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Review title: heavily padded, amateurish, lacking characterizations
Product review: It seems all too clear that Carr's main interest is in recreating life in turn-of-the-century New York City. Page after page, we are told not only what it is like outside and inside a given building, but what the building was used for 20 years, 40 years, 60 years... etc... before! Characters are undeveloped; the "heroes" are unheroic underdogs, and the "mystery" is solved by blundering, and ends in a preposterous movie-type chase and standoff... just like the next novel that followed. I managed to read it and its sequel, but I can't imagine ever re-reading either one.
