Green, Norman 1954-

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GREEN, Norman 1954-

PERSONAL:

Born 1954, in MA; married.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Emerson, NJ. Agent—c/o Author Mail, 7th Floor, HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East Fifty-third Street, New York, NY 10022.

CAREER:

Author.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Shooting Dr. Jack, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2001.

The Angel of Montague Street, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2003.

Way past Legal, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS:

Though Norman Green didn't become a writer until he was forty-three, he has produced several noir thrillers in quick, prolific succession. Green's books are best known for their likeable yet credible heroes. In a New York Times Book Review assessment of Green's first novel, Shooting Dr. Jack, Dana Kennedy found "such indelible portraits … that the reader is drawn into their world and starts to care about them more than the plot."

In Shooting Dr. Jack, quirky characters Fat Tommy Rosselli and his partner, Stony, run a Brooklyn junkyard that doubles as a chop-shop; they find dead bodies in the junkyard and befriend prostitutes. According to a contributor in Kirkus Reviews, Green neglects the story's plot in order to paint "a group portrait of despair so deep that getting killed just doesn't seem like that much of a risk." Green's second noir thriller, The Angel of Montague Street, follows a similar pattern. Silvano Iurata, the book's protagonist, is a Buddhist Vietnam veteran who returns to Brooklyn to find his missing brother. A Publishers Weekly reviewer stated that Silvano "may seem like the usual noir hero at war with himself, but Green taps into something larger with his subtle pronouncements about family curses, bad choices, lost souls, mindless violence and redemption."

In Way past Legal, Manny joins a group of criminals to pull off a million-dollar heist. When one of his partners starts to kill the other burglars, Manny takes the money, as well as his five-year-old son, and runs for it. When Manny's car breaks down in a small town in Maine, strangers take him, and his son, in. While Manny is in Maine, remarked a contributor in Kirkus Reviews, "What catches Manny off guard, transforming him forever, is how willing he is in the end to exchange kindness for kindness." A Publishers Weekly reviewer reported, however, that "the story takes an unusual detour," and while Green's change in "format is refreshing, [it] might not satisfy his usual audience."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 1, 2004, Connie Fletcher, review of Way past Legal, p. 1503.

Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 2001, review of Shooting Dr. Jack, p. 965; April 1, 2003, review of The Angel of Montague Street, p. 495; April 1, 2004, review of Way past Legal, p. 301.

New York Times Book Review, October 21, 2001, Dana Kennedy, "Books in Brief," p. 28; May 18, 2003, Marilyn Stasio, "Crime," p. 33.

Publishers Weekly, August 6, 2001, review of Shooting Dr. Jack, p. 59; May 19, 2003, review of The Angel of Montague Street, p. 54; April 12, 2004, review of Way past Legal, p. 36.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 21, 2003, Jeremy C. Shea, "Tension Builds in Angel of Montague Street," section E, p. 3.