First Avenue

by Lowen Clausen

Book Overview

Written with compelling authenticity by a former Seattle police officer, this debut novel is the passionate and powerful story of a Seattle cop who can't shake the image of the abandoned, dead baby he... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0451409485
• ISBN13: 9780451409485
• Release Date: December 2000
• Publisher: Berkley Books
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 4.2" x 6.7"

Customer Reviews

First Avenue: A Review

Lowen Clausen's "First Avenue" is finally finished. It has been a difficult book to put down, for I could have stayed up all weekend reading it.It was a very enjoyable first novel.Though I had lived in Seattle (Rainer Valley) for some years twenty years ago, I now live and work in Olympia. However, I occasionally drive to downtown Seattle, to visit SAM (Seattle Art Museum), or check out the many used book shops along First Avenue from Jackson to the Market, and recognize some of the semi-disguised businesses in the story; the characters are quite believable, and the "local color" agrees with my observations.The shop locations, such as Silve's diner on the lower level of Pike Place Market, and the "Re(a)d and Green" leftist bookstore (across the cobbled street from the Market newsstand) feel familiar, as does "The Lusty Lady" peep show, with its naughty billboards (and ATM inside), across the street from SAM.While I always thought the doughnut shop was on Second Avenue, I only knew about it from its unsavory reputation as a hangout for hookers of all ages and both genders.The level of detail in your first novel reminds me of another author who has researched her specialty quite well: Laura Joh Rowland's "history mystery" series, set in 17th-century Japan, with its protagonist sosakan-sama Sano Ichiro, is an interesting look at the shogunate, and the seamier side of Japanese imperial court life, from a detective's point of view.Your second novel (Second Watch) is recently published, and the protagonist is Katherine Murphy, not Sam. Interesting, and unexpected (a sexist expectation on my part?). I had looked forward to Henry, with Sam's tennis shoes as a redemptive gift, becoming his "sidekick."I look forward to reading Second Watch.

What a great book! A thinking-man's cop story!

I just finished reading First Avenue ten minutes ago and just had to say something about it. I'm not a literary guru, but there's some real down-to-earth feeling in this book that I've seldom experienced. Lowen Clausen has managed to mix the gritty and many-times depressing feeling of First Avenue with a caring and sensitive storyline. This is not the typical cop story. In fact, the cop story almost fades in comparison to the real underlying story of the characters. It's a thinking man's cop story! I'm hoping for many more Lowen Clausen stories... this book really touched me!

Cop With A Soul

This is a well-crafted story of policework in Seattle, solving a mystery along the way and introducing a cast of likable characters based on real life.Growing up in Seattle the locales are spot-on, and the times well-portrayed (the image of the cop as a student-by-day, policeman-by-night, and unable to tell either group of friends about the other, is a perfect metaphor).The main character of Sam, the beat cop who writes poetry in his slack times, is a wonderful antidote to the hardboiled cop stereotype and, to some large degree, appears to be autobiographical. Lowen Clausen, from the reading I attended last week, appears to be that "cop with a soul."Recommended without reservation.

From one COP to another...

I just finished First Avenue...and as a Seattle Police officer I felt the author truly reflected another side of police work the public rarely glimpses. Lowen Clausen developed a story around a part of Seattle's culture and "otherside" that only an officer often views. I greatly appreciated the humanity and emotions of his character Sam. Author, former police officer Clausen took the warriors mask off and gave the reader ar ride-along in the reality of an officer's world.

I like this book.

I am Lowen's Little Brother in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, and I want to tell you what I like about this story. I like First Avenue because of the way Lowen Clausen made the characters seem to tell everything that went on in their lives. Sam, one of the important characters, seems to live a life that has no problems. He is also a man who wants to avoid looking at his past or future. But that all changes when he finds a dead baby in a hotel room. The image of the baby won't leave his mind, and the only way for the image to leave is if he finds out what happened.This story is more than a shoot-em-up cop story. This story is sure to give you a taste of life in Seattle and what it is like to be a cop for a major city. Lowen wanted to write, and that's what he will be doing.