Low Light: a novel (Rubin Family / Dave Levitan Mysteries) (Volume 1), by Stanley Cutler
Low Light: A Novel (Rubin Family / Dave Levitan Mysteries) (Volume 1), By Stanley Cutler How a straightforward idea by reading can boost you to be an effective individual? Reviewing Low Light: A Novel (Rubin Family / Dave Levitan Mysteries) (Volume 1), By Stanley Cutler is an extremely basic task. Yet, exactly how can lots of people be so lazy to read? They will choose to invest their leisure time to chatting or hanging out. When as a matter of fact, reading Low Light: A Novel (Rubin Family / Dave Levitan Mysteries) (Volume 1), By Stanley Cutler will offer you much more possibilities to be effective finished with the hard works.
Low Light: a novel (Rubin Family / Dave Levitan Mysteries) (Volume 1), by Stanley Cutler
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The first book of The Rubin Family / Dave Levitan Series, in which Al Rubin establishes his power and influence. In 1929 Atlantic City, gangsters and politicians answer to Enoch 'Nucky' Johnson, the Czar of The Ritz. In Washington, J. Edgar Hoover sets out to end Nucky's reign. Nucky hatches a plan to neutralize Hoover with blackmail photos taken when the young FBI Director comes to an Atlantic City hotel for Decoration Day celebrations. Al Rubin, a studio photographer, is promised a lucrative lease on an entertainment pier to set up the shoot and snap the shots. Hoover discovers the plot and sets off in pursuit of Al, who tries to disappear in the sin city of the Jazz Age. More is at stake than the life of one thoughtful photographer. The American justice system's balance of power rides on the surprising and ingenious outcome of a fast-paced thriller.
Low Light: a novel (Rubin Family / Dave Levitan Mysteries) (Volume 1), by Stanley Cutler- Published on: 2015-05-22
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .67" w x 5.00" l, .64 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 266 pages
Where to Download Low Light: a novel (Rubin Family / Dave Levitan Mysteries) (Volume 1), by Stanley Cutler
Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Looking forward to seeing more great reads from this author By For what it's worth Great read!- a page turner with interesting well-fleshed out characters. I particularly like the author's handling of dialogue. These characters sound like real people. Cutler is obviously a historian at heart. He does a masterful job of setting the historical context for the events that unfold in Atlantic City circa 1929 when political bosses/racketeers ran everything in the city. Detailed, lively descriptions of life on the boardwalk provide a sense of place, with historical figures like J. Edgar Hoover and Enoch "Nucky" Johnson figuring prominently in the plot. If you are looking forward to seeing the HBO miniseries "Boardwalk Empire", reading this book will whet your appetite!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Low Light Sparkles By MRD As a history buff who has spent a good chunk of time in Atlantic City I couldn't pass up a book about the birth of organized crime in New Jersey's most famous resort. I am certainly glad that I did.Low Light is an amazing tale that moves from Philadelphia to Atlantic City as photographer Al Rubin becomes "innocently" involved in getting the goods on a young J. Edgar Hoover. His opportunity appears to be an open door to a very desirable studio location on the famous Steel Pier. But the real benefit of Al's activity is to Atlantic City's politically connected power-broker, Enoch "Nucky" Johnson.I must admit, I bought this new novel because of my interest in New Jersey and Atlantic City history. What I discovered was a well written and meticulously researched work that is a wonderfully delightful mix of very real people, some plucked from history and others created in the author's imagination.Reading Low Light was an experience akin to reading E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime, Kevin Baker's Paradise Alley, or Caleb Carr's The Alienist - putting literature into an historical context seemingly lifted from the pages of old newspapers - delivering the "feel of an era" that most history texts simply don't capture. The tale begun in Low Light (which promises to be the first of a trilogy) by Stan Cutler, captures the 1930s perfectly, and promises much more to come as Al and Ida Rubin and their daughters begin a new, more prosperous life in Atlantic City and to footing gained by Nucky Johnson in forming the future of Atlantic City.Low Light is clearly a winner. I can't wait to see more from Stan Cutler.