Girls

Starred review from March 23, 1998
Sweeping pathos, historical knowledge, philosophical density and gruesome violence make Busch's 19th work of fiction both profound and a page-turner. Busch's articulate narrator, William Bartholomew, served as a Union sniper in the Civil War until an explosion maimed his face; now it's 1867, and Bartholomew works as an investor in New York City, hiding his scars behind a pasteboard mask. The Civil War may be over, but slavery isn't: slave children are stuck at a Florida school, and Jessie, a Creole prostitute romantically involved with Bartholomew, entangles him in a plot to bring them North to freedom. Bartholomew seeks help from Herman Melville, once a bestselling novelist, now a customs inspector (the "night inspector") in Manhattan's shipyards. Rapacious journalist Samuel Mordecai tags along, hoping for scoops on the demimonde of the docks. After struggles with corrupt bureaucrats and money-hungry merchants, Bartholomew's mission collapses in a grisly climax. Flashbacks intersperse the 1867 plot with Bartholomew's horrific wartime experience. Busch's rich work can be savored simply as historical suspense, or as a detailed picture of Civil War combat and post-Civil War New York--fans of The Alienist should like it. So should fans of Billy Budd as Bartholomew and Melville himself (called "M") enliven and deepen the novel with allusion and argument: "Do I seek a stay against oblivion on behalf of my little actors on the vast page? Or do I seek my own eternal life?" Bartholomew is a strange mix of self-hatred, honor, vulnerability and violence, Melville a morbid, self-declared defeatist. People back then used longer, slower sentences, and so do Busch's characters: learning to hear them is part of a reader's reward. Buttressed by Bartholomew's backstory and all the characters' thoughts, The Night Inspector becomes a serious, nuanced meditation on history, redemption, commerce, conscience and literary vocation, as well as a gripping read. Author tour.

Starred review from March 3, 1997
Busch (Closing Arguments; The Children in the Woods) deserves greater success than he has so far received-though connoisseurs of clean, dynamic American prose already know and admire his work. His latest novel is a tour de force in which the setting, a college in upstate New York in deepest winter, the characters and the situation are blended so seamlessly that the reader becomes a hapless part of its grim world. Jack, the narrator, is a hard-bitten, decent campus cop who, with wife Fanny, is working out the bitter legacy of the death, years before, of their only child, a little girl. When another girl, one who seems like a model teenager, vanishes in a nearby town, he throws himself desperately into a hunt for her and whoever may have done her violence; in the process, he is so deeply hurt, both physically and emotionally, that he barely survives. It is a dark tale, but it's told with an economical mastery and intensity that only a few current novelists can command. Busch even manages to create a dog who is real, touching but never cute, and the perfect life-enhancing foil for the human sorrows around him. In its very different way, this is the finest literary thriller since William Trevor's Felicia's Journey-and shares the same passionate concern with the helplessness of young women when they become prey to predatory men.