Way Past Legal - Hardcover

Green, Norman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060564547 ISBN 13: 9780060564544

Publisher: Harper, 2004

Synopsis

You never know, when it happens, what's going to change your life, what's going to bounce you out of the rut you've been in, send you flying off in some new direction.

Manny's latest score left him with more money than he's ever dreamed of, but with money comes danger -- from his partner, Rosey, who might get greedy, and from the Russian mobsters they stole it from. Worse, if he's busted again, he'll go back to prison for life, leaving his motherless five-year-old son, Nicky, still trapped in the foster care system.

With the kind of guts born of panic and desperation, Manny grabs his son and heads for the wilds of Maine. When he discovers that the bad guys are on his trail, his impulse is, as usual, to run. But the people he's met in Maine -- including the local police chief -- have become his unlikely friends and an unlikely surrogate family to his boy. Now they're all in danger, and it's because of him. Does Manny have what it takes to change his street-tough ways and become a real father to Nicky? And does he dare to settle into a new life, putting at stake the safety of everyone he has come to love?

Norman Green presents a gripping portrait of a man trying to break out of the stranglehold of a life of crime and create a future for himself and his son.

About this title

About the Author:

Norman Green reports this about himself: "I have always been careful, as Mark Twain advised, not to let schooling interfere with my education. Too careful, maybe. I have been, at various times, a truck driver, a construction worker, a project engineer, a factory rep, and a plant engineer, but never, until now, a writer." He lives in Emerson, New Jersey, with his wife, and is hard at work on his second novel.

From Publishers Weekly:

Green's third novel (after Shooting Dr. Jack and The Angel of Montague Street) starts like a gritty crime yarn, told in slangy, crackling first-person prose by its tough but likable hero, an ex-con named Manny Williams. But early on, the story takes an unusual detour into something more like a coming-of-age tale. Turning the tables on his partner, Rosey, who, in a deft bait and switch, has managed to keep all the loot from a successful heist, Manny burgles his crony's cache in New York. Then he sneaks his adorable five-year-old son, Nicky, out of foster care and hits the open road. When their car breaks down, the two stop in Maine, at the home of generous strangers Louis and Eleanor, who become surrogate grandparents in short order. Trouble inevitably follows, but not before Manny has come to know and like an assortment of good-hearted locals. Ironically, one is the town sheriff, Bookman, who asks Manny to help him with a problem: his deputy, Hopkins, has a habit of beating his girlfriend, Brenda, and Bookman wants to cure him of it. Manny, of course, has reasons of his own for not getting involved, but he knows the right thing to do even if hasn't always done it in his life. As he grows attached to the people around him, he gradually learns that he can't run from trouble: "I needed to stop taking the easy way out, stop sneaking out the back window, stop running away. I always thought I was so fucking smart." That lesson is brought home to him with brutal force when his past comes back to haunt him. By breaking with formula conventions, Green creates genuine suspense and richly rewards the reader.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0060564547
• ISBN 13: 9780060564544
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272