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Disintegration
BEST FICTION BOOKS OF 2015—Entropy Magazine
TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2015—Cultured Vultures
FAVORITE READS OF 2015—Shotgun Logic
BEST FICTION READS OF 2015—Quiet Fury Books
TOP TEN NOVELS OF 2015—The Horror Bookshelf
“A dark existential thriller of unexpected twists, featuring a drowning man determined to pull the rest of the world under with him. A stunning and vital piece of work.”
—Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting and Filth
In a brilliantly stylish breakthrough thriller for fans of Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho and Will Christopher Baer’s Kiss Me, Judas, here is the compelling tale of a man who has lost it all—and is now navigating a crooked, harrowing path to redemption.
Once a suburban husband and father, now the man has lost all sense of time. He retains only a few keepsakes of his former life: a handmade dining room table, an armoire and dresser from the bedroom, and a tape of the last message his wife ever left on their answering machine. These are memories of a man who no longer exists. Booze and an affair with a beautiful woman provide little relief, with the only meaning left in his life coming from his assignments. An envelope slipped under the door of his apartment with the name and address of an unpunished evildoer. The unspoken directive to kill. And every time he does, he marks the occasion with a memento: a tattoo. He has a lot of tattoos.
But into this unchanging existence seep unsettling questions. How much of what he feels and sees can he trust? How much is a lie designed to control him? He will risk his own life—and the lives of everyone around him—to find out.
EARLY PRAISE FOR DISINTEGRATION:
“Sweet hot hell, Richard Thomas writes like a man possessed, a man on fire, a guy with a gun to his head. And you’ll read Disintegration like there’s a gun to yours, too. A twisted masterpiece.”
—Chuck Wendig, author of Blackbirds and Double Dead
“This novel is so hard-hitting it should come with its own ice-pack. Richard Thomas is the wild child of Raymond Chandler and Chuck Palahniuk, a neo-noirist who brings to life a gritty, shadow-soaked, bullet-pocked Chicago as the stage for this compulsively readable crime drama.”
—Benjamin Percy, author of The Dead Lands and Red Moon
“Thomas builds his universe and its population with terse prose and dynamic, often horrifyingly visceral imagery that unspools with grand weirdness and intensity. Then he rips that universe apart, brick by bloody brick. Disintegration is provocative. It’s also damned fine noir.”
—Laird Barron, author of The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All and The Croning
“A sodden, stumbling anti-hero in a noir so dark it makes much of the rest of the genre seem like Disney movies by comparison. Gritty, obsessive, and compulsively readable.”
—Brian Evenson, author of Immobility and Windeye
“Disintegration is gritty neo-noir; a psycho-sexual descent into an unhinged psyche and an underworld Chicago that could very well stand in for one of the rings of Dante's Hell. Richard Thomas' depraved-doomed-philosopher hitman is your guide. I suggest you do as he says and follow him, if you know what's good for you.”
—Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Little Sleep
“In sharp, icy prose that cuts like a glacial wind, Richard Thomas’ dark Chicago tale keeps us absolutely riveted to the very end.”
—Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Devil All the Time and Knockemstiff
TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2015—Cultured Vultures
FAVORITE READS OF 2015—Shotgun Logic
BEST FICTION READS OF 2015—Quiet Fury Books
TOP TEN NOVELS OF 2015—The Horror Bookshelf
“A dark existential thriller of unexpected twists, featuring a drowning man determined to pull the rest of the world under with him. A stunning and vital piece of work.”
—Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting and Filth
In a brilliantly stylish breakthrough thriller for fans of Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho and Will Christopher Baer’s Kiss Me, Judas, here is the compelling tale of a man who has lost it all—and is now navigating a crooked, harrowing path to redemption.
Once a suburban husband and father, now the man has lost all sense of time. He retains only a few keepsakes of his former life: a handmade dining room table, an armoire and dresser from the bedroom, and a tape of the last message his wife ever left on their answering machine. These are memories of a man who no longer exists. Booze and an affair with a beautiful woman provide little relief, with the only meaning left in his life coming from his assignments. An envelope slipped under the door of his apartment with the name and address of an unpunished evildoer. The unspoken directive to kill. And every time he does, he marks the occasion with a memento: a tattoo. He has a lot of tattoos.
But into this unchanging existence seep unsettling questions. How much of what he feels and sees can he trust? How much is a lie designed to control him? He will risk his own life—and the lives of everyone around him—to find out.
EARLY PRAISE FOR DISINTEGRATION:
“Sweet hot hell, Richard Thomas writes like a man possessed, a man on fire, a guy with a gun to his head. And you’ll read Disintegration like there’s a gun to yours, too. A twisted masterpiece.”
—Chuck Wendig, author of Blackbirds and Double Dead
“This novel is so hard-hitting it should come with its own ice-pack. Richard Thomas is the wild child of Raymond Chandler and Chuck Palahniuk, a neo-noirist who brings to life a gritty, shadow-soaked, bullet-pocked Chicago as the stage for this compulsively readable crime drama.”
—Benjamin Percy, author of The Dead Lands and Red Moon
“Thomas builds his universe and its population with terse prose and dynamic, often horrifyingly visceral imagery that unspools with grand weirdness and intensity. Then he rips that universe apart, brick by bloody brick. Disintegration is provocative. It’s also damned fine noir.”
—Laird Barron, author of The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All and The Croning
“A sodden, stumbling anti-hero in a noir so dark it makes much of the rest of the genre seem like Disney movies by comparison. Gritty, obsessive, and compulsively readable.”
—Brian Evenson, author of Immobility and Windeye
“Disintegration is gritty neo-noir; a psycho-sexual descent into an unhinged psyche and an underworld Chicago that could very well stand in for one of the rings of Dante's Hell. Richard Thomas' depraved-doomed-philosopher hitman is your guide. I suggest you do as he says and follow him, if you know what's good for you.”
—Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Little Sleep
“In sharp, icy prose that cuts like a glacial wind, Richard Thomas’ dark Chicago tale keeps us absolutely riveted to the very end.”
—Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Devil All the Time and Knockemstiff
259 pages, ebook
First published May 19, 2015
About the author
Richard Thomas
98 books670 followersRichard Thomas is the award-winning author of nine books: four novels—Incarnate (Podium), Disintegration and Breaker (Penguin Random House Alibi), and Transubstantiate (Otherworld Publications); four short story collections—Spontaneous Human Combustion (Turner Publishing—Bram Stoker finalist), Tribulations (Cemetery Dance), Staring Into the Abyss (Kraken Press), and Herniated Roots (Snubnose Press); as well as one novella of The Soul Standard (Dzanc Books). His over 175 stories in print include The Best Horror of the Year (Volume Eleven), Cemetery Dance (twice), Behold!: Oddities, Curiosities and Undefinable Wonders (Bram Stoker Award winner), The Hideous Book of Hidden Horrors (Shirley Jackson Award winner), Lightspeed, PANK, storySouth, Gargoyle, Weird Fiction Review, Midwestern Gothic, Shallow Creek, The Seven Deadliest, Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories, Qualia Nous, Chiral Mad (numbers 2-4), PRISMS, Pantheon, and Shivers VI. He has won contests at ChiZine and One Buck Horror, has received five Pushcart Prize nominations, and has been long-listed for Best Horror of the Year seven times. He was also the editor of four anthologies: The New Black and Exigencies (Dark House Press), The Lineup: 20 Provocative Women Writers (Black Lawrence Press) and Burnt Tongues (Medallion Press) with Chuck Palahniuk. He has been nominated for the Bram Stoker (twice), Shirley Jackson, Thriller, and Audie awards. In his spare time he is a columnist at Lit Reactor. He was the Editor-in-Chief at Dark House Press and Gamut Magazine. His agent is Paula Munier at Talcott Notch. For more information visit www.whatdoesnotkillme.com.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 78 reviews
March 11, 2015
‘There are no mirrors in my apartment. I have forgotten my own face. My wife is a distant memory, and I can’t remember what she smells like, the melody of my son’s laugh, the butterfly kisses of my daughter’s soft lips on my cheek. They are shadows that haunt my every movement, and I drown them out, blur them every chance I get.’
Disintegration is a relentlessly dark nightmare of a thriller. The story of a man irrevocably lost, a past always just out of reach of his memories, tainted with tragedy, loss and ruin.
Told in first person our narrator is a mystery man existing in the backstreet's of the Windy city. Manipulated by Vlad his pusher, controlled and compelled by a mixture of drugs, sex and a complete loss for the value of human life, to kill repeatedly every time that envelope gets pushed under the door. A tattoo honours every kill and this man looks nothing like his former self, no resemblance to the man who once had a family to care for.
An assassin whose targets are the worst of humanity, killers, abusers, wholly justified or so he believes. The dregs of society, those with no chance or need of redemption, the very thing he searches for but just what's real in this twisted existence of killing, exploitation, sex, violence and the sense of a man fading, living on the edge, a breath away from falling off it.
Searching for answers persistently kept from him, forever watched and continually broken, clinging to a semblance of life, drifting through each day, waiting for the next job and a step away from the end.
Disintegration is a story of a man lost, desperate to find a path into the future but fighting through a fog that offers only resistance, a man's fight to find out who he is, what he was, what happened to a family he's aware of but only through slithers of consciousness. This is without doubt a dark and dirty trip through a bleak haze that never seems to end but its one well worth taking. The style of writing is one that's becoming more and more popular, a short, sharp sentence structure that gets you in the mind of the protagonist but never allowing you to settle into a rhythm. Certainly giving an intense feel amidst the darkness.
