The Twenty-Year Death
Hardcover, 700 pages, Hard Case Crime, List Price: $25.99 | purchase
Book Summary
A debut novel written in the form of three interconnected crime stories, each set in a different decade and penned in the style of a different mystery genre giant, features such protagonists as a 1930s French police inspector, a hardboiled 1940s private eye and a 1950s man desperately seeking redemption while fleeing from the police.
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NPR stories about The Twenty-Year Death
Critics' Lists: Summer 2012
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Ulin didn't leave crime novels off his list, either. And this one is an homage to the genre. It's actually three novels in one, all set 10 years apart, each in the style of a different writer: Georges Simenon, Raymond Chandler and Jim Thompson. None of that would work, says Ulin, if the stories weren't good — but they are. And though Ulin doesn't want to give anything away, he will say that the three stories are connected. This book, says Ulin, honors the conventions of the mystery. It is
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