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Cargando... One-Eyed Jackspor Brad Smith
   Ninguno Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro.  DaveWilde | Sep 22, 2017 |  sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
Tommy was standing there without a drink along that last bit of bar. End of the line, Lee thought, where else would she find him? She stopped in front of him, almost as tall as him in her pumps, knowing full well that everybody in the joint was watching her and not giving one thin damn. She could only stand there a moment though, and then she had to touch him; she put her arms around his neck and her cheek next to his, just to feel him after all this time, to smell him after all these years. And then he put those hams of his around her and they stayed like that, not saying anything, for maybe a minute. Finally she put her lips against his neck and then on his mouth and she stepped back to look at him again. "Oh, you goddamn mick," she said. "Where you been?" At 35, Tommy Cochrane is a washed-up boxer who missed out on a shot at the heavyweight title and has to hang up his gloves for good when he's diagnosed with an aneurysm. His best friend and former sparring partner, T-Bone Pike, isn't in great shape either as the two of them head to Toronto on a quest for the $5,000 Tommy desperately needs to buy back his grandfather's farm. In the big city, Tommy and T-Bone encounter an intriguing cast of characters operating on the questionable side of the tracks. Fat Ollie runs the weekly poker game on Queen Street; Buzz Murdoch gives Tommy a job as a doorman at the Bamboo club; Herm Bell is a sharp kid on a run of luck; and Tony Broad is a small-time hood with big-time ambitions and a seedy sidekick named Billy Callahan. There's also Lee Charles, a sharp, cynical, smart-mouthed torch singer, who happens to be Tommy's ex-girlfriend. In the tradition of James Ellroy, Brad Smith has readers instantly embroiled in a quick-paced plot that involves guns and money, good guys and bad guys, double and triple crosses, and an exciting, suspenseful payoff. An unerring tradition of '50s Ontario, rich in local colour and with the kind of crackling dialogue that drives an Elmore Leonard novel, One-Eyed Jacks is a great read that opens up the underbelly of Toronto the Good. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
Debates activosNingunoCubiertas populares
 Google Books — Cargando...GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio: (3.89)
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It's Toronto and the nearby farmland in the late fifties and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley are the biggest stars anyone's heard of and everyone wants to know who is going to be the next heavyweight champion of the world. Two washed up and dead broke old boxers, one Canadian (Tommy Cochrane) and one a Black man from Missouri ( T- Bone), leave their old De Soto to rust when it stops and hitchhike their way north. It's where Tommy's old family farm is - that is if he can ever get the dough to buy it before his brother in law puts it up for auction.
Of course, it wouldn't be dramatic if the old boxer didn't get a chance for one last fight against an up and comer, a bruiser with no brains but his eye on a pathway to Madison Square Garden and the championship belt. And of course the story wouldn't be complete without Mac the conniving promoter who will do anything in the book to get his fight.
There's also Tommy's long lost love, Lee, back from Hollywood where she never made it big, but up in Toronto every man has his eyes on her as she strolls across the room belting out torch songs with a jazz ensemble at the Blue Parrot.
Throw in a guy obsessed with horse races and gambling, a guy with Brylcream in his hair, a .38, and a cheap suit, and a guy who makes stag movies. Each character perfectly etched.
What you have here is a great story that just purrs along like a sleek racing car. It's a story about good guys and bad guys, about the meaning of friendship, and a terrific love story. It's a fight story that involves a couple of fighters and training for a big fight, but, on the whole, it's not really a boxing story.
Smith does a great job of encapsulating the era and the life of the nightclubs and boxing gyms and the scuzzy characters circling around the periphery.
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