This was my first read from Richard Thomas and it definitely won't be my last.
Disintegration was provided by Alibi from the Random House Publishing Group and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review and that’s what you’ve got.
Also posted at http://paulnelson.booklikes.com/post/...
Disintegration is a relentlessly dark nightmare of a thriller. The story of a man irrevocably lost, a past always just out of reach of his memories, tainted with tragedy, loss and ruin.
Told in first person our narrator is a mystery man existing in the backstreet's of the Windy city. Manipulated by Vlad his pusher, controlled and compelled by a mixture of drugs, sex and a complete loss for the value of human life, to kill repeatedly every time that envelope gets pushed under the door. A tattoo honours every kill and this man looks nothing like his former self, no resemblance to the man who once had a family to care for.
An assassin whose targets are the worst of humanity, killers, abusers, wholly justified or so he believes. The dregs of society, those with no chance or need of redemption, the very thing he searches for but just what's real in this twisted existence of killing, exploitation, sex, violence and the sense of a man fading, living on the edge, a breath away from falling off it.
Searching for answers persistently kept from him, forever watched and continually broken, clinging to a semblance of life, drifting through each day, waiting for the next job and a step away from the end.
Disintegration is a story of a man lost, desperate to find a path into the future but fighting through a fog that offers only resistance, a man's fight to find out who he is, what he was, what happened to a family he's aware of but only through slithers of consciousness. This is without doubt a dark and dirty trip through a bleak haze that never seems to end but its one well worth taking. The style of writing is one that's becoming more and more popular, a short, sharp sentence structure that gets you in the mind of the protagonist but never allowing you to settle into a rhythm. Certainly giving an intense feel amidst the darkness.
This was my first read from Richard Thomas and it definitely won't be my last.
Disintegration was provided by Alibi from the Random House Publishing Group and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review and that’s what you’ve got.
Also posted at http://paulnelson.booklikes.com/post/...
May 28, 2015
A man lost to the world is spending his time trying to forget the past. Once was he a husband and father now he is a killer that mementos every kill with a tattoo; he has a lot of tattoos.
I must admit that this is not a book I would have chosen to read at first glance. But when I was asked to take part of the blog tour for it did I find the story interesting enough to say yes and I'm glad I did.
Yes, the story is black as the night, gritty, bloody and frankly a hell of a lot depressing to read. But it was also, intriguing and sad to read. Well intriguing when I got into the story, it took me a while to get the hang of the rhythm, but when I did everything got a lot smoother. The chapters in this book are very short, some only a couple of sentences long, but it suits the story. It's a first person narrative and you really get a sense that his memory is not as it used to be because of all the booze.
As I said before this is not a happy story and I didn't expect a happy ending, but in a way it was a good ending, it could have ended a lot worse for out nameless killer.
I received this copy from the publisher through Netgalley and from TLC Book Tours in return for an honest review!
Review also posted on A Bookaholic Swede and It's a Mad Mad World
I must admit that this is not a book I would have chosen to read at first glance. But when I was asked to take part of the blog tour for it did I find the story interesting enough to say yes and I'm glad I did.
Yes, the story is black as the night, gritty, bloody and frankly a hell of a lot depressing to read. But it was also, intriguing and sad to read. Well intriguing when I got into the story, it took me a while to get the hang of the rhythm, but when I did everything got a lot smoother. The chapters in this book are very short, some only a couple of sentences long, but it suits the story. It's a first person narrative and you really get a sense that his memory is not as it used to be because of all the booze.
As I said before this is not a happy story and I didn't expect a happy ending, but in a way it was a good ending, it could have ended a lot worse for out nameless killer.
I received this copy from the publisher through Netgalley and from TLC Book Tours in return for an honest review!
Review also posted on A Bookaholic Swede and It's a Mad Mad World
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July 12, 2017Hope you enjoy the book.
June 30, 2015
Fantastic and original. Lyrical, lush, dark, and deep. Moves fast and furious even when the main character is just sitting on his bed thinking. How I'd love to call just one of the pargraphs in this story my own. The tone and prose alone is worth the price of admission, and the story keeps you turning pages until the end. I've heard this story reads a bit like Sin City, and hellz yeah, you can hear the Sin City narrator as you read. But there is something much more earnest here. Ends on a perfect note. If you're fan of True Detective, you'll love this.
May 30, 2015
This is one of the darkest and bleakest noirs I can remember reading, but also so good that as soon as I finished it I started reading again, taking new pleasure in how the story and the pieces of the puzzle are constructed and also admiring the heady mix of language, which is by turns concrete and gritty, lush and lyrical, violent and visceral. I will skip plot details here because it's better not to know certain details beforehand. The basic story is that our narrator is a hitman: "I lurk in the blind spots and only come out at night. I wait for the rain, the clouds to pass over, the wind to rush in off the lake. I don't make eye contact, but when I do, you'll know it's your time. I can't stop. And I don't want to." We follow along with him for some indeterminate time as he does a number of jobs. Woven through the story of these kills is the puzzle of his disintegration from family man to hit man. How did he get to be where he is and will he make it anywhere else? The beauty of the plot is that we follow our unnamed narrator on that journey, too, which is every bit as dark and violent as his hit man routine. The real danger here is that if you give yourself over to the story you just might find yourself empathizing with this brutal killer of a narrator, and when that happens you can thank Richard Thomas and his masterful prose.
April 9, 2015
This is tough guy/girl fiction. I’m not one. Psycho-sexual drama, drug culture, brutal killings. I normally don’t find these bleak novels entertaining or inspiring. I have a violence tolerance level of about 4 or 5 (and Disintegration is surely a 9 or 10). This story has all the expected twisted darkness but takes a step that I didn’t expect. Disintegration is a compelling read, prose smoothly executed, and with diabolical characters that are so full blown on the page, I wanted to run away from them. Our unnamed narrator is a depraved, self-absorbed hitman (and under the control of a bloodthirsty maniac named Vlad). Nameless kills the bad guys (not quite Dexter-esque who was clear on himself and his mission). Nameless is struggling with his booze- and drug-induced perspectives of his life as the unreality blurs reality and threatens truth and trust. This guy is raw, witty, and sad. I did have trouble with the attack scenes; I was cringing at the bashing of bones and blood flowing out of mouths. But Thomas gives us an unusual beauty in this story. And therein is the dance. Nameless was a husband and father. And it is the loss of his wife and children that drives him beyond the everyday killing madness and into a tender shining moment. I nearly abandoned this book several times, thinking this is not for me. Glad I made it to the end. Exemplary. I received this book free via NetGalley.
April 21, 2015
Dark, surreal, atmospheric, heartfelt, lyrical. I could list a hundred more adjectives for this book, but you need to experience it for yourself.
Thomas dissects a man's disintegration (no pun intended) and hope for eventual redemption with such precision and humanity, it's as startling as it is unnerving. The beautiful part about the novel is that you can read it to be swept up in the story, then reread it just to swim in the prose and have different but equally satisfying experiences. This will be the book that makes people sit up and take notice of Richard Thomas.
Thomas dissects a man's disintegration (no pun intended) and hope for eventual redemption with such precision and humanity, it's as startling as it is unnerving. The beautiful part about the novel is that you can read it to be swept up in the story, then reread it just to swim in the prose and have different but equally satisfying experiences. This will be the book that makes people sit up and take notice of Richard Thomas.
June 1, 2015
Raymond Chandler Meets William Burroughs
By Bob Gelms
Richard Thomas’ new book, Disintegration, is mind-bogglingly good. There is a word that is used, most of the time misused, to describe particularly superior books. That word is masterpiece. When reading a book for the first time, there have been only a handful of times that I had the feeling I was reading something very, very special. Disintegration is one of those books.
It is written in the first person but the narrator is not identified. I came to think of him as Our Man in Chicago and he is so vividly drawn that you can’t help but to know him inside out. He has undergone a personal tragedy that breaks him apart psychologically, emotionally and physically. We find out about this horrific life-changing event as it is spoon fed to us by the author in the form of a message left on a phone machine. Our Man in Chicago has all of the regular coping mechanisms and they have all failed him. He’s tail spinning into the ocean like that film of a Japanese Zero, smoke trailing behind as it crashes at high speed into the water. In the haze of his fall from grace he says of himself, “I reek of violence and remorse.” In a moment of startling self-awareness he says, “What have I become…this monster. I’m covered in tattoos, missing a finger, an insane drug addict, a drunk and a killer.”
Some people look for love in all the wrong places but Our Man in Chicago looks for redemption in all the wrong places. He is literally picked up by a mysterious Russian he calls Vlad in a package liquor store. Our Man’s diet of choice consists of Budweiser and Jim Beam. Vlad seems to be offering a helping hand. Vlad is willing to pay for little errands, a package pick up here, a delivery there. Vlad sets him up in a dingy apartment and slowly reels him in like some evil fisher of men’s souls. I’m not going to describe the transition. You have to read it. It’s outstanding.
Finally Our Man in Chicago is completely fractured. His only friend is the neighborhood cat, Luscious, who comes to visit through an open window in the kitchen. He also has a very twisted relationship with a woman named Holly. That’s when Vlad strikes. Our Man in Chicago becomes a hired killer for Vlad. At first there is a Dexter Morgan thing happening here. He receives his assignments in a yellow envelope slipped under his door. His targets seem to be people who deserve the ultimate justice but somehow have escaped the law.
