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Book Reviewed by:Life hasn’t been easy for Eugene “Huge” Smalls. But it’s not all bad. Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett have taught Huge everything he needs to know about being a hard-boiled detective, and he’s just been hired to solve his first case. What he doesn’t realize is that his search for the truth will change everything for him.
Life hasn’t been easy for Eugene “Huge” Smalls.
Sure, his IQ is off the charts, but that doesn’t help much when you’re growing up in the 1980s in a dreary New Jersey town where your bad reputation precedes you, the public school system’s written you off as a lost cause, and even your own family seems out to get you.
But it’s not all bad. Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett have taught Huge everything he needs to know about being a hard-boiled detective... and he’s just been hired to solve his first case.
What he doesn’t realize is that his search for the truth will change everything for him.
Fuerst’s small-time detective and his whodunit mystery delivered me straight to readers' heaven... Huge's narrative voice swings seamlessly from snappy wiseguy cant to philosophical musings, pre-teen naïveté and savvy smarts without losing the essence of the boy's character... An unlikely combo of pulp PI-wit plus 19th Century transcendentalism contributes to Eugene's uber-unique charm...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Donna Chavez).
BookBrowse chats with James Fuerst
BB: Is Eugene based upon anyone in particular?
JF: I hope no one is terribly disappointed by this, but Eugene "Huge" Smalls isn't based on anyone in particular nor is he a composite of characteristics drawn from real people (at least no real people I know or have known). He is, however, pretty explicitly cut from the cloth of fictional hard-boiled detectives such as Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe and Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade, among others, and he's also a kid, a somewhat precocious, almost-thirteen-year-old kid who has problems, a foul mouth, has experienced his share of difficulties and is trying to figure out not only who vandalized the sign at his grandmother's retirement home, but also ...
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If you liked Huge, try these:
As Easy as Falling Off the Face of the Earth
by Lynne Rae Perkins
Published 2012
Train. Car. Plane. Boat. Feet.
He'll get there.
Won't he?
The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin
by Josh Berk
Published 2011
Those who prefer their heroes to be not-so-usual and with a side of wiseguy will gobble up this witty, geeks-rule debut.
Keith Donohue, author of The Stolen Child
An evocative black comedy…Huge effortlessly lures you into his hardboiled imagination and completely dysfunctional life.
