Thursday, August 09, 2007

"Going, Going, Gone" by Peter Blauner

From: Hard Boiled Brooklyn, ed. Reed Farrel Coleman. Bleak House Books, 2006.

After glancing at an attractive woman on a subway platform, divorced father Sussman looks back to see his six-year-old son speeding away on a Coney Island-bound F train.

Woefully out of sorts and out of shape, Sussman darts about in search of a phone to call 911. As fear consumes him, Sussman tangles with a younger, stronger man who refuses to yield a pay phone to him.

This is a nightmare scenario worsened by a character who has almost no chance of handling it. Nicely noir.

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