The City Under the Skin

March 10, 2014
This zippy yet predictable literary thriller begins promisingly: a series of women, apparently selected at random, are kidnapped, crudely tattooed with coded maps on their backs, and then released. What do the maps mean? Who is responsible? Billy Moore, a petty thug trying to go straight; Wrobleski, a hit man and map collector; and Zak Webster, an amateur cartographer, try to solve the mystery. Billy is hired by Wrobleski to bring the inked women to his boss (whether they come willingly or not), who then locks them away in his gated compound. Meanwhile, Zak searches for clues as to the meaning of these strange events, aided by Marilyn Driscoll, who comes to his aid when Zak’s involvement in the case puts him in danger. Eventually, all parties converge for a rushed, underwhelming climax. Nicholson (Bleeding London) charms the reader with offbeat humor and unexpected narrative tangents, but he doesn’t trust his audience enough. Conversations often run on, with characters overexplaining situations, and coincidences—Billy’s daughter, for example, just happens to suffer from dermatographia, a skin condition resulting in tattoolike marks—are unconvincingly used to draw heroes and villains together. An undercooked novel from a prolific writer.

May 15, 2014
Young women with maps crudely tattooed on their backs hold answers to the mysteries posed in Nicholson's arch urban thriller.No one knows who kidnapped the women, blindfolded them and etched the maps into their skin-they're otherwise unharmed and promptly returned home. But several people are interested in the maps, which seem to point to a shadowy underground where an unidentified reward awaits. Wrobleski, a murderous criminal, will do anything to lay his hands on it. He bullies Billy, an aimless parking-lot owner with a jaded 12-year-old daughter, into collecting the tattooed women and acting as his henchman. Among those Billy roughs up is Zak, a cartography-store clerk who becomes involved with the hard-edged Marilyn; while privately dealing with the trauma of being defiled by a tattoo attacker years ago, she's combing the city for clues on the disappearance of her grandfather. She lives in the long-shuttered Telestar Hotel, a '60s relic he designed. At times, the novel comes off like a sardonic answer to the film comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, with its odd assortment of characters, rapid pacing and offbeat touches. But the author, who has also written a nonfiction book called The Lost Art of Walking (2008), is seriously devoted to the physical history of places, as reflected in the wealth of maps in the book-including the unsavory Rape Map, which charts where various assaults have taken place. "Maps are always nostalgic one way or another," says Zak. The novel also speaks to how cities are reshaped and, more importantly, reimagined.This "cartographic thriller" by the British-born, Los Angeles-based Nicholson doesn't always rise to its subject, but it does a good job of making us think about our surroundings and the people in them.

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May 1, 2014

In this bizarrely entertaining novel of murder, real estate development, and geography, set in a large, seemingly British city undergoing massive urban renewal, women are being kidnapped and forced to undergo tattooing that leaves them with a mysterious maplike image covering their entire backs. Billy Moore, a low-life thug, is hired by murderous psycho Wrobleski to locate these women and bring them to his peculiar inner-city compound, where they await who-knows-what terrible fate. Zak Webster, a young and somewhat nerdy employee at an antique map store, witnesses one of the kidnappings, as does passerby Marilyn Driscoll. The two form an unlikely but comical duo as they begin investigating the crime on their own, tracing Billy back to Wrobleski's place while beginning to decipher the meaning of the tattooed maps. They end up chasing Wrobleski down an abandoned subway line, which seems to go on endlessly deeper with no way out. VERDICT Nicholson (Bedlam Burning) has these characters down, and the more weird and murderous they are, the funnier their roles. A sort of British Elmore Leonard-style dialog animates the story, and the city descriptions and sidetracking into geographical theory provide an interesting backdrop.--James Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2014
In Nicholson's atmospheric chiller, his sixteenth novel, he continues to focus on the obsessed outsiders who make his work both entertaining and compelling. Cartography expert Zak runs a map store in a verging-on-trendy neighborhood. When a young woman stumbles into his shop and shows him the crude tattoo on her back, he recognizes the outlines of an inexpertly drawn map. Before he can decipher the location depicted, she is whisked away by a tough guy driving a beat-up blue Cadillac. The only other witness, a feisty young woman outfitted in thrift-store clothes, determines that the two should investigate. And that investigation takes them to some scary places, including the rambling, industrial-looking digs of the obese and powerful local crime lord, Wrobleski. It seems that there are more women who have been extensively tattooed with crude maps. Can a nerdy, map-obsessed urban explorer take down the hard-core thugs who seem to be running a criminal underworld? Let's hope so. With its fast-paced, dryly witty dialogue; looming, darkened cityscapes; wonderfully offbeat characters, including an enforcer with child-care problems; and metaphoric riffs on disorientation, this is a hugely entertaining crime novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)