Home About Us Media Kit Subscriptions Links Forum
 
APPEARED IN:

Nov/Dec 2011View Select Articles

Download PDF

FAMOUS INTERVIEWS

Directories:

SCHOLARSHIPS & GRANTS

HELP WANTED

Tutors

Workshops

Events

Sections:

Books

Camps & Sports

Careers

Children’s Corner

Collected Features

Colleges

Cover Stories

Distance Learning

Editorials

Famous Interviews

Homeschooling

Medical Update

Metro Beat

Movies & Theater

Museums

Music, Art & Dance

Special Education

Spotlight On Schools

Teachers of the Month

Technology

Archives:

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

1995-2000


MAY/JUNE 2012

BOOK REVIEW
‘The Gypsy Twist: A Max Royster Mystery’

The Gypsy Twist: A Max Royster Mystery
By Frank Hickey
Published by Pigtown Books: 2012. 189 pp.

By Merri Rosenberg

Go ahead. Have fun. Summer vacation definitely beckons — and this is an ideal book to tuck into your beach bag for your well-deserved break from the classroom.

I’m not normally a fan of mysteries, but Frank Hickey’s assured, confident voice could make me a convert (or at least to his work).  He knows his way both around the genre, and the world of detectives, suspects, low-lifes and hard-boiled reporters. The result is a compelling page-turner about a serial killer who preys upon rich students, in perhaps the ultimate scary teacher revenge.

Hickey’s detective, Max Royster, is an incisive and cynical observer of what he and his colleagues term the “Playpen” of the Upper East Side (will be hard for me to walk around Madison or Park Avenue again without seeing those exalted locales through Max’s perspective).  As he writes, “I call it the Playpen because it is so well protected. Safe enough for children to play in. You could live and die in the neighborhood without ever having to see the real, the dirty side of life. If you stagger home dead drunk, a doorman will catch you before you fall flat on the sidewalk. Politicians, bartenders, businessmen and cops all cooperate to keep the Playpen safe for its wealthy inhabitants. There is no other neighborhood like it in the city. Maybe the world.”

Hickey captures perfectly the world of privilege that informs elite, pricey private schools, as well as the benign disdain that its inhabitants display, often unknowingly, towards those who work for them.

Add in some detours to New Orleans and San Francisco in pursuit of a truly creepy serial killer (much better to read this on a sunny beach instead of a cobweb-infested summer cabin in the woods), with the requisite red herrings, false leads and pitch-perfect descriptions of those who live on the margins, and you have an ideal summer read.

What makes this even better is that Hickey knows the tropes well enough to play with them, from the film-noir descriptions of women, stereotypes of traditional Irish cops, and the wealthy, with just enough edge to make them contemporary and interesting. In describing a briefing to reporters, Hickey writes, “They nodded like spanked schoolchildren. Like Max, they did not earn enough to live comfortably in the Playpen. They were allowed to work here only so long as they did not upset the working relationship between their publishers and the neighborhood powers.”

Exactly. You’re in excellent hands with this assured writer. Enjoy. #

COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE

Name:

Email:
Show email
City:
State:

 


 

 

 

Education Update, Inc.
All material is copyrighted and may not be printed without express consent of the publisher. © 2012.