Mr. In-between - Softcover

Cross, Neil

3.42

139 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0224050273 ISBN 13: 9780224050272

Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1998

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Jon Bennet works for the Tattooed Man. He is the ideal employee: utterly loyal to the man for whom he kills. It's an existence that encourages solitude - until he encounters Andy and Cathy. His life is threatened, not by violence, but by the demands of friendship - and the Tattooed Man must punish.

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Review:

Jon Bennett is the perfect employee: efficient, completely loyal, conscientious to the last. But his job is murder--pure, cold and calculated. It is only when he meets an old friend that the life he has forged for himself amid the nameless, the faceless and the heartless is challenged and he is forced for the first time to face the consequences of his actions.

Cruel, powerful and decidedly unnerving, Mr In-Between is an uncomfortable portrait of a man who has so successfully erased his past that the stirring of love and friendship becomes an agony that is too much to endure.

We never really know why Jon Bennett turned out the way he did, and it actually doesn't matter. What matters is the knowledge that, from the minute that Andy and Cathy appear on the scene, there will be a descent into the kind of madness from which there is no return. At one point there is a false sense that some kind of status quo has been reached, but Cathy's death merely acts as a way to ensure that the descent continues until it becomes all the more obvious that there is only one way out.

As searingly painful as many of the physical wounds Jon Bennett inflicts on his countless victims on behalf of the bizarre, yet somehow captivating, Tattooed Man, Mr In-Between is a disturbing, powerful novel that will leave an indelible mark on the mind. --Susan Harrison

Review:

Neil Cross applies a sharp satirical gaze to inarticulate male working-class culture.... Cross s portrayal of male friendship, the rituals of working-class life and the shock of bereavement is superbly done. "The Observer" The precision of thought, psychological scope and massive inner crises [Jon Bennet] goes through as his friend is dragged deeper down justifies the hype around this first novel. "Esquire" A tightly written thriller that starts out dirty-realist and violent and then modulates into something rather different and thought-provoking, philosophical... Bleak, dark, with a distinctly modern-gothic imagination, and certainly readable. "The Literary Review" Cross s first novel displays a subtle mind grappling with a thrilling tale of perverse redemption. "The Independent on Sunday""

"Neil Cross applies a sharp satirical gaze to inarticulate male working-class culture. . . . Cross's portrayal of male friendship, the rituals of working-class life and the shock of bereavement is superbly done." --The Observer

"The precision of thought, psychological scope and massive inner crises [Jon Bennet] goes through as his friend is dragged deeper down justifies the hype around this first novel." --Esquire

"A tightly written thriller that starts out dirty-realist and violent and then modulates into something rather different and thought-provoking, philosophical . . . Bleak, dark, with a distinctly modern-gothic imagination, and certainly readable." --The Literary Review

"Cross's first novel displays a subtle mind grappling with a thrilling tale of perverse redemption." --The Independent on Sunday

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