Rivers of Gold

( 2 )

All Available Formats + Editions

——

$13.75

NOOK Book

——

$13.75

Rivers of Gold (eBook) Pub. Date: 10/3/2010 Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
$0.02

$24.25

Hardcover

$0.02

$24.25

Rivers of Gold Pub. Date: 9/28/2010 Publisher: Bloomsbury USA

Customers Who Bought This Also Bought

More About This Book

Overview
Editorial Reviews
Product Details
Meet the Author

Advertising

Overview

New York City has never been an easy place to make it, but in the year 2013, it's a little tougher than usual. Race riots. Massive unemployment. Rampant crime. Vacant buildings now housing a thriving black market. A worthless currency and a broken government. Welcome to the Second Great Depression. Some have adapted to life in tomorrow's Big Apple. Like Renny, a part-time fashion photographer and full-time drug dealer who oversees a network of taxicabs running contraband through the underground party circuit. He works for Reza, an enterprising immigrant who has turned the city's nightlife down a deadly road.

Others in the city are just trying to hang on. Like Detective Sixto Santiago, part of an experimental new NYPD unit known as the Citywide Anticrime Bureau (CAB), squads of undercover cops in taxicabs who are meant to hold down the chaos just enough to keep tourists coming. Santiago's new assignment will send him after the man both Renny and Reza must ultimately answer to, a criminal visionary known only as the Slav. But Santiago's most dangerous foe just might be his new partner. From the grime of the city's taxi garages to the sterilized peaks where high finance and organized crime converge, Rivers of Gold is a kaleidoscopic vision of the near future gone hideously wrong.

Adam Dunn

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Dunn's debut, a near-future crime novel, offers a scary view of a fiscally devastated New York City, but the execution falls short of the concept. NYPD Det. Sixto Santiago works for the controversial Citywide Anticrime Bureau, an outfit launched to combat an uptick in crime whose actions in response to a police fatality have led to citywide riots. Assigned to undercover work, Sixto ends up on a murder case, which he views as a chance for advancement, after the mutilated corpse of Eyad Fouad, an Egyptian immigrant and cabdriver, surfaces near the Manhattan entrance of the Holland Tunnel. Predictably, the trail takes a few twists and turns before the reader learns that Fouad's death was not a simple murder. Less than memorable characters and a dive into unsubtle farce toward the end (city officials have names like Janice Anopheles, Isabella Trichinella, and Tsetse Fly) don't help. (Oct.)

Kirkus Reviews

New York taxicabs form the nexus of the drug trade in this messy near-future crime novel, journalist Dunn's debut.

The city is a bleak place in 2012, ravaged by double-digit inflation and unemployment. Buildings stand empty, restaurants shuttered. Organized crime, though, has seized the opportunity. Catering to a young, well-heeled party crowd, it has created a network of "speaks," illegal bars that float between locations, never used more than once. As for the drugs, the dealer gets his money from the clients, then directs them to a waiting cab, where the product is stashed. It works like clockwork, explains Renny, the young fashion photographer who sells Specials (Ecstasy pills) as a lucrative second job. He gets his cut from underworld boss Reza, a Bulgarian who first turned the cabs into the eponymous rivers of gold. When he's not working, Renny the stud is having wild sex with L, who he dumps in favor of N. (He likes his gorgeous babes depersonalized.) "I really can have it all," he gloats. Such hubris will not go unpunished; already there are warning signs (a murdered cabbie, a looming turf war) and the cops are catching on. They are represented by Detective Santiago, a hulking young Dominican-American, and his mysterious new partner Everett More. More is uncommunicative but frighteningly good at breaking bones. The opponents are now in place, but the novel stalls. Exposition trumps action. The revelation that More is a Marine entails a lecture on the Posse Comitatus Act; the search for the cabbie'skiller pauses for a survey of the taxicab business. The old maxim (write what you know) becomes in Dunn's handling something different (write what you research). His predilections (guns, acronyms and really, really large people) poke through the narrative. A car chase (good guys pursuing good guys) and a high-tech showdown absent Reza make for an unsatisfying climax.

