A Good Man

October 15, 2019
A successful Manhattan adman believes his family comes first--but commits an unthinkable act against them. The world in which the events of Katz's disturbing debut novel unfold is a dangerous place. Mass graves are discovered in Damascus. College students set themselves on fire to protest against their deportations. There are school massacres, hunger strikes, police shootings, a paramilitary presence on the streets. Against this unsettling backdrop of violence and disaster--which doesn't feel that far removed from American life in 2019--Thomas Martin unspools his dark confession. Thomas is an adman in Manhattan. He spins stories for a living, making "things like death seem clean and manageable--attractive, even." Thomas' troubled childhood has provided him with a unique view of emotional disaster and prepared him well for his career. His abusive father was a drunk, his mother a cowering, terrified wreck. His older sister committed suicide, and his younger sisters exist in an extended adolescence, wandering aimlessly through the wreck of the family house on Long Island. But Thomas has built a better life for himself. He fell in love, got married, had a daughter. He's working on an important account. He's transformed. He is, he tells us, a good man, one who takes care of his family. But Thomas is not a reliable narrator, and his account slowly unravels as Katz reveals his inner turmoil. And if he's such a good man, why did he buy that threatening billy club online for "psychological protection"? As she expertly builds a growing sense of dread, Katz creates an unsettling atmosphere of paranoia, fear, and rage, hinting at the catastrophe to come through ominous comparisons to the tragic operas Thomas loves. This is the sort of relentless novel you can't put down even when you're afraid to read what happens next. An unnerving and absorbing exploration of modern masculinity and how the seeds of violence are sown.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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.

Starred review from November 1, 2019
Thomas Martin is a good father, a devoted husband, and a lover of opera who buys himself a handmade billy club for Christmas. The women in his life confound him: his twin sisters, whose lives resemble Grey Gardens as rendered in a V. C. Andrews novel; his Salingeresque mother; his advertising firm coworkers, who send mixed signals; and even his wife and daughter occasionally make it hard for him to take care of them. As he presents the evidence of his own goodness, from meeting his wife, Miriam, and introducing her to his strange family to a creative pitch gone awry, it is clear to the reader that Thomas is not a reliable judge of character, and the reality of his actions are much more sinister. But this is what makes Katz's debut simultaneously nightmarish and utterly compelling; she perfectly captures the voice of a man who does not recognize his own privilege, who thinks he is trying his best but is really doing his worst. As A Good Man speeds toward its violent conclusion, readers will be captivated. A masterful, suspenseful tale told by an ultimate unreliable narrator.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)