The Big Exit

By David Carnoy

By the acclaimed author of the remarkable debut novel, Knife Music, The Big Exit is a suspenseful crime novel that keeps the surprises coming right up to the end.

Richie Forman is freshly out of prison. By night, he makes a living impersonating Frank Sinatra in San Francisco’s lounges and corporate parties. But then his ex-best friend—the man who stole his fiancée while he was in prison—is found hacked to death in his garage, and Richie is the prime suspect. In a murder mystery with the twists and turns of a microchip, Carnoy weaves his characters like a master. He has written an authentic, unputdownable thriller that is sure to chill and delight.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Release date: Oct 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468303773

Reviews for The Big Exit

[sdramsey-298717 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is not a short book, but I was so engrossed in the audio version that I just couldn't stop listening until I got to the end--stayed up late and bent my schedule around being able to listen. :) It's a fairly gritty murder mystery but has so many twists and turns that you just have to keep going. The characters were intriguing and the plot so nicely complicated that as a reader, I kept second-guessing what I thought was really going on. Definitely recommended for crime novel lovers!

[stephanie_m-868484 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Unfortunately, the only characters I liked in this novel were not the ones you'd expect. And it dragged..... The narrator, R. C. Bray, was just.....ok.

Mysteries are made in part by what the author doesn't tell us. In The Big Exit, David Carnoy lays out the mystery right at the start like an invitation into the spider's web. And unwittingly, I enter. So, a husband, murdered at home, and discovered by his wife. Prosaic enough, but, of course, nothing is supposedly what it seems. As the narrative progresses, the author parcels out twists and revelations that keep me reading, taking precious fiction time from other books on the queue. This annoyed me, but I stuck with it, hoping for more.

The author uses a style of presentation that is based almost entirely on dialogue and one of Carnoy's strengths as a novelist is the construction of his characters' conversations. Some of the characters do seem a little too voluble, like when the detective telling his main suspect details of the investigation, and when the doctor who speaks of a patient's hospitalization in full HIPAA disregard. Nonetheless, with this technique, the narrative does zip along. With way too many characters, and some of them seeming very alike, it was confusing for me. The narrator made quite a nice effort to keep everyone straight, but it didn't help me much. I spent quite a lot of the novel saying....."Who..?" That's not cool. And having taken me, the reader, far along the story and committed to reading on to the very end, I thought the author owed me a big reveal. But I saw it coming way ahead of the story, and this may have spoiled the book for me.

There is promise in this sophomore effort. I would have given this 4 stars if the second half was as interesting or compelling, and tight as the first half. Maybe I'll take a look at Carnoy's first novel for comparison. MAYBE. For now, I give this 3 stars.

[akmamma · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mysteries are one of the trickiest stories to tell, especially these days. Throw in technology, procedure and the fact we are basically spoon fed crime drama’s throughout popular media it makes it even harder to present a truly outstanding and gripping tale. David Carnoy has done it with this book. It was three-hundred plus pages of non stop, breath-holding action. The characters were easily embraced and so well fleshed out you felt like you were a fly on the wall in every scene.

It could easily be coined a dot.com murder mystery, except the murder mystery is just one thing going on in the book. It is the anchor for everything else going on, the aging detective, the depressed and confused trophy wife (who also happens to be the lead suspect in the cases ex-fiance). Oh and the lawyer who is introduced to us while trying to inject herself with hormones for invitro. There are many other characters who you fall in love with or at least love to despise, including the dead guy!

The story flows back and forth in time and place with such ease and no jarring effect I was never confused at what was going on! Well wait, that is not entirely true, I saw a few things coming but most of the time Carnoy had me hopping trying to figure out all the pieces in this huge puzzle which stretched from the Valley to the Bay.

One of my big pet peeves with story telling these days is name dropping tech devices or items which will end up dating the book later down the road. I few mystery writers have done that and it kills the read a decade from now. I do not think this will be the case with The Big Exit. Only in a San Fransisco based criminal mystery do we have cops where the station has gone green and they use iPads instead of paper and the statement will last as long as the book does. There were many items and procedures being used where are ground breaking in today’s crime solving and with the book centered around the founders of some huge dot.com and internet start up companies, it makes perfect sense to include them.

