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Small Town is the Lawrence Block ensemble novel that takes post-9/11 New York and writes it through a rotating set of point-of-view characters: a former NYPD commissioner-turned-private-citizen, a struggling novelist, an art-gallery owner, a doorman, a serial killer whose identity is the engine of the book's suspense. The "small town" of the title is Manhattan itself, where the book argues that everyone is connected to everyone else by no more than two or three social steps.
Block uses the ensemble structure to do the kind of city-novel work the crime form rarely allows. The interactions between the characters are the actual pleasure of the book, with the serial-killer plot providing the structural through-line. The post-9/11 atmosphere is handled with care.
The book is long and the rotating POV requires patience. The closing chapters earn themselves.
Four stars. Recommended to readers who like ambitious crime fiction. Not a Matt Scudder novel and not a Bernie Rhodenbarr; a different and worthwhile Block project.
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