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Library | Item Barcode | Call Number | Material Type | Item Category 1 | Status |
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Searching... | 30000010357337 | PS3511.A784 C66 1989 | Open Access Book | 1:CREATIVE_G | Searching... |
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Summary
Author Notes
Howard Fast was born on November 11, 1914 in Manhattan. At the age of 17, he sold his first story to Amazing Stories magazine. The next year he sold his first novel, Two Villages, to the Dial Press for a $100 advance. During his lifetime, he wrote more than 80 books, including Conceived in Liberty, The Unvanquished, Citizen Tom Paine, Freedom Road, April Morning, The Immigrants, Second Generation, The Establishment, The Legacy, and Greenwich. He won the Stalin International Peace Prize in 1953.
A member of the Communist party, he served three months in a federal prison in 1950 for refusing to testify about his political activity. Blacklisted as a result, he founded his own publishing house, Blue Heron Press, which released his novel Spartacus in 1951. In 1957, he wrote a book about his political experiences entitled The Naked God. He also wrote a series of detective stories under the name E. V. Cunningham. He died on March 12, 2003 at the age of 88.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews 2
Publisher's Weekly Review
The prolific novelist ( The Pledge ) weighs in with his 46th book, a crime thriller-cum-political allegory. Mel Freedman, Jewish police lieutenant in a largely Catholic/black New York City precinct house, and his Puerto Rican sidekick, Ramos, stumble onto what looks like a Washington-run cocaine-smuggling operation in Central America. Their tip-off is Joe Cullen--Vietnam vet, pilot-for-hire and guilt-ridden Catholic--who saw a priest thrown out of a helicopter in Honduras. After more murders, Cullen flees the N.Y.C. police, who want him as a suspect; he's also evading the drug cabal which may include an army colonel who resembles Oliver North and a multimillionaire WASP society figure. This tough-guy tale has a soft heart: Freedman dates his ex-wife; a pretty assistant D.A. falls head-over-heels for fugitive Cullen. Although the characters at times resemble props in a morality play and the plot is schematic, Fast's grimly chilling fa ble delivers a resounding message about the decline of America's values, its corrupt leaders and the duplicity of a U.S. government that, clandestinely or openly, supports death squads and dictators in Latin America. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
Joe Cullen makes more than one confession: to the police, to a priest, and to a hooker. The confession concerns the death of a priest in Honduras, and the details weave a startling web of intrigue involving the CIA and the Feds trading guns to the Contras for cocaine. When the hooker and the priest confessed to are killed, Lieutenant Freedman of the New York City Police involves himself in tracking down the brains behind the whole scheme. While this fast-moving story succeeds on the level of a thriller, there is also substantive probing into guilt and mysticism in Catholicism. An unexpected and welcome book from the author of April Morning ( LJ 4/1/61) and many other well-known works. Highly recommended.-- Robert H. Donahugh, Youngstown and Mahoning Cty . P.L., Ohio (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
