fiction/crime mystery-suspense (philadelphia 1965-2015. diversitynotes: the 2015 main character is characterized as a fat woman going to forensics school)

abandoned at p. 102: the story was fine, but not really what I feel like reading and maybe not that compelling, considering the genre.

For those that like the books of George Pelecanos and Richard Price, you will probably like this novel as well.

This novel deals with three generations of the same families where their stories are tied together through a singular revolver handgun.

Duane Swierczynski flip flops back and forth between the three generations to effectively tell the story, that is brought full circle by the end of the book.

From the opening of the book, at first I thought this would be a somewhat, typical police procedural novel, but by the end of the book, it wasn't quite that, which turned out to be a pleasant surprise.

The reason why I mentioned fans of George Pelecanos is because Swierczynski blends in the social ills associated with racism to tell the story, as Pelecanos often does, and how some people grow, while others remain the same or devolve even more so.

To tell more would offer spoilers. Highly recommended. ( )

Revolver is a story about a family stretching over three separate time periods. It's 1965 and Officer Stan Walczak together with his partner George Wildey is patrolling an area of Philadelphia known locally as the Jungle. This is not a good chapter in American History and events attributable to racism are an everyday occurrence. The police officers have arranged to meet local snitch ,Terrill Lee Stanton, at a nearby taproom where in unexpected incident has devastating and far reaching consequences.

It's 1995 and homicide detective Jim Walczak is made aware that Terrill Lee Stanton is about to be released. Jim suspects that Stanton was to blame for the death of his father but he was never actually incarcerated for this offence. Jim is determined to find the truth whatever the cost.

2015 and Jim Walczak's daughter, as part of her dissertation, is reinvestigating the death of her grandfather Stan. What she discovers will question everything that went before and lead to surprising and shocking revelations.

The author of this story has embarked on a difficult balancing act. In attempting to rediscover the truth, he needs to hold the reader's attention as the storyline flits between the harsh and difficult reality of policing a racially divided 60's Philadelphia and the modern world as seen through the eyes of granddaughter Audrey. Duane Swierczynski performs this task with ultimate ease creating a thoughtful story that challenges the reader as he expertly brings all the separate threads together in a surprising yet very fitting conclusion. ( )

In 1965, I was being raised in the city of Chicago, a neighborhood much like the one depicted in this novel. A neighborhood of Polish, Irish and Italian decent, a neighborhood where cops in one generation were followed by those of the next. So much of the feeling, the atmosphere, the tone were so familiar to me that I couldn't help but be drawn into this story, a story of three generations of cops.

In this story and starting in 1965 a policeman named Stan and his partner Wiley, one white of Polish ancestor, one black whose father had also been a policeman are gunned down in a bar, the shooters never discovered nor punished. Though in 1985 when his son Jim, now also a policeman believes the shooter was known and is being released from prison. These events will reverberate through the family with disastrous results. A novel of family, race relations and secrets, within the family and without. A novel of sorrow and pain but at the end also hope as a new generation will attempt to resolve the unanswered questions of the old.

I really enjoyed this novel, it is well written, just gritty enough without being graphic and really showed what is was like to live in a city divided by race and ethnicity. Also the toll police work takes on family members and how many times the past comes back to haunt the future. Good stuff. ( )

I think it's impossible for Swierczynski to write a bad book. The only drawback for me (and I MEAN FOR ME) was the triple story telling, with each story alternating a chapter. My old brain couldn't handle it, so I read the stories as 3 different novellas with a tie up of the three stories in the last three chapters. Worked for me, but most people will probably won't have a problem with reading the story the way it was written. ( )