Dunn has hung his story on a gimmick (the cab thing). It doesn't work.

More Reviews (1) Fewer Reviews

Patrick Anderson

…often brilliant…good fun, if you're not uptight about sex, drugs and youthful decadence…there is some wildly inventive writing in this novel—"future noir" one early reader called it—and we do find ourselves worrying about whether the relatively decent Renny can survive in this jungle. Dunn is a talented writer, and Rivers of Gold will be talked about, deservedly.
—The Washington Post

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781608193073
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Publication date: 9/28/2010
Pages: 288
Product dimensions: 9.80 (w) x 11.30 (h) x 0.98 (d)

Meet the Author

Adam Dunn is a freelance writer whose byline has appeared in eighteen publications in four countries, including the South China Morning Post, BBC News Online, CNN.com, the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times. He lives with his family in New York City.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 5

( 2 )

Rating Distribution

5 Star

(2)

4 Star

(0)

3 Star

(0)

2 Star

(0)

1 Star

(0)

Your Rating:

Review Guidelines

Tell the world what you think of this product.

Add Recommendations

Your Name: Create a Pen Name or Leave Anonymously

Barnes & Noble.com Review Rules

Our reader reviews allow you to share your comments on titles you liked, or didn't, with others. By submitting an online review, you are representing to Barnes & Noble.com that all information contained in your review is original and accurate in all respects, and that the submission of such content by you and the posting of such content by Barnes & Noble.com does not and will not violate the rights of any third party. Please follow the rules below to help ensure that your review can be posted.

Reviews by Our Customers Under the Age of 13

We highly value and respect everyone's opinion concerning the titles we offer. However, we cannot allow persons under the age of 13 to have accounts at BN.com or to post customer reviews. Please see our Terms of Use for more details.

What to exclude from your review:

Please do not write about reviews, commentary, or information posted on the product page. If you see any errors in the information on the product page, please send us an email.

Reviews should not contain any of the following:

- HTML tags, profanity, obscenities, vulgarities, or comments that defame anyone
- Time-sensitive information such as tour dates, signings, lectures, etc.
- Single-word reviews. Other people will read your review to discover why you liked or didn't like the title. Be descriptive.
- Comments focusing on the author or that may ruin the ending for others
- Phone numbers, addresses, URLs
- Pricing and availability information or alternative ordering information
- Advertisements or commercial solicitation

Reminder:

- By submitting a review, you grant to Barnes & Noble.com and its sublicensees the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right and license to use the review in accordance with the Barnes & Noble.com Terms of Use.
- Barnes & Noble.com reserves the right not to post any review -- particularly those that do not follow the terms and conditions of these Rules. Barnes & Noble.com also reserves the right to remove any review at any time without notice.
- See Terms of Use for other conditions and disclaimers.

harstan

Posted September 5, 2010

more from this reviewer

an intriguing near futuristic tale

In 2013, the second Great Depression has led to the rise of crime especially in the urban centers. NYPD established the controversial Citywide Anticrime Bureau to prevent the further increase in criminal activity. Already having strong objections to the creation of this unit, the Aubrey Bright fatality has led to rioting against the cops and especially CAB.

CAB Detective Sixto Santiago works undercover, but when he finds the mutilated corpse of Egyptian cabdriver Eyad Fouad near the Holland Tunnel, he sees an opportunity for career advancement. Thus expecting to solve the case quickly and obtain kudos and a promotion, Santiago investigates the brutal homicide of the immigrant. However, his inquiry soon proves this was not a simple murder of a cabbie, but much more.

Rivers of Gold is an intriguing near futuristic tale that extrapolates the economic crisis from a lingering recession into a deep rooted depression and consequently its affect on people. The investigation is entertainingly filled with twists and spins as a simple homicide that smacks of promotion turns into a convoluted job killer. Although the ending inanely and overly hyperbolizes the previously somewhat subtle farcical plot, readers will enjoy this fun police procedural.

Harriet Klausner
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Anonymous

Posted October 8, 2010

No text was provided for this review.

If you find inappropriate content, please report it to Barnes & Noble