He says, “A hollow blackness spreads across my chest. Everything I touch disintegrates before my eyes. I am a curse upon the land I tread, an abomination, a scourge. There’s nothing left, and so I embrace it, the emptiness, I fall into the abyss, and become one with its void, the last bit of my humanity spilling out onto the floor.”
This is a noir novel of compelling darkness. The very bottom of his soul is inspected as if under a micron microscope. Lest I forget to stress that this is a crime novel, he kills many people along the mean streets of Chicago getting a tattoo to commemorate each of his kills. He has a lot of tattoos.
He has no coping mechanisms left; his emotions are all jumbled up. He has the wrong emotional response to even conventional situations and his body takes on physical characteristics of disintegration. He cuts himself and his body is covered with tattoos and wounds that were self inflicted or allowed to be inflicted upon him. He is a certifiable, 100% bullgoose looney, all the while seeking some solution to his horrific personal tragedy and continuing to kill for Vlad.
The prose in Disintegration is luminous. It’s surreal and at times psychedelic. It reminded me of passages from Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. It’s almost as if you are watching a Salvador Dali painting become animated.
Disintegration is a major work by a master storyteller. It’s a must read for fans of crime fiction. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
By Bob Gelms
Richard Thomas’ new book, Disintegration, is mind-bogglingly good. There is a word that is used, most of the time misused, to describe particularly superior books. That word is masterpiece. When reading a book for the first time, there have been only a handful of times that I had the feeling I was reading something very, very special. Disintegration is one of those books.
It is written in the first person but the narrator is not identified. I came to think of him as Our Man in Chicago and he is so vividly drawn that you can’t help but to know him inside out. He has undergone a personal tragedy that breaks him apart psychologically, emotionally and physically. We find out about this horrific life-changing event as it is spoon fed to us by the author in the form of a message left on a phone machine. Our Man in Chicago has all of the regular coping mechanisms and they have all failed him. He’s tail spinning into the ocean like that film of a Japanese Zero, smoke trailing behind as it crashes at high speed into the water. In the haze of his fall from grace he says of himself, “I reek of violence and remorse.” In a moment of startling self-awareness he says, “What have I become…this monster. I’m covered in tattoos, missing a finger, an insane drug addict, a drunk and a killer.”
Some people look for love in all the wrong places but Our Man in Chicago looks for redemption in all the wrong places. He is literally picked up by a mysterious Russian he calls Vlad in a package liquor store. Our Man’s diet of choice consists of Budweiser and Jim Beam. Vlad seems to be offering a helping hand. Vlad is willing to pay for little errands, a package pick up here, a delivery there. Vlad sets him up in a dingy apartment and slowly reels him in like some evil fisher of men’s souls. I’m not going to describe the transition. You have to read it. It’s outstanding.
Finally Our Man in Chicago is completely fractured. His only friend is the neighborhood cat, Luscious, who comes to visit through an open window in the kitchen. He also has a very twisted relationship with a woman named Holly. That’s when Vlad strikes. Our Man in Chicago becomes a hired killer for Vlad. At first there is a Dexter Morgan thing happening here. He receives his assignments in a yellow envelope slipped under his door. His targets seem to be people who deserve the ultimate justice but somehow have escaped the law.
He says, “A hollow blackness spreads across my chest. Everything I touch disintegrates before my eyes. I am a curse upon the land I tread, an abomination, a scourge. There’s nothing left, and so I embrace it, the emptiness, I fall into the abyss, and become one with its void, the last bit of my humanity spilling out onto the floor.”
This is a noir novel of compelling darkness. The very bottom of his soul is inspected as if under a micron microscope. Lest I forget to stress that this is a crime novel, he kills many people along the mean streets of Chicago getting a tattoo to commemorate each of his kills. He has a lot of tattoos.
He has no coping mechanisms left; his emotions are all jumbled up. He has the wrong emotional response to even conventional situations and his body takes on physical characteristics of disintegration. He cuts himself and his body is covered with tattoos and wounds that were self inflicted or allowed to be inflicted upon him. He is a certifiable, 100% bullgoose looney, all the while seeking some solution to his horrific personal tragedy and continuing to kill for Vlad.
The prose in Disintegration is luminous. It’s surreal and at times psychedelic. It reminded me of passages from Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. It’s almost as if you are watching a Salvador Dali painting become animated.
Disintegration is a major work by a master storyteller. It’s a must read for fans of crime fiction. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
May 26, 2015
DISINTEGRATION is hard-hitting dark noir of the highest order. The book moves at a breathless pace both in terms of plot and style. Writing with an incisive voice and relentless prose, Thomas explores some of the darkest material I've ever read. He manages to balance the darkness touches of subtle beauty.
Filled with taut, raw-edged material—sugar, glass, and cocaine—the book is thrilling, disturbing, gut-wrenching, and always, always entertaining. Set in Chicago and featuring a nameless protagonist, we follow a desperate man forced to do desperate things—a man living in the margins, a man lost to the world and to himself.
With fluid prose, compelling action, a flair for the literary and including a handful of subtle literary references, DISINTEGRATION excels at being both smart and tough. It takes us down dingy, mist-filled streets. It offers keen observations of human nature, and explores the zoos we construct for ourselves, the labyrinths, the never-sufficient penance we inflict on ourselves and others. A story of grief and regret, of rage and violence, of the need to break free, the novel moves at frenetic pace. Broken out into 100 chapters (some no longer than a handful of lines) DISINTIGRATION simply moves, sometimes so fast it will leave your head spinning.
The plotting seems simple enough at first: the protagonist is a damaged-goods enforcer who kills because he has to, because he wants to, because it’s his only form of escape from his demons. Similar to Dexter, the protagonist takes out the filth, the top predator in the food chain. However, as the book progresses, we learn that things are more complicated than we’d imagined; that secretes lay beneath secrets, that the man we think we know doesn’t know his own story.
Thomas does an exemplary job of withholding information, delivering it in a trickle that like the protagonist’s chemical dependence, keeps you desperate for more. Thomas also finds myriad ways to make this gritty killer likable so that when the book reaches its conclusion, we feel WITH him as much as we do FOR him. That’s the real accomplishment of the book: it’s easier to horrify than it is to inspire compassion. Thomas does both.
DISINTEGRATION is a fantastic read and well worth the price of admission.
Filled with taut, raw-edged material—sugar, glass, and cocaine—the book is thrilling, disturbing, gut-wrenching, and always, always entertaining. Set in Chicago and featuring a nameless protagonist, we follow a desperate man forced to do desperate things—a man living in the margins, a man lost to the world and to himself.
With fluid prose, compelling action, a flair for the literary and including a handful of subtle literary references, DISINTEGRATION excels at being both smart and tough. It takes us down dingy, mist-filled streets. It offers keen observations of human nature, and explores the zoos we construct for ourselves, the labyrinths, the never-sufficient penance we inflict on ourselves and others. A story of grief and regret, of rage and violence, of the need to break free, the novel moves at frenetic pace. Broken out into 100 chapters (some no longer than a handful of lines) DISINTIGRATION simply moves, sometimes so fast it will leave your head spinning.
The plotting seems simple enough at first: the protagonist is a damaged-goods enforcer who kills because he has to, because he wants to, because it’s his only form of escape from his demons. Similar to Dexter, the protagonist takes out the filth, the top predator in the food chain. However, as the book progresses, we learn that things are more complicated than we’d imagined; that secretes lay beneath secrets, that the man we think we know doesn’t know his own story.
Thomas does an exemplary job of withholding information, delivering it in a trickle that like the protagonist’s chemical dependence, keeps you desperate for more. Thomas also finds myriad ways to make this gritty killer likable so that when the book reaches its conclusion, we feel WITH him as much as we do FOR him. That’s the real accomplishment of the book: it’s easier to horrify than it is to inspire compassion. Thomas does both.
DISINTEGRATION is a fantastic read and well worth the price of admission.
February 2, 2016
4.5 stars
Disintegration is the first book in Richard Thomas's Windy City Dark Mystery series, and the key word here is "dark." Thomas has written a first-class example of that subset of noir fiction known as "hard-boiled," offering a bleak vision of America, set against a dark and gritty urban scene and populated by a protagonist whose amorality and ruthlessness make him at times indistinguishable from the villains. Nevertheless, we care about Disintegration's unnamed "hero" because he didn't start out this way:
Strangely, it was this self-same emotional denouement which dropped my rating from 5 stars to 4.5. I won't disclose what bothered me here, so as to avoid spoiling the climax for other readers, but I have asked about it below and would be delighted if another Goodreads member (or, even better, Mr. Thomas himself!) would answer my question. Suffice it to say that I found the ending illogical, though still gut-wrenching.
Disintegration's designation as part of a series is a bit misleading. The continuing presence in these novels is not a character whose personality might develop over the course of the series, but Chicago, the Windy City itself. Each book stands, and can be fully enjoyed, alone. Whether you start with Disintegration or Thomas's latest book Breaker, you are in for a fantastic reading experience.
