A Good Man

Starred review from November 25, 2019
“The billy club arrived with the first shipment of Christmas presents that year,” says Thomas Martin at the start of Katz’s powerful and unsettling debut. Thomas seems to have had it all—a loving wife and daughter, an upscale Long Island home, and a successful career in advertising—but he has sacrificed everything in a sudden, violent act of desperation. Thomas proceeds to tell his story in an effort to explain and perhaps find absolution. But the account of family life he provides, though enviable on the surface, contains disturbing revelations—his failure to protect his sister from sexual abuse, the ambiguous role he had in his father’s death, his attitude toward the billy club—produces in the reader a sense of foreboding that builds with ever-increasing intensity to the inevitable and brutal climax. Throughout, Thomas insists on believing himself to be a good man, “if deeply flawed.” Katz is in full control of mood and pacing. This masterly first novel is sure to attract an audience from outside the mystery/thriller genre. Agent: Julia Kenny, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner.