St. Louis, Missouri, is slowly falling off the map. Once
hailed as the fourth largest it has fallen to twenty seventh. Crime is up, and
businesses are fleeing for the county, or elsewhere. But the new police chief,
named S. Jammu intends to fix all of that. But as crime figures drop a series
of political terrorist attacks rock the city. Though she vows to find and stop
these terrorist, people cannot help but notice the attacks seem to be helping
Jammu more than hurting the city.
I read this book after hearing two coworkers talking about Franzen’s
work. This piqued my interest and so I started at the beginning. At first I
really liked this book. It used neighborhoods I am familiar with, and I could
really picture the buildings and intersections as he mentioned them. But as the
book went on, I became more and more frustrated with Franzen’s change of scenes.
There was the classic blank line to let you know that he had hopped characters,
but no introductory line to let you know to whom you were now reading about.
Eventually this could be extrapolated from the text, but at times this took
many paragraphs. I even caught myself skimming ahead to find out whose
storyline I was in. If it wasn’t for this vagueness, I think the book would
have been great, but as it is I can only call it good.
The Twenty Seventh City certainly merits reading, especially if you are from St.
Louis or lived here long enough to know the area. It is sad to say, but I could
easily see this book being played out today.
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