Billy Verite

By Rick Harsch

Book Overview

Skunk Lane Forhension - a man of pure evil who bears a striking resemblance to Lee Harvey Oswald arrives in La Crosse to take charge of an outlaw motorcycle gang. Ugly Billy Verite, reformed snitch... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1883642574
• ISBN13: 9781883642570
• Release Date: November 1999
• Publisher: Steerforth Pr
• Length: 263 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 1.0" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Cool Book!

I wasn't sure what I'd think of this book. I didn't read the first one beforehand or anything, but--wow! It's funny, exciting, smart, and sad. So I'd recommend it. Some of it is kind of hard but it's well worth it. Most of it isn't hard to read, though. They ought to make a movie out of it. It's definitely one of the best books I've read in the past couple of years, and I read all the time. Now I've bought the first book, the Driftless Zone, and have read 50 pages or so and am loving it, too. I'll let you know what I think when I finish it.

Back to the Zone, But Even Better!

As much as I liked The Driftless Zone, I think Rick Harsch has topped himself with this one. He has a knack for creating unique, well-drawn characters, and has become a sharper storyteller. He also shows a strange affection and deep feeling for La Crosse's (Wisconsin) natural and unnatural wonders. After reading Harsch's first two books, I feel like I've been there for a six-month visit, even though I've never been within 500 miles of the place. Harsch promises Billy Verite is the second of a "La Crosse Trilogy" and I can't wait to return.

Harsch takes the reader on another wild ride.

Don't be put off by the fact that Billy Verite is the second book in a trilogy: if you haven't read Harsch's quirky and brilliant first book, The Driftless Zone, there'll be plenty of chances to come. In the meantime, Billy Verite is provocative entertainment--funny, suspenseful, and sharply intelligent--and you shouldn't hesitate to pick it up. Then, if you haven't already, pick up The Driftless Zone. Despite its many connections to Billy Verite, Harsch's first novel is a different creature--more philosophical and poetic, while still containing enough hilarity, sex, action, and wild originality to split the seams.

Check out Billy Verite: Elmore Leonard meets Mark Twain

Mordant adventures along the Mississippi River with motorcycle gangsters, bar flies, unemployed detectives, victims of meaningless violence and violent meaninglessness, Rick Harsch unfolds the second volume of his grimly hilarious 'La Crosse Trilogy'. This time the 'hideously ugly' Billy Verite seizes the day when a friend, soon to be murdered himself, places in Billy's care the trenchant and maltreated Lola, endangered witness to crimes and corruption in the town, which is on the verge of war between rival gangs. Two corrupt undercover cops, Stratton and Torgeson, who first made their appearance in Harsch's excellent first novel, THE DRIFTLESS ZONE, reappear, as before, up to no good. It's in this milieu of vicious low life in a waterfront town that the decidedly unheroic Billy Verite takes action to reveal a comic, disturbing, non-standard heroism of sorts. As in Harsch's previous novel, Billy's tale is told with unexpected turns of language, plot and point of v! iew, fascinating juxtapositions of hard-edged realism and flights of fancy as in the early films of Federico Fellini, a harsh view of small town life in the middle of America enlivened and illuminated by close attention to local detail, fantastic insights into the existential pathology of the trapped citizenry of middle America at the end of the second millennium and a will to dark comedy. BILLY VERITE entertains with the best of Graham Greene's "entertainments," and we look forward to more.