I received a free copy of Disintegration through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Disintegration is the first book in Richard Thomas's Windy City Dark Mystery series, and the key word here is "dark." Thomas has written a first-class example of that subset of noir fiction known as "hard-boiled," offering a bleak vision of America, set against a dark and gritty urban scene and populated by a protagonist whose amorality and ruthlessness make him at times indistinguishable from the villains. Nevertheless, we care about Disintegration's unnamed "hero" because he didn't start out this way:
Maybe those with the most to lose have the furthest to fall. Maybe the ones with everything, the American dream realized, they become the best soldiers. Because without love, there cannot be hate. Without a fullness, there cannot be a void. To be fractured, you must be solid once, a presence, a rock, complete.As is the case in the best hard-boiled fiction, it is precisely the negative aspects of his broken character which make his ultimate sacrifice all the more powerful.
Strangely, it was this self-same emotional denouement which dropped my rating from 5 stars to 4.5. I won't disclose what bothered me here, so as to avoid spoiling the climax for other readers, but I have asked about it below and would be delighted if another Goodreads member (or, even better, Mr. Thomas himself!) would answer my question. Suffice it to say that I found the ending illogical, though still gut-wrenching.
Disintegration's designation as part of a series is a bit misleading. The continuing presence in these novels is not a character whose personality might develop over the course of the series, but Chicago, the Windy City itself. Each book stands, and can be fully enjoyed, alone. Whether you start with Disintegration or Thomas's latest book Breaker, you are in for a fantastic reading experience.
I received a free copy of Disintegration through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
July 1, 2015
Richard Thomas’s novel, DISINTEGRATION, is a harrowing glimpse into a dark and desolate underworld that is threaded through our very own everyday lives and yet is always at the periphery of our vision. Set in Chicago and its environs, it is a study in how quickly and easily an average man can be stripped down and molded into a killer.
“Nobody leaves me, except for the earth. Got it, big man? You work for me forever.”
The unnamed protagonist in the novel is a deeply troubled man, but is our hero nonetheless. He is cold and ruthless and efficient, but in this dark storm of a narrative, the clouds part often enough to see his humanity. Thomas is a prolific storyteller, and skilled in many genres, but after reading DISINTEGRATION, it seems clear that the neo-noir genre, in his capable hands, is deadliest of all. Fans of Will Christopher Baer will find much to love in this novel, although there is a distinct difference between them, which is the often poetic way that DISINTEGRATION is written. An example:
“A flash of headlights, the squeal of tires on pavement, and the windshield of my car is filled with the sun. Metal screams and glass tinkles the air, I’m a feather drifting in a slow-moving current, I’m a fragile egg, cracked on the counter, shell splintering into tiny jagged pieces. The muted mass of the minivan in front of me is gone from my vision in the blink of an eye. Nothing remains. It’s all gone. A kaleidoscope of gray and white, slices of red and pinpoint pain scatters across my body.
'Hey, guys,' I mutter to the graves.”
If you’re into dark, gritty, character-driven crime novels, you need to add this one to your e-reader. If it ever becomes available in paperback, it should come with bourbon stains on the pages, cigarette burns on the cover, and smelling of gunpowder. That is the kind of book DISINTEGRATION is.
“Nobody leaves me, except for the earth. Got it, big man? You work for me forever.”
The unnamed protagonist in the novel is a deeply troubled man, but is our hero nonetheless. He is cold and ruthless and efficient, but in this dark storm of a narrative, the clouds part often enough to see his humanity. Thomas is a prolific storyteller, and skilled in many genres, but after reading DISINTEGRATION, it seems clear that the neo-noir genre, in his capable hands, is deadliest of all. Fans of Will Christopher Baer will find much to love in this novel, although there is a distinct difference between them, which is the often poetic way that DISINTEGRATION is written. An example:
“A flash of headlights, the squeal of tires on pavement, and the windshield of my car is filled with the sun. Metal screams and glass tinkles the air, I’m a feather drifting in a slow-moving current, I’m a fragile egg, cracked on the counter, shell splintering into tiny jagged pieces. The muted mass of the minivan in front of me is gone from my vision in the blink of an eye. Nothing remains. It’s all gone. A kaleidoscope of gray and white, slices of red and pinpoint pain scatters across my body.
'Hey, guys,' I mutter to the graves.”
If you’re into dark, gritty, character-driven crime novels, you need to add this one to your e-reader. If it ever becomes available in paperback, it should come with bourbon stains on the pages, cigarette burns on the cover, and smelling of gunpowder. That is the kind of book DISINTEGRATION is.
December 10, 2018
There's not much for me to add to the numerous—and well-deserved—rave reviews for this book, but that's not going to stop me from raving anyway. I'm a huge fan (and writer) of minimalist, transgressive fiction, and it's rare to find novels these days that I'd rank along side those by the likes of Hubert Selby Jr., Irvine Welsh, Iain Banks and Denis Johnson. (Add Bret Easton Ellis and Will Christopher Baer to that list [where have you gone, WCB?].)
With gritty, powerful prose, Mr. Thomas builds tension like a master, and the twists are what good twists should be—ambitious and unexpected, yet plausible and relevant. Best of all, there are no "look ma, I'm writing!" moments that befall so many authors who possess the narrative skill and lyricism that Thomas does. Instead, he keeps the writing tight and pared down, unpacking only what needs to be unpacked and doing so in a way that grabs the reader and pulls her/him into every scene.
My only complaint is that I had to read the Kindle version since the paperback wasn't/isn't available. And because of this, I nearly cracked my e-reader screen several times while pointing emphatically at passages I found to be the epitome of all that is wonderful about dangerous writing.
Highly recommended for those who like smart, gritty thrillers and crime fiction.
With gritty, powerful prose, Mr. Thomas builds tension like a master, and the twists are what good twists should be—ambitious and unexpected, yet plausible and relevant. Best of all, there are no "look ma, I'm writing!" moments that befall so many authors who possess the narrative skill and lyricism that Thomas does. Instead, he keeps the writing tight and pared down, unpacking only what needs to be unpacked and doing so in a way that grabs the reader and pulls her/him into every scene.
My only complaint is that I had to read the Kindle version since the paperback wasn't/isn't available. And because of this, I nearly cracked my e-reader screen several times while pointing emphatically at passages I found to be the epitome of all that is wonderful about dangerous writing.
Highly recommended for those who like smart, gritty thrillers and crime fiction.
May 17, 2015
I reviewed this at Entropy: "In Disintegration by Richard Thomas, the breakdown of the mind is represented in his breakdown of language, a lexicon of destruction, dissipation, and dissolution. Violence is both lyrical and jarring, and Thomas burns our ears, scorching expectations. There’s a visceral, gut-wrenching intensity that wracks at readers in short throbs that would be overwhelming if not for their poetic evisceration. Lust consumes, rage devours, loneliness pervades. The melancholy whispers of regret haunt the narrator, fueling his assassinations."
http://entropymag.org/disintegration-...
http://entropymag.org/disintegration-...
May 28, 2015
Review: DISINTEGRATION by Richard Thomas
[Windy City Dark Mystery Book One]
Author Richard Thomas places DISINTEGRATION in the category of "Neo-Noir," and I'd agree. Imagine Dashiell Hammett gone post-modern. There's certainly no sweetness and light here, nor is there intended to be. The protagonist is a man existing at the minimum level of existence: food, alcohol, occasional physical (without emotional connection) intimacy, killing on order. His mind is sometimes filled with a void, other times with memories of the loved ones he's lost. The ending is a real kicker; totally unexpected to me, and I can't put it out of my mind.
[Windy City Dark Mystery Book One]
Author Richard Thomas places DISINTEGRATION in the category of "Neo-Noir," and I'd agree. Imagine Dashiell Hammett gone post-modern. There's certainly no sweetness and light here, nor is there intended to be. The protagonist is a man existing at the minimum level of existence: food, alcohol, occasional physical (without emotional connection) intimacy, killing on order. His mind is sometimes filled with a void, other times with memories of the loved ones he's lost. The ending is a real kicker; totally unexpected to me, and I can't put it out of my mind.
July 6, 2015
Readers don’t just watch Thomas’s protagonist fall, we take that dark plunge with him. Every jagged step of that spiral staircase down, we tumble too, until we hit rock bottom and discover the secrets buried there.
Told in short, sharp chapters that snap with bondage-whip prose, Disintegration does dark damn well while sneaking in some humor when you least expect it. The novel’s a rich, roiling noir that pulls no punches, and is sure to leave some scars.
Told in short, sharp chapters that snap with bondage-whip prose, Disintegration does dark damn well while sneaking in some humor when you least expect it. The novel’s a rich, roiling noir that pulls no punches, and is sure to leave some scars.
April 8, 2015
Over the last couple of years, I’ve become rather used to seeing Richard Thomas’s name appear in my news feed. It seems hardly a week goes by without one of his stories finding a home—not surprising, really, given that he’s one of the most prolific and hard-hitting writers out there. Operating primarily within the neo-noir genre, Thomas has put out, to date, over a hundred pieces of fiction, including a novel, Transubstantiate, and two short story collections, Herniated Roots and Staring Into The Abyss. He’s also an extremely skilled editor, a gifted and generous mentor, and as highly respected for the advice he shares in his columns about writing as he is for his own fiction.
But while the appearance of his name on social media feeds may carry with it an air of predictability, reading his work most certainly does not. “Dark”; “transgressive”; “twisted”—these are just some of the words used to describe Thomas’s writing. In fact, the only predictable thing about reading one of Richard Thomas’s stories is that you’ll be left wondering about what sort of mind spawned such a diabolical creation… and where can I read some more?
