Iron House

Starred review from May 16, 2011
This rich, impressive contemporary thriller from two-time Edgar-winner Hart (The Last Child) focuses on two brothers, Michael and Julian, both raised and abused at the Iron House of the title, an orphanage in the mountains of North Carolina. As a boy, Michael flees the place and ends up on the streets of New York City, where Otto Kaitlin, "the most powerful crime boss in recent memory," rescues him and fashions him into an accomplished killing machine and a surrogate son. When Kaitlin dies, his real son, Stevan, fueled by a mixture of jealousy and greed, sets out to destroy everything the now grownup Michael has. Stevan kidnaps Michael's girlfriend, Elena, and threatens emotionally fragile Julian, a creative, tortured genius who is now living at the North Carolina mansion of his adoptive parents. Hart deftly interweaves a complex family history story with Stevan's intense, bloody quest for vengeance. Though the book occasionally feels overplotted, its powerful themes and its beautiful prose will delight Hart's fansâand should earn him many new ones. 200,000 first printing; author tour.

July 15, 2011

In Hart's latest (The Last Child, 2009, etc.) a vengeful ex-orphan tracks fellow former orphans, asylum not on offer.

Michael and Julian, brothers, abandoned as babies, lead lives of mounting desperation in a prototypically grim orphanage tucked away in the North Carolina high country. Iron Mountain Home for Boys has long sped past hardscrabble on its way to Dickensian, and the brothers have endured every manner of unkindness known to unprincipled orphanage management. Michael, 10, physically and temperamentally suited to vicissitude, can cope with Iron House's horrors. Sensitive, painfully vulnerable Julian can't. He falls victim to a particularly nasty quintet of bullies, who catch and torment him whenever his older brother is occupied elsewhere. Suddenly, events take an even darker turn, and Michael is forced to flee, leaving Julian unprotected. But not for long. Enter the elegant and very rich Abigail Vane, wife of U.S. Senator Randall Vane, who not only plucks Julian from Iron House but nurtures him lovingly all the years it takes for his career to blossom. When it does, Julian is an A-list, bestselling author. Meanwhile, Michael, too, finds a benefactor, though of a considerably different stripe. Respected almost as much as he's feared, Otto Kaitlin is the powerful, high-profile rackets boss who recognizes in Michael a kindred spirit and takes him under his wing. Counseled by Kaitlin, Michael becomes an adroit, unregenerate killer, hell bent on a brilliant gangster future. But then Michael falls in love with a good woman, and all bets are off. Will he now seek some sort of redemption? Will the brothers finally reunite? Will Iron House be revisited so that the brutish five can get a well-deserved comeuppance? The plot twists and turns supply a full measure of answers, few of them unpredictable, most of them engulfed in gobs of gratuitous violence.

Two-time Edgar Award winner Hart, after three first-rate outings, is not at his best in what amounts to a soap opera for the macho set.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

February 15, 2011

I was to have introduced John Hart at a FOLUSA panel at the 2006 American Library Association conference in New Orleans. Alas, his flight was canceled, but I was glad to have read The King of Lies, which he would have introduced; it made a powerful impression. That book was an Edgar nominee for best first novel. Hart's second novel, Down River, won an Edgar for best novel--as did his third, The Last Child, which became a New York Times best seller. So I think I am on safe ground when I say that this fourth work will be very, very good. The story features two orphaned brothers, one of whom escapes the orphanage after being accused of killing another boy. He doesn't see his brother for 20 years, when he's on the run from the crime world he initially embraced. With a one-day laydown on July 12, a national tour, and a reading group guide; consider multiples.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2011
It isnt as if Harts career needed jump-starting. His first three stand-alone thrillers have been greeted by an ever-growing crescendo of praise, including two Edgar Awards. Definitely not the kind of writer who needs a breakthrough book. And, yet, Iron House lifts Hart to an altogether new level of excellence. Its premise is reminiscent of the authors second book, Down River (2007)North Carolina man returns home after years in New York to settle scoresbut here the stakes are so much higher. Brothers Michael and Julian spent the formative years of their childhood in a Dickensian orphanage in North Carolina called Iron House; the experience made Michael strong and Julian weak, utterly dependent on his brother, but that all changes in a moment: suddenly Michael is on the run, and Julian is adopted by a wealthy woman. In New York, Michael becomes a stone-cold Mob hit man; Julian, on the other hand, turns his nightmares into best-selling childrens books but remains haunted by demons. The brothers lives come together when Mob rivals threaten to use Julian to get to Michael. The present-time plotdisaffected Mob hit man on the run, trying to carve a new life without endangering those he lovesmakes a superb thriller on its own (steadily building tension, magnificently choreographed fight scenes, including a High Noonlike finale), but its what Hart does with the backstory that gives the novel its beyond-genre depth. Like the great Peter Heg in Borderliners (1994), Hart uses the familiar story of mistreatment in an orphanage as a way into the inner lives of his characters, and the blind fear, abject confusion, and yearning for love he finds there are both heartbreaking and curiously hopeful, in an almost postapocalyptic way. An unforgettable novel from a master of popular fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)