Small Brutal Incidents

By Michael Dittman and Contemporary Press Staff

Home from a brutal stint fighting the Japanese in the Pacific, Burns finds himself unemployed. What's worse, he's been blackballed as a whistleblower from the only mill in town that's still hiring.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0976657929
• ISBN13: 9780976657927
• Release Date: May 2006
• Publisher: Contemporary Pr
• Length: 119 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.5" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Tight little period noir

Graeme Burns is back home in Pittsburgh after serving in the Pacific theater of WWII. He is trying to reconnect with his wife and daughter, and to find a way to make a living in a town where he's been blackballed. Graeme is a troubled character, in some deep way ruined by his experiences. He dreams, when he's able to sleep at all, of approaching the battlefront beaches again-- with no hands. He has become unable to live in the land that he supposedly saved-- the aroma of the flowers in Phipps Conservatory chokes him; he's more comfortable with the smoky acrid air of industrial Pittsburgh. For standing up for worker's rights, he's been blackballed. And now, the people who want to give him a job are the same people who blackballed him. Murder, dark secrets and layers of mystery all wrap around this brutal and brutalized main character. On top of that, Dittman layers on a vivid picture of post-war Pittsburgh, a city that, in his hands, seems tailor-made for this type of rough-edged tale of murder, loss and--maybe-- redemption. Tightly plotted and written, this story has been packed into surprisingly few pages. A good, satisfying read.