Disintegration is no exception. At the beginning of the book, we find a broken man, living alone, in a shit-hole apartment in the Bucktown area of Chicago, and taking jobs from a man named Vlad, who delivers his orders in an envelope shoved under the door of that same shit-hole. The details of how the man ended up in this state are sparse. Snippets of an answer machine message, scattered sporadically throughout the narrative, reveal the once beating heart of the life he held dear, but really, there’s very little time for him—or anyone—to dwell on the past:
“Hallucinations, nightmares, and all manner of slips with reality—my life is a smorgasbord of dysfunction, lies and false memories. What to do? Back to fucking work, I guess. And Vlad made that easy…”
The “work”, to which the narrator refers, consists, essentially, of doing bad very things to people who’ve done very bad things. (I know, right—what’s not to like?) Matters are made more complicated, however, by the fact that the man lives in an almost permanent state of booze- and pill-fuelled detachment, punctuated by some rather irksome doubts about the nature of his work, and who he can trust. He’s also got a cat named Luscious to look after, and a girlfriend named Holly… the latter of whom may or may not be double-crossing him…
Disintegration is dazzling, compulsive reading: a gritty, fast-paced crime thriller that’ll have you turning the pages at breakneck speed, even as you try to determine the verisimilitude of what’s being described on those pages. The bleakness and violence of its protagonist’s existence is underpinned by some of the pithiest prose and hilariously grim one-liners you’re likely to revel in all year, and while one might justifiably draw comparisons to a host of other writers for the way this piece is penned, there’s something uniquely arresting about the manner in which Thomas’s narrator delivers his words:
“In the span of one hundred and forty seconds I have transformed once again. I spill out of the seat, and to the back of the white beast, the crisp night air filling my lungs… There is plenty of life out here. Hands shoved into my coat pockets, the laughter of a circus clown echoing in the alleyways between tiny houses, the brick apartment buildings, the long warehouses that extend away from me. And already I can feel my hands on his neck.”
At times, it felt like George Stark—the murderous, back-from-the-dead alter-ego of the fictitious author in Stephen King’s novel, The Dark Half—had stumbled unwittingly into the K-hole, after a night out with one of Bret Easton Ellis’s more degenerate characters; at others, it was far more disturbing. And that’s before we’re introduced to a dominatrix named Isadora, from which point on things start to get really messy...
But while the protagonist in Disintegration may be on his way down, its creator is most definitely not. There is a singularity of purpose to Thomas’s writing that lends weight to the argument that this is his strongest work yet, as he leads a complex, morally ambiguous character through a series of increasingly sordid, bizarre and brutal encounters with complete control, counterpoising them with moments of genuine tenderness and compassion. In the end it’s this that gives Disintegration its edge… and why I’ll be looking out for Richard Thomas’ name again in the coming months, when the second book of this series is released.
Matt Pucci
Disintegration was provided by Alibi from the Random House Publishing Group and Netgalley. Review originally posted here: http://mattpucci.com/book-review-disi...
But while the appearance of his name on social media feeds may carry with it an air of predictability, reading his work most certainly does not. “Dark”; “transgressive”; “twisted”—these are just some of the words used to describe Thomas’s writing. In fact, the only predictable thing about reading one of Richard Thomas’s stories is that you’ll be left wondering about what sort of mind spawned such a diabolical creation… and where can I read some more?
Disintegration is no exception. At the beginning of the book, we find a broken man, living alone, in a shit-hole apartment in the Bucktown area of Chicago, and taking jobs from a man named Vlad, who delivers his orders in an envelope shoved under the door of that same shit-hole. The details of how the man ended up in this state are sparse. Snippets of an answer machine message, scattered sporadically throughout the narrative, reveal the once beating heart of the life he held dear, but really, there’s very little time for him—or anyone—to dwell on the past:
“Hallucinations, nightmares, and all manner of slips with reality—my life is a smorgasbord of dysfunction, lies and false memories. What to do? Back to fucking work, I guess. And Vlad made that easy…”
The “work”, to which the narrator refers, consists, essentially, of doing bad very things to people who’ve done very bad things. (I know, right—what’s not to like?) Matters are made more complicated, however, by the fact that the man lives in an almost permanent state of booze- and pill-fuelled detachment, punctuated by some rather irksome doubts about the nature of his work, and who he can trust. He’s also got a cat named Luscious to look after, and a girlfriend named Holly… the latter of whom may or may not be double-crossing him…
Disintegration is dazzling, compulsive reading: a gritty, fast-paced crime thriller that’ll have you turning the pages at breakneck speed, even as you try to determine the verisimilitude of what’s being described on those pages. The bleakness and violence of its protagonist’s existence is underpinned by some of the pithiest prose and hilariously grim one-liners you’re likely to revel in all year, and while one might justifiably draw comparisons to a host of other writers for the way this piece is penned, there’s something uniquely arresting about the manner in which Thomas’s narrator delivers his words:
“In the span of one hundred and forty seconds I have transformed once again. I spill out of the seat, and to the back of the white beast, the crisp night air filling my lungs… There is plenty of life out here. Hands shoved into my coat pockets, the laughter of a circus clown echoing in the alleyways between tiny houses, the brick apartment buildings, the long warehouses that extend away from me. And already I can feel my hands on his neck.”
At times, it felt like George Stark—the murderous, back-from-the-dead alter-ego of the fictitious author in Stephen King’s novel, The Dark Half—had stumbled unwittingly into the K-hole, after a night out with one of Bret Easton Ellis’s more degenerate characters; at others, it was far more disturbing. And that’s before we’re introduced to a dominatrix named Isadora, from which point on things start to get really messy...
But while the protagonist in Disintegration may be on his way down, its creator is most definitely not. There is a singularity of purpose to Thomas’s writing that lends weight to the argument that this is his strongest work yet, as he leads a complex, morally ambiguous character through a series of increasingly sordid, bizarre and brutal encounters with complete control, counterpoising them with moments of genuine tenderness and compassion. In the end it’s this that gives Disintegration its edge… and why I’ll be looking out for Richard Thomas’ name again in the coming months, when the second book of this series is released.
Matt Pucci
Disintegration was provided by Alibi from the Random House Publishing Group and Netgalley. Review originally posted here: http://mattpucci.com/book-review-disi...
May 25, 2015
I am thrilled that Lisa from TLC Book Tours approached me to ask if I would like to read Disintegration and take part in the book tour & giveaway. After seeing a recommendation from Brian Evenson whose novels I have read and enjoyed, I was eager to get reading.
‘There are no mirrors in my apartment. I have forgotten my own face. My wife is a distant memory, and I can’t remember what she smells like, the melody of my son’s laugh, the butterfly kisses of my daughter’s soft lips on my cheek. They are shadows that haunt my every movement, and I drown them out, blur them every chance I get.’
This was a real compulsive car crash read. My initial thoughts on finishing Disintegration, were WOW, just WOW.
The narrative was confusing and disorientating mirroring the mindset of the narrator who is also the protagonist. As the story evolves you follow him maybe reluctantly at first, but then compulsively, along his road to self annihilation, retribution or redemption. He doesn't know where the road will lead and you don't know which he deserves.
Our protagonist is a fractured shell of his former self. A devastating incident has resulted in the loss of everything he cares about. Between episodes of brutality and drug induced oblivion he listens to snippets of a recorded message left by his wife just before the said incident. Far too painful for him to listen to in its entirety he craves the void again by means of a drug and alcohol induced coma. Life is a continuous slide between blurred reality and nothingness.
He gives not a damn about himself nor anyone unlucky enough to be drawn to his attention. He is an emotionally dead receptacle, void of any emotion or empathy. He only becomes animated by the aggressive encounters he has with those he believes needs to be taught a lesson. I am not a violent person but the writing draws you utterly into the seedy, dirty world the narrator resides in and I couldn't help myself from siding with him on many occasions.
Although dark and vengeful there are episodes of light and tenderness in the form of 'Luscious the cat' who visits him. Our narrator cares and feeds her during her short stays, but she is ever watchful and wary and leaves at the slightest shift in his mood. Other chinks of light also come in the fleeting sporadic visits from Holly, his girlfriend. The most beautiful and sensual moments in Disintegration are between these two, but you can't help get that niggling doubt in the back of your mind that things aren't as they appear.
The story is as fragmented and confusing as the narrators psyche. Eventually he comes to question what has happened to him, and who his secret benefactor is. Is he being manipulated for sinister and ulterior motives? As he starts to make sense of the puzzle he is left wondering if he will be able to escape his current situation and return to being the man he once was after all he has done?
This was my first read from Richard Thomas and it definitely won't be my last. I look forward to reading 'The Breaker' the second book in the "Windy City Dark Mystery" series when it becomes available.
Pure Noir .... Gritty, unnecessary gratuitous violence...brilliant...loved it!
Disclaimer: A complimentary digital copy of Disintegration was provided by Alibi from the Random House Publishing Group and TLC Book Tours in exchange for an honest unbiased review.
‘There are no mirrors in my apartment. I have forgotten my own face. My wife is a distant memory, and I can’t remember what she smells like, the melody of my son’s laugh, the butterfly kisses of my daughter’s soft lips on my cheek. They are shadows that haunt my every movement, and I drown them out, blur them every chance I get.’
