Citizen Vince
by Jess Walter
Summary
Winner of the 2005 Edgar Award for best Novel, Citizen Vince is a genre-defying, darkly comic and utterly engrossing crime novel. It is also a moving and inspirational book about the right to vote in America. Vince is a small-time mobster now in the witness protection program selling donuts; Beth is a single-Mom hooker working toward her real estate licence - is America the land of second chances, can they escape the choices of their pasts?
During one unforgettable week, Vince negotiates a coast-to-coast maze of obsessive cops, eager politicians, and assorted mobsters - only to find that redemption might exist in, of all places, the voting booth. Two stream-of-consciousness riffs at the center of the novel even take readers into the minds of Presidents Carter and Reagan. The excruciatingly breathless climax pits the claims of civic responsibility against those of self-preservation as Vince insists on exercising his voting rights in the face of almost certain oblivion. In its direct and very funny way, Citizen Vince is an affecting testament to American faith in the common man.
Jess Walter, winner of the 2005 Edgar Award for best novel and The Pacific Northwest Bookselllers Award, and finalist for the 2006 National Book Award, the L.A. Times Book Prize and the PEN USA Literary Prize, is the author of several acclaimed novels and non-fiction works including The Zero, Land of the Blind, Over Tumbled Graves and Ruby Ridge. His books have been New York Times, Washington Post and NPR best books of the year and have been published in twenty countries. Jess and his family live in Spokane, Washington.
Praise
"Wonderfully written ... hard to forget." — LA Times
"Utterly inventive ... excruciatingly breathless ... you just have to read it." — Washington Post
"It's been a long time since I've read a book as compulsively, indeed greedily, as I read Citizen Vince." — Richard Russo
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