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Evocative and Engaging By Libby Cone This book has a very engaging plot, dealing with a possible explanation for the legendary FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover's predilection for persecuting anyone he deemed Communist or otherwise subversive, while leaving the great organized crime networks of the US relatively untouched. It is common knowledge now that J. Edgar preferred the company of men; it was a career-destroying piece of information in the Twenties, and the only lever with which he could be controlled.I have lived in Philadelphia for twenty years, and have been to Atlantic City once or twice, and find Cutler's descriptions of old Philly and the honky-tonk sounds and smells of Atlantic City to be quite evocative. He tells a tale of photographer Al Rubin, who has built a life in the United States after arriving as a penniless immigrant. Still mindful of the racism and anti-Semitism rife in everyday polite American society, he has been able to situate himself in the middle class. Of course, a middle class life in those days could be destroyed if you were a naturalized citizen with too much familiarity with labor unions, Socialists, and the like. The author mentions the Palmer raids: roundups and deportations of immigrants, legal and illegal, naturalized and nonnaturalized, that were named after Woodrow Wilson's Attorney General. It was best to keep a low profile. In an interesting digression towards the end of the book, Al reflects on the gangsters who have tapped him for his services, namely Meyer Lansky and Enoch "Nucky" Johnson, and their ways of smoothing the cognitive dissonance inherent in the trade:"Meyer was of the Robin Hood school; laws were enacted by an elite group to manage society for its own, narrow benefit. He, born poor, had an obligation to take from them..." Johnson, the Treasurer of Atlantic County, boss of the Republican political machine, and "Czar of the Ritz," "...saw himself as the benevolent engineer who kept everything running smoothly." Al, in too-infrequent moments of introspection, sees himself being sucked into this demimonde, attracted by the wealth and luxury. He gradually acquires his gangster sea-legs as the plot progresses, to the point of using his boyhood boxing experience without hesitation to get out of a jam. Does he have photos of Hoover in a negligee? Does Meyer? Are the photos destroyed? Hoover is kept guessing, and his weakness for the ponies as well as for tall men is played like a violin.I would have liked to see a bit more depth in Al's infrequent soliloquies on being drawn into the life. These are the only portions where Cutler ditches show-don't-tell (" The room pulled at me -- I wanted to gamble"..."I didn't want to understand her; I had been completely seduced"). A bit more mention of some characters, such as investigators Dixon and Whitehead, would have been nice, so I didn't have to keep going back to the prologue (or whatever one is to call the pages before Part One), in which Al is spying on, and trying to photograph, Hoover and his lover Clement Talbot in flagrante delicto. The prologue would be perfectly fine in chronological order. But Cutler is spot-on in his research (indeed, I had forgotten that Woodrow Wilson, who is briefly mentioned, died in 1924; I thought he had died in 1920, but my plans to make snarky comments about this being an historical vampire novel were happily foiled). Other minor flaws were mentions of Al and his wife taking mass transit on Shabbos to Meyer Lansky's Bar Mitzvah, which had me busily dog-earing pages, only to be followed several chapters later by the mention that they were Reform Jews, and rather lapsed at that. A little more explanation earlier on would remedy that. I was very amused at one point where, when offered a lobster, Al turns it down in favor of a club sandwich (which contains bacon). It is a brilliant evocation of one of the little cognitive-dissonance smoothings many of us no-longer-really-kosher Jews do. Oh, no, not a big lobster! A little bacon buried in a sandwich? OK. But in Al's case, we have already seen him rationalize blackmail.Now for the editing. As Al's wife Ida and I both tend to say when perturbed, vay is mir! I will be the first to point out the difficulties of self-publishing: it is extraordinarily difficult to keep some of the conventions in mind, such as not indenting a line of dialogue that starts a paragraph (I am guilty of this and am beating my chest right now). But, oy, the backwards quotation marks! On almost every page yet! Sometimes he uses single quotes, it seems, just for the hell of it. Plus "alright" used so many times, a middle school English teacher would plotz! The restaurant at Nucky's Ritz is called "The Bath and Turf Club." Bath and Turf? Is that a steak on a plate with a loofah? And why do the waitstaff keep changing genders?The other things that bothered me were the portentous subtitles on the front and back covers. "Birth of Organized Crime in Jazz Age Atlantic City" and "Blackmail FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover," besides being non-grammatical, make the book sound like nonfiction. I only figured out it was a novel when I began reading the contents. A little subtlety instead of subtitles would be nice.That said, it was an enjoyable read. I hope Mr. Cutler's style and editing really shine in the second and third volumes of what is to be a trilogy.-reviewed for The New Podler Review of Books
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