This was a real compulsive car crash read. My initial thoughts on finishing Disintegration, were WOW, just WOW.
The narrative was confusing and disorientating mirroring the mindset of the narrator who is also the protagonist. As the story evolves you follow him maybe reluctantly at first, but then compulsively, along his road to self annihilation, retribution or redemption. He doesn't know where the road will lead and you don't know which he deserves.
Our protagonist is a fractured shell of his former self. A devastating incident has resulted in the loss of everything he cares about. Between episodes of brutality and drug induced oblivion he listens to snippets of a recorded message left by his wife just before the said incident. Far too painful for him to listen to in its entirety he craves the void again by means of a drug and alcohol induced coma. Life is a continuous slide between blurred reality and nothingness.
He gives not a damn about himself nor anyone unlucky enough to be drawn to his attention. He is an emotionally dead receptacle, void of any emotion or empathy. He only becomes animated by the aggressive encounters he has with those he believes needs to be taught a lesson. I am not a violent person but the writing draws you utterly into the seedy, dirty world the narrator resides in and I couldn't help myself from siding with him on many occasions.
Although dark and vengeful there are episodes of light and tenderness in the form of 'Luscious the cat' who visits him. Our narrator cares and feeds her during her short stays, but she is ever watchful and wary and leaves at the slightest shift in his mood. Other chinks of light also come in the fleeting sporadic visits from Holly, his girlfriend. The most beautiful and sensual moments in Disintegration are between these two, but you can't help get that niggling doubt in the back of your mind that things aren't as they appear.
The story is as fragmented and confusing as the narrators psyche. Eventually he comes to question what has happened to him, and who his secret benefactor is. Is he being manipulated for sinister and ulterior motives? As he starts to make sense of the puzzle he is left wondering if he will be able to escape his current situation and return to being the man he once was after all he has done?
This was my first read from Richard Thomas and it definitely won't be my last. I look forward to reading 'The Breaker' the second book in the "Windy City Dark Mystery" series when it becomes available.
Pure Noir .... Gritty, unnecessary gratuitous violence...brilliant...loved it!
Disclaimer: A complimentary digital copy of Disintegration was provided by Alibi from the Random House Publishing Group and TLC Book Tours in exchange for an honest unbiased review.
July 9, 2015
Disintegration is one of those rare books that after twenty pages I decided I really didn’t like, only to go back for a second go and end up reading the rest in two sittings.
Was my return to it a case of ‘I don’t like it but I admire it?’ Possibly. Thomas’s writing style is enviable to say the least: every paragraph feels polished, the ‘camera’ is always so concisely focused on what should inflict maximum impact on the reader, and the economy is striking: fast paced action and montage from scene to scene while giving plenty of time for reflection.
Was it a case of wanting to find redeeming features in a character/narrator who on the face of it doesn’t appear to have any? Definitely. Did I find what I was looking for? Yes. In bucket loads. The narrator’s voice for me has a recognisable, laconic Sin City style monotone drawl, but the way he sometimes seems as high on the description of his world as he does on pills and booze adds another level altogether. While we’re on movies, any creative arts student could have a field day comparing Disintegration to Taxi Driver, and my focus in such a study would be how Thomas’s narrator is a far more sympathetic character than Travis Bickle in a world where it’s damn hard to inspire anything resembling sympathy. My decision to award a five star review basically came down to this: the way it was done was new to me. Impossible to completely explain without spoilers (if you’ve read the book, come and join in with the monthly book club at Litreactor where Disintegration is August’s choice and I’ll try and talk about this there). Yes, there’s a helping of kick-the-dog tropes in reverse, but the redemption of this character goes beyond that. It goes beyond that all too familiar ‘the people he kills are worse’ idea as well. It does take a leap of faith to believe that this man was once any kind of ordinary citizen and was once incapable of doing what he does now, and part of me wondered if his old life were really the way he imagined it, but therein lies the brilliance...
Disintegration’s cover labels it ‘A Windy City Mystery,’ but for a while there didn’t appear to be much that was mysterious about it. I came to consider it an unconventional mystery in that the narrator often shows very little urge to solve anything, or even see there’s anything odd at work other than something feeling ‘wrong’ about his life. A lot of the page turning quality of Thomas’s writing was in the high intensity action, and the horror film shtick of rooting for the killer because sometimes the victims have it coming, not in the mystery, or in the ‘I have to know the truth even if I read all night to get it’ element I recently gave Hugh Howey five stars for. Disintegration is a new kind of mystery fiction for me.
Even when revelations do happen, the real mystery for me in Disintegration lies in the questions that remain largely unanswered or open to interpretation. What I never found out left me thinking back through the book, not perhaps to the extend where I’d do a re-read looking for clues, but the kind that made me re-consider me love of complete closure in fiction. Any writer who can do that’s earned their five stars.
Disintegration also has a brilliant ending. Happy or sad, I’m not going to say. Just that if this book’s your sort of thing and it leaves you disappointed, I’ll be surprised.
Was my return to it a case of ‘I don’t like it but I admire it?’ Possibly. Thomas’s writing style is enviable to say the least: every paragraph feels polished, the ‘camera’ is always so concisely focused on what should inflict maximum impact on the reader, and the economy is striking: fast paced action and montage from scene to scene while giving plenty of time for reflection.
Was it a case of wanting to find redeeming features in a character/narrator who on the face of it doesn’t appear to have any? Definitely. Did I find what I was looking for? Yes. In bucket loads. The narrator’s voice for me has a recognisable, laconic Sin City style monotone drawl, but the way he sometimes seems as high on the description of his world as he does on pills and booze adds another level altogether. While we’re on movies, any creative arts student could have a field day comparing Disintegration to Taxi Driver, and my focus in such a study would be how Thomas’s narrator is a far more sympathetic character than Travis Bickle in a world where it’s damn hard to inspire anything resembling sympathy. My decision to award a five star review basically came down to this: the way it was done was new to me. Impossible to completely explain without spoilers (if you’ve read the book, come and join in with the monthly book club at Litreactor where Disintegration is August’s choice and I’ll try and talk about this there). Yes, there’s a helping of kick-the-dog tropes in reverse, but the redemption of this character goes beyond that. It goes beyond that all too familiar ‘the people he kills are worse’ idea as well. It does take a leap of faith to believe that this man was once any kind of ordinary citizen and was once incapable of doing what he does now, and part of me wondered if his old life were really the way he imagined it, but therein lies the brilliance...
Disintegration’s cover labels it ‘A Windy City Mystery,’ but for a while there didn’t appear to be much that was mysterious about it. I came to consider it an unconventional mystery in that the narrator often shows very little urge to solve anything, or even see there’s anything odd at work other than something feeling ‘wrong’ about his life. A lot of the page turning quality of Thomas’s writing was in the high intensity action, and the horror film shtick of rooting for the killer because sometimes the victims have it coming, not in the mystery, or in the ‘I have to know the truth even if I read all night to get it’ element I recently gave Hugh Howey five stars for. Disintegration is a new kind of mystery fiction for me.
Even when revelations do happen, the real mystery for me in Disintegration lies in the questions that remain largely unanswered or open to interpretation. What I never found out left me thinking back through the book, not perhaps to the extend where I’d do a re-read looking for clues, but the kind that made me re-consider me love of complete closure in fiction. Any writer who can do that’s earned their five stars.
Disintegration also has a brilliant ending. Happy or sad, I’m not going to say. Just that if this book’s your sort of thing and it leaves you disappointed, I’ll be surprised.
June 4, 2015
Like any noir novel worth its salt-in-the-wounds, all lessons come hard-won and pitiless, with the reader equally limping away in the end with gritted teeth and squinted eyes, but with a hardier soul. This is the power of Richard Thomas’s Disintegration, a neo-noir tale with roots in Chandler and Himes, but with the modern psychological ambition and sledgehammer vigilantism of Richard Price and Dennis Lehane. Thomas has successfully crafted a narrator with no name, an everyman who dresses and acts the parts necessary to undertake his missions, which are murders at the behest hawk-nosed Russian gangster named Vlad. Amongst a steady cavalcade of decadent partiers, nubile femme fatales, and gambling degenerates groping into the narrator’s path from the margins, no punches are pulled in depicting the slow gutting of a man already cleaved in two by the death of his wife and two kids in a car accident. By the time the bullet reports die and the dust starts to clear, the narrator is offered a tiny glint of hope, as is the reader in regards to the still thriving power of the written word.
June 25, 2015
So this is going to be my personal review of this book. For a more critical review, please go to http://www.thisishorror.co.uk/book-re...
This novel is the deepest, darkest, crazy-ass, dirty, nastiest noir I have ever read. Seriously. Bleak, unforgiving, relentless, I needed to shower twice when I finished. If you're one of those that think no one is writing kickass books anymore, crawl up from under that rock and buy this damn book. This is the first of a series, each book will feature an all new cast and story, all focused on the back alleys of that windy city we call Chicago, home of The Night Stalker. So it's dark, right, but there's light at the end of that tunnel, and our hero finds it, and pulls himself up from the depths of Hell and finds a way to make it all right. Well, maybe not all right, but he gets what he deserves. YOU owe it to yourself to download this book right now.