As I mentioned this is not just a story about a murder, this is a story about today’s world, how small it really is with the internet and social media. How anyone and everyone can make an impact with a few strokes of the keys and some clever marketing. But it has a price, just as everything does, the real question is can any of us, including all in the book, truly survive it? One didn’t and he was tagged in blood as a hack. His ex-partner from a decade before who claims he was innocent of a prior crime but still ending up serving almost a decade is now facing charges of murder to the only one who knew the truth about that night.

Extenuating Circumstances define so many folks lives in this book. Past crimes, marriages still on going instead of dissolving, a leave of absence and relationship, an extra glass of wine or two or three and staying on the job… Everyone has reasons and circumstances! It was such a great read and I definitely will be picking up David’s other novel, Knife Music. I highly recommend this book to anyone who thinks they are hard pressed to be stumped with a mystery and who is not afraid to dive a bit deeper in the characters lives, as well as their own.

4 out of 5 floppy discs!

[bjmitch_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really loved this book. This is Carnoy's second thriller but the first I've read and I'm hooked. He is an executive editor at CNET and regularly interviewed on television as a tech expert. With that background you might think his novels would appeal only to techies but you would be wrong. This is a complex plot, masterfully told, that pulled me in and held me firmly until the end. I'm sort of the opposite of a techie but I understood and followed everything.The characters either just get to you, like hero Richie Forman, or you are fascinated because you can't figure out which side they're on, like for instance his ex-fiance and sudden widow Beth McGregor. Forman is an ex-con and the reason he served time is the necessary background to the whole story. It involves a traffic accident in which a woman was killed. At the time Forman was engaged to Beth but when he went to prison on the basis of Mark McGregor's testimony that Forman was driving, Beth married McGregor. You can see there are all kinds of emotions involved here, and a mystery. Just who was actually driving?Now Forman is out and understandably having a tough time finding a job. He is a great Frank Sinatra impersonator so he's eking out a living in a night club. Then he scores a job at an organization that works pro bono for people who have been wrongly convicted of crimes. He's on a trial basis when McGregor is found beaten to death and Forman is arrested for murder.That's all I can tell you without giving away too much but I wanted to get you into the story enough that you would want to find out what happens because I don't want you to miss this book. Sorry for the gushing. I'm just impressed with this author and his writing style and his characters.Highly recommended readingSource: The Overlook Press through Partners in Crime Tours

[doingdewey · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Convicted of vehicular manslaughter, Richie is released from prison still claiming his friend actually swapped places and put him behind the wheel. While Richie served his sentence, his friend has gone on to business success and marriage to Richie’s ex-fiance. When that same friend turns up dead, Richie is the obvious suspect. However, while evidence against both Richie and his ex-fiance mounts, not everything is as it seems. Plot twists and intriguing leads kept me reading this one late into the night.The atmosphere was by far my favorite part of the book. Despite the modern, Silicon Valley setting, this book felt like a 1940′s noir. Although their are multiple view points, all of the characters voices reminded me of the hard-boiled, dedicated detective featured in mysteries from The Maltese Falcon to the computer game LA Noire. To an extent, I missed having characters with more unique voices, but I also liked and admired them all for their shared stubborn insistence on finding the truth. As a result, I really enjoyed the narration, despite it’s uniformity.The dialogue and the writing did a lot more to flesh out the characters and I very much enjoyed both. The dialogue was funny, but not unbelievably witty or over the top. And the writing was very good, with descriptions of appearances and background stories both worked seamlessly and naturally into the plot. The technical jargon got a little heavy on one or two occasions, deserving of more explanation that was given, but this was rare enough that it didn’t affect my enjoyment of the book. I did appreciate the fact that the author seemed to understand how crime labs work. He certainly gave a much more realistic representation than most stories, especially popular TV shows! I was also constantly intrigued by the plot, especially all the tantalizing clues leading me to re-work my theory about what happened. While this wasn’t the sort of mystery I typically go for, more based on clues and action sequences than an understanding of human nature, I definitely enjoyed the ride.

[gatorhater · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of the best novels that I've read to date, complex, sophisticated with the storyline tied together amazingly well done. I can't wait to get my hands on his first novel, Knife Music.