or she would confess to poisoning him. I was wrong. It really was an accident. Of course, since it was indeed this, dumping the body makes no sense. It seems like Price couldn't make her a murderer, but he also couldn't actually make the boy have been abducted, so he came up with an ending that makes the whole book pointless. Some people have complained about the length of the book; I personally didn't mind this and until the revelation of the boy's death, I was actually enjoying the book. But it's that ending which keeps the book from being good and moves it into badness. show less

I book that I found slow moving at first, but realized that it is just deep. A mystery wrapped up in a psychological thriller. A over seven hundred pages it's a marathon read, but feels more like a middle distance race, the pages fly by.

Freedomland is a "ripped from the headlines" story from 1998 obviously based on the Susan Smith story of 1994. Brenda Martin zombie walks to a hospital with bleeding hands and tells police she was carjacked in the projects by a black man and her son was in the car. It's obvious from the start that she's lying. But detective Lorenzo Counsel and reporter Jessie take turns babysitting her and keeping her from self-destructing while trying to get her to tell the truth.

I listened to the audio version, not realizing I had checked out the abridged version until part way through. But now that I know the book was over 700 pages, I'm glad I had the abridged version. I don't think I could have taken a lot more of Brenda's quiet suffering and show more non-cooperation.

I was really into the book at the beginning, but the characters seemed to become stereotypical partway into the book. I didn't like the cop out ending. I thought, "Are you serious?" I'm wondering if something was lost in the abridgment. show less

We saw the trailer and the plot tease made me curious, then the reviews said the book was better. A police procedural, about the cop and reporter working a missing child case in which the mom accuses a black man of carjacking and throws the community into racial rioting. Pretty good, though too slow moving at times.

This is a good well written novel but I think goes on a bit.
Main character is Lorenzo Council who is Police officer in fictitious town of Dempsey New Jersey, Mainly Black Housing project sits next door to Gannon the mostly White area.
He is in charge of finding a kidnapped boy called Cody. His Mother Brenda says she was car jacked and her son was taken. Lorenzo feels he needs to tread carefully here. He also enlists the help rather reluctantly of a reporter called Jesse she befriends and helps Brenda.
There is lots or Racial tension that is ready to implode at anytime.
People offer to help Brenda find her son she isnt to bothered really with their offer help.
Later Brenda confesses she found Cody dead at home he took to much medicine show more then she with the help of Billy Wiliams she was having an affair with buried his body in wasteland that used to be an old themepark.
There is a riot once Brenda is arrested. (She made up a story about a black man stealing her son)
Brenda is convicted she goes to jail she kills herself. Sad really.
Lorenzo and Jesse become quite good friends. Good strong characters with lots of background. show less

I decided to read this book when I saw the advertisements on TV for the movie which came out earlier this year. With a cast of Morgan Freeman and Julianne Moore, and a promising storyline, I thought it would be a great read. Unfortunately, while the story was interesting, I felt like I was reading another "gritty thriller" that had little to stand out from other books in this genre. The charactors seemed to want to break free of the stereotypes that they were based on, but never seemed to free themselves from the confines of the "troubled detective" or "gritty reporter". An okay read, but not one I'd revisit, nor would I seek out other books by the author.