This novel is the deepest, darkest, crazy-ass, dirty, nastiest noir I have ever read. Seriously. Bleak, unforgiving, relentless, I needed to shower twice when I finished. If you're one of those that think no one is writing kickass books anymore, crawl up from under that rock and buy this damn book. This is the first of a series, each book will feature an all new cast and story, all focused on the back alleys of that windy city we call Chicago, home of The Night Stalker. So it's dark, right, but there's light at the end of that tunnel, and our hero finds it, and pulls himself up from the depths of Hell and finds a way to make it all right. Well, maybe not all right, but he gets what he deserves. YOU owe it to yourself to download this book right now.
August 12, 2015
Richard Thomas is a unique and skilled author, but he's not for everyone. I've been reading his short stories for many years now and they are emotional portraits more than cohesive narratives of some sort and this aspect of his fiction is very present in his novel DISINTEGRATION, which is what I imagine Samuel Beckett's THE UNNAMABLE would be like if it had been written by James Sallis. You get my drift?
I thought the urban setting was really well-used in DISINTEGRATION. I never been to Chicago, but I thought it was what it must be like to be there. The action scenes felt a little bit like it felt watching the movie adaptation of Sallis' DRIVE. What is left of a man once his life disintegrates before his very eyes? Richard Thomas has an interesting hypothetical answer to this questions and you'll have to read his novel to find out.
I thought the urban setting was really well-used in DISINTEGRATION. I never been to Chicago, but I thought it was what it must be like to be there. The action scenes felt a little bit like it felt watching the movie adaptation of Sallis' DRIVE. What is left of a man once his life disintegrates before his very eyes? Richard Thomas has an interesting hypothetical answer to this questions and you'll have to read his novel to find out.
June 14, 2015
This book. It will lure you in with pretty words, then punch you in the face, then twist your heart, for good measure.
Everything about this story keeps your head spinning. Where you begin to feel contempt, you'll find yourself feeling compassion. You'll come to love the ugliness of the characters' souls and be complicit in their violence. Your heart aches for these villains.
I had a hard time putting this one down. Just when I'd tell myself it was time for a break, I'd get to another "oh shit" moment, and have to keep going. My kindle died right at a big realization, and I wailed audibly.
Give this a read, if you've got the stomach for it. Loved it.
Everything about this story keeps your head spinning. Where you begin to feel contempt, you'll find yourself feeling compassion. You'll come to love the ugliness of the characters' souls and be complicit in their violence. Your heart aches for these villains.
I had a hard time putting this one down. Just when I'd tell myself it was time for a break, I'd get to another "oh shit" moment, and have to keep going. My kindle died right at a big realization, and I wailed audibly.
Give this a read, if you've got the stomach for it. Loved it.
June 24, 2015
Lyrical, and at times, just plain gritty and mean, Disintegration is good old fashioned noir at it's best. Our nameless narrator wakes up in the hell that is his own life with nothing pure but the one cat that keeps visiting him. Otherwise it's bad women, bad men, bad drugs, and bad thoughts (and Vlad, a Russian gangster whose accent made me think of Travolta). Fast read, and the kind of thing to get into when you want to dive into something brutal for a couple of days. The first of a series of books that take place in Chicago, Disintegration sets a good tone and standard for what follows.
May 25, 2015
I think it was a Chuck Palahniuk essay I read that said you should never leave your character alone. I wanted to link to it, because it was a great essay, but I can't seem to find it now. But I'm getting a little off topic here. Disintegration is a pretty fantastic example of knowingly breaking a rule.
We spend most of our time with... uh, the Narrator. Who I'm just now realizing doesn't have a name I ever remember reading. Which is just fine because he's no one. Or, at least, he wants to be no one because being someone means coming to terms with what he lost. Which is everything.
This is the story of a man going mad. With nothing left to tether him to reality, besides an aloof cat called Luscious, he's slipping down the rabbit hole pretty fast. And he's going to take as many people down with him as he can.
Disintegration mixes black and white until it turns all grey and red. It doesn't just blur the line between real and paranoid delusion-- it zig zags back and forth, tangling the two together. It's dark and moody with plenty of sex and violence. I haven't worried so much about a cat since Pet Semetary.
The characters are strangely relatable. Like, I feel like I actually know some of them (in less extreme circumstances, obviously),which is nuts because I usually have a really hard time relating to adult characters. Like I've missed out on whatever magical rite of passage that happens to make me feel like I know what I'm supposed to be doing. But these people do all the same things my friends do (aside from the murder, I'm pretty sure). They wear hoodies and listen to music I know. They've got kids and responsibilities, but that's not where they end. They make the best the decisions they know how to make. They fuck up.
This is one of those books that I'm afraid to say much about. It's all so super tense and secrety that I think I might give something away. Despite being pretty heavy, it's... easy... fun... none of those words are really right. They make it sound light. And it's definitely not that.
The narrator is so unreliable that I found myself wondering if any of it happened at all or if we were all just caught up in the violent fantasy of a desperate man. It's that kind of a mindfuck. So, just trust me when I say it's a good read.
We spend most of our time with... uh, the Narrator. Who I'm just now realizing doesn't have a name I ever remember reading. Which is just fine because he's no one. Or, at least, he wants to be no one because being someone means coming to terms with what he lost. Which is everything.
This is the story of a man going mad. With nothing left to tether him to reality, besides an aloof cat called Luscious, he's slipping down the rabbit hole pretty fast. And he's going to take as many people down with him as he can.
Disintegration mixes black and white until it turns all grey and red. It doesn't just blur the line between real and paranoid delusion-- it zig zags back and forth, tangling the two together. It's dark and moody with plenty of sex and violence. I haven't worried so much about a cat since Pet Semetary.
The characters are strangely relatable. Like, I feel like I actually know some of them (in less extreme circumstances, obviously),which is nuts because I usually have a really hard time relating to adult characters. Like I've missed out on whatever magical rite of passage that happens to make me feel like I know what I'm supposed to be doing. But these people do all the same things my friends do (aside from the murder, I'm pretty sure). They wear hoodies and listen to music I know. They've got kids and responsibilities, but that's not where they end. They make the best the decisions they know how to make. They fuck up.
This is one of those books that I'm afraid to say much about. It's all so super tense and secrety that I think I might give something away. Despite being pretty heavy, it's... easy... fun... none of those words are really right. They make it sound light. And it's definitely not that.
The narrator is so unreliable that I found myself wondering if any of it happened at all or if we were all just caught up in the violent fantasy of a desperate man. It's that kind of a mindfuck. So, just trust me when I say it's a good read.
March 17, 2015
I’m not sure whether Disintegration by Richard Thomas is brilliant or totally insane. I know that author, and he is brilliant. So I read the whole novel again and try to make up my mind. Now the story makes sense to me. There is a method to this madness. The novel is both brilliant and insane.
First read didn’t go well for me, so used to straight narrative and give and take dialogue from the usual word merchants am I that I couldn’t make hide nor hair of the skeleton in the closet of the protagonist’s mind. First-person stream-of-consciousness William Burroughs avant garde does not compute. What is real and what isn’t? Hard to tell.
And that’s the brilliance of this novel. You get drawn in so your own mind constantly questions what is real and what isn’t until, finally, you don’t care either way. The human mind is marvelously adaptive and mimicking, and you find yourself inside the narrator’s demented psyche and tattooed skin thinking just like him. After a while, the story seems vaguely familiar, and you realize it’s probably because the style and setting remind you of a combination of Nelson Algren’s novels and Wayne Allen Sallee’s award-winning “Take the A Train.” Maybe even a touch of Hemingway’s “The Killers.” Maybe it’s mainly because Disintegration takes place in Chicago and the streets and buses and trains have Chicago names. Or maybe it’s only because Chicago writers tend toward a dark way of thinking that’s broody and moody and self-destructive.
This quote from Richard Thomas’s novel rings true for me: “They say that your experiences in life, whether real or imagined, something you’ve seen in a dream or a movie—they all stay with you, they all become part of your past, with equal weight, your emotional baggage, the fabric you stitch together to weave the stained blanket of lies you call your life.”
Fair warning: Once you’ve read Disintegration, the stained blanket of your life won’t ever be the same. You’ll be haunted with horrible nightmares, doubts, delusions. It’s an experience you can’t forget, no matter how hard you try. It’ll be tattooed to your psyche forever.
First read didn’t go well for me, so used to straight narrative and give and take dialogue from the usual word merchants am I that I couldn’t make hide nor hair of the skeleton in the closet of the protagonist’s mind. First-person stream-of-consciousness William Burroughs avant garde does not compute. What is real and what isn’t? Hard to tell.
And that’s the brilliance of this novel. You get drawn in so your own mind constantly questions what is real and what isn’t until, finally, you don’t care either way. The human mind is marvelously adaptive and mimicking, and you find yourself inside the narrator’s demented psyche and tattooed skin thinking just like him. After a while, the story seems vaguely familiar, and you realize it’s probably because the style and setting remind you of a combination of Nelson Algren’s novels and Wayne Allen Sallee’s award-winning “Take the A Train.” Maybe even a touch of Hemingway’s “The Killers.” Maybe it’s mainly because Disintegration takes place in Chicago and the streets and buses and trains have Chicago names. Or maybe it’s only because Chicago writers tend toward a dark way of thinking that’s broody and moody and self-destructive.
This quote from Richard Thomas’s novel rings true for me: “They say that your experiences in life, whether real or imagined, something you’ve seen in a dream or a movie—they all stay with you, they all become part of your past, with equal weight, your emotional baggage, the fabric you stitch together to weave the stained blanket of lies you call your life.”
Fair warning: Once you’ve read Disintegration, the stained blanket of your life won’t ever be the same. You’ll be haunted with horrible nightmares, doubts, delusions. It’s an experience you can’t forget, no matter how hard you try. It’ll be tattooed to your psyche forever.
March 23, 2015
DISINTEGRATION: A Windy City Dark Mystery
by Richard Thomas
published by Random House Alabi
publication date: May 26, 2015
The first half of Richard Thomas’s DISINTEGRATION: A Windy City Dark Mystery lives up to its subtitle. It is an extremely atmospheric tale set in what I would call a dark-reality version of modern Chicago. It is the Chicago of our reality, but only if you include the dark, gritty and nasty bits. Things are surreal, and at times become hallucinatory, as we are introduced to the narrator of the story, a man for whom nothing is usual or sure, including his name. He works for a man he calls Vlad, running errands at odd intervals to nefarious ends.
The protagonist goes through the motions of his bizarre life in the first half of the book, letting us know what normal is for him and very little else. And just when things could get confusing or frustrating for the reader, knowing so little, the story starts to unfold, cracks are filled in and realities found. Thomas’s pace is expert as he allows the narrator to clear up the mysteries of the book for himself, relating them to the reader as he does so. The women of his life and his cat anchor the narrator to the book to the realities he, and the reader, are ultimately searching for.
DISINTEGRATION is an absolutely fantastic mystery. Call it neo-noir. The voice of the story is so clear, even when the events of the book are not, and the prose is so sharp that it is hard to put this book down, and by the time the reader hits the halfway point the choice will seem out of their hands. The book demands to be finished and the reader should be more than happy to oblige.
by Richard Thomas
published by Random House Alabi
publication date: May 26, 2015
The first half of Richard Thomas’s DISINTEGRATION: A Windy City Dark Mystery lives up to its subtitle. It is an extremely atmospheric tale set in what I would call a dark-reality version of modern Chicago. It is the Chicago of our reality, but only if you include the dark, gritty and nasty bits. Things are surreal, and at times become hallucinatory, as we are introduced to the narrator of the story, a man for whom nothing is usual or sure, including his name. He works for a man he calls Vlad, running errands at odd intervals to nefarious ends.
The protagonist goes through the motions of his bizarre life in the first half of the book, letting us know what normal is for him and very little else. And just when things could get confusing or frustrating for the reader, knowing so little, the story starts to unfold, cracks are filled in and realities found. Thomas’s pace is expert as he allows the narrator to clear up the mysteries of the book for himself, relating them to the reader as he does so. The women of his life and his cat anchor the narrator to the book to the realities he, and the reader, are ultimately searching for.
DISINTEGRATION is an absolutely fantastic mystery. Call it neo-noir. The voice of the story is so clear, even when the events of the book are not, and the prose is so sharp that it is hard to put this book down, and by the time the reader hits the halfway point the choice will seem out of their hands. The book demands to be finished and the reader should be more than happy to oblige.
August 13, 2015
A nail-biting page turner, equal parts grit and heart. Okay, maybe not equal. Most parts grit, but pulling even an ounce of heart out of a protagonist like this is a tall order and Richard serves a damn fine meal.
It’s not a stretch to compare Thomas’s Disintegration with the works of Brett Easton Ellis, however with Ellis’ work I typically come away enjoying the experience while hating the characters and sometimes even the story and a dozen hot showers can’t wipe away the filth.
It wasn’t like this with Disintegration. Despite all the brutal things the Protag has done and has had done to him, the ending left us with that glimmering shine of humanity. And moreover, hope. Things might actually be o.k. for him and he sacrifices his own wants/needs for the wellbeing of others. So I generally like this guy. And it’s why the book earned all five of my stars.
Great endings are hard to pull off, and Thomas nailed it. Typically books like this, (that seem to be a plane in a nosedive with no possible outcome but a nasty explosion when it impacts the ground) leave their world a bloodbath of ruins where nothing good or hopeful can remotely be considered. They take you all the way down a rat hole and leave you buried there suffocating in the dirt. This book does the opposite. Granted, the plane falls all the way down, crashes, explodes and takes dozens with it, but somehow the narrator and the nasty world he lives in evolve. And that’s what makes reading a story like this worthwhile.
It’s not a stretch to compare Thomas’s Disintegration with the works of Brett Easton Ellis, however with Ellis’ work I typically come away enjoying the experience while hating the characters and sometimes even the story and a dozen hot showers can’t wipe away the filth.
It wasn’t like this with Disintegration. Despite all the brutal things the Protag has done and has had done to him, the ending left us with that glimmering shine of humanity. And moreover, hope. Things might actually be o.k. for him and he sacrifices his own wants/needs for the wellbeing of others. So I generally like this guy. And it’s why the book earned all five of my stars.
Great endings are hard to pull off, and Thomas nailed it. Typically books like this, (that seem to be a plane in a nosedive with no possible outcome but a nasty explosion when it impacts the ground) leave their world a bloodbath of ruins where nothing good or hopeful can remotely be considered. They take you all the way down a rat hole and leave you buried there suffocating in the dirt. This book does the opposite. Granted, the plane falls all the way down, crashes, explodes and takes dozens with it, but somehow the narrator and the nasty world he lives in evolve. And that’s what makes reading a story like this worthwhile.
June 26, 2015
To tell a story this dark and unrelenting, you have to be one hundred percent committed to pulling all the blinds and blacking out the windows. Richard Thomas follows his unnamed narrator / hired killer with the dedication of a stalker. He plunges us into a raw and gritty Chicago wasteland where characters exist in permanent fallen states. Wherever they land is where they stay.
Thomas' broken killer is employed by a vicious, and mysterious, Russian who keeps this killer on a short leash. But because of tragedy this killer doesn't mind being kept in a cage. His days and nights are spent wandering through a fog of alcohol and medication as he waits for his next assignment. From here the story takes off like a man being chased down a dark alley, with footsteps splashing through puddles of blood.
This is muscular noir, beefed up on the steroids of hard hitting modern fiction, but with one foot firmly in the classic age of film noir. Thomas keeps the plot moving breathlessly, leading us to a shocking conclusion.
The writing itself is near hallucinatory. The voice is of a man who has lost everything he loves, and now moves through the world breaking anything he touches. Thomas does more than just tell a story, he throws the reader into the dingy bars, the rotting apartments, the filthy streets.
"Disintegration" is a dark and bloody noir with hints with existentialism. Richard Thomas is creating his own unique world within the Windy City, and I look forward to visiting again when he publishes "Breaker" in 2016.
Thomas' broken killer is employed by a vicious, and mysterious, Russian who keeps this killer on a short leash. But because of tragedy this killer doesn't mind being kept in a cage. His days and nights are spent wandering through a fog of alcohol and medication as he waits for his next assignment. From here the story takes off like a man being chased down a dark alley, with footsteps splashing through puddles of blood.
This is muscular noir, beefed up on the steroids of hard hitting modern fiction, but with one foot firmly in the classic age of film noir. Thomas keeps the plot moving breathlessly, leading us to a shocking conclusion.
The writing itself is near hallucinatory. The voice is of a man who has lost everything he loves, and now moves through the world breaking anything he touches. Thomas does more than just tell a story, he throws the reader into the dingy bars, the rotting apartments, the filthy streets.
"Disintegration" is a dark and bloody noir with hints with existentialism. Richard Thomas is creating his own unique world within the Windy City, and I look forward to visiting again when he publishes "Breaker" in 2016.
May 26, 2015
This is a dark but exciting book about a man who at one time was a father, husband and just a guy trying to make it all work. Now he is drunk, high, having an affair oh and by the way he is a killer. He marks his killings by getting a tattoo and his body is now covered by them. but one day as he is listening to the last recording he kept from the night of the accident that took his family he is wondering did it really happen or was it all just a plan to get me to do what I am doing now. As he is trying to put the pieces together he is also trying to stay alive for now someone is trying to kill him. He must find the truth but when he does what will happen, he is a killer and a drunk he is not that man he once was and would his family if they were alive even recognize him. Better yet would they want to be around him? As he gets closer to finding to truth he is realizing he is having to kill more people to just to stay alive but as you get closer to finding out what has happened to him you find yourself actually routing for the guy but knowing he is screwed. An excellent book and the main character and story is full of depth and emotion. A very good book. I got this book from net galley.
May 26, 2015
Wow! I wasn't sure about this book as I started reading but was soon hooked and couldn't put it down. The plot was original and very well written. I won't give away the plot as you have to see it unfold for yourself. I will say it is about being at rock bottom and trying to struggle your way up. What is right and what is the truth? The characters are well developed and real. You care about them and feel for them. They are flawed, some more than others. Can they redeem themselves and find the way out of their nightmare or are they destined to be exactly what they are, where they are?
I would highly recommend this book to others. It is what some would call dark but there is light to be seen if you give it a chance. If you are looking for an original, well written mystery, give it a try. I don't think you'll be disappointed.
I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This did not effect review one way or the other. This is the first book I have read by Richard Thomas but I will definitely look for more of his books.
I would highly recommend this book to others. It is what some would call dark but there is light to be seen if you give it a chance. If you are looking for an original, well written mystery, give it a try. I don't think you'll be disappointed.
I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This did not effect review one way or the other. This is the first book I have read by Richard Thomas but I will definitely look for more of his books.
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