Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share A Better Goodbye Audiobook by John Schulian
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
A Better Goodbye Audiobook by John Schulian
Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.
Title: A Better Goodbye
Subtitle: A Novel
Author: John Schulian
Narrator: Keith Szarabajka
Format: Unabridged
Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
Language: English
Release date: 12-04-15
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 2 votes
Genres: Mysteries & Thrillers, Suspense
Publisher's Summary:
A retired masseuse and a retired boxer take jobs working for an actor, and love and jealousy soon follow.
Nick Pafko knows he can't be a professional boxer forever. But he never guessed it would end so quickly - and so wrong. Broke and unemployed, Nick has little choice but to call a number given to him by a friend. On the other end is Scott, a washed-up B-movie actor who runs a so-called massage parlor, looking for somebody desperate enough to work security.
Jenny Yee doesn't really mind massage until the day she finds her coworkers robbed and assaulted. Fearing for her safety, she resolves never to work without security again. With mounting expenses, she knows massage is the fastest way to get paid. When an old massage acquaintance calls Jenny to ask her to work for Scott, she agrees - and before long, she's the top earner. Scott is an arrogant moron, but he's harmless compared to the thug he calls "friend" - Onus DuPree. When DuPree decides to rob Scott's massage joint, it's the perfect opportunity to beat up Nick and take advantage of Jenny. Can Nick stay true to his promise to protect Jenny? Can he protect himself?
Members Reviews:
A Cut Above More Clichéd Crime Fiction Fare
A BETTER GOODBYE is an uneven but never uninteresting debut crime novel.
Jenny is a little too smart and decent for the cynical, manipulative world of shady massage operations in which she makes her halfway way through life. Nick is a washed-up boxer who needs work â and beyond that, needs purpose. Onus DuPree is a stone thug looking for the next big score, and Scott Crandall is a fading pretty boy who no longer has Hollywood to fall back on. The four are on a collision course, and all trajectories lead to a high-rise "jack shack" in Los Angeles.
There's a "but" for every bit of praise or criticism I could offer for A BETTER GOODBYE. The prose is electric and kinetic, but occasionally sounds like a parody of Raymond Chandler. For every great line like "Dupree had ... elevator-shaft eyes that went all the way to the basement" there's a cringe-inducing sentence like "She came a heartbeat later, and then he did too, with cries that had their origins in primordial ooze."
The characters are all interesting, particularly Scott as the actor who doesn't know how to do anything but act and can't even act all that well. But it's hard to forget that for the most part, they're types rather than people â Nick as the down-and-almost-out boxer is every alienated-man redemption trope ever written; Jenny is every hooker with a heart of gold, or at least gold plating; and DuPree doesn't have much for the reader to connect to beyond a screenwriter-fantasy snarl.
What ultimately makes A BETTER GOODBYE worth reading is its insight â into the pathos of the fallen athlete, and especially into the shadowy world of massage that operates beyond the law. The types of men who patronize such places, the way they relate to the women, the way the women have seen it all and done it all and still make the stupidest possible choices about who to see outside of work. Author John Schulian is a career journalist of high renown, and his cultural anthropology reflects a deep and careful and unsentimental study of worlds you and I will rarely if ever see.
View all episodes
By DOWNLOAD FULL AUDIOBOOKS FOR FREE ON HOTAUDIOBOOK.COMPlease open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.
Title: A Better Goodbye
Subtitle: A Novel
Author: John Schulian
Narrator: Keith Szarabajka
Format: Unabridged
Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
Language: English
Release date: 12-04-15
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 2 votes
Genres: Mysteries & Thrillers, Suspense
Publisher's Summary:
A retired masseuse and a retired boxer take jobs working for an actor, and love and jealousy soon follow.
Nick Pafko knows he can't be a professional boxer forever. But he never guessed it would end so quickly - and so wrong. Broke and unemployed, Nick has little choice but to call a number given to him by a friend. On the other end is Scott, a washed-up B-movie actor who runs a so-called massage parlor, looking for somebody desperate enough to work security.
Jenny Yee doesn't really mind massage until the day she finds her coworkers robbed and assaulted. Fearing for her safety, she resolves never to work without security again. With mounting expenses, she knows massage is the fastest way to get paid. When an old massage acquaintance calls Jenny to ask her to work for Scott, she agrees - and before long, she's the top earner. Scott is an arrogant moron, but he's harmless compared to the thug he calls "friend" - Onus DuPree. When DuPree decides to rob Scott's massage joint, it's the perfect opportunity to beat up Nick and take advantage of Jenny. Can Nick stay true to his promise to protect Jenny? Can he protect himself?
Members Reviews:
A Cut Above More Clichéd Crime Fiction Fare
A BETTER GOODBYE is an uneven but never uninteresting debut crime novel.
Jenny is a little too smart and decent for the cynical, manipulative world of shady massage operations in which she makes her halfway way through life. Nick is a washed-up boxer who needs work â and beyond that, needs purpose. Onus DuPree is a stone thug looking for the next big score, and Scott Crandall is a fading pretty boy who no longer has Hollywood to fall back on. The four are on a collision course, and all trajectories lead to a high-rise "jack shack" in Los Angeles.
There's a "but" for every bit of praise or criticism I could offer for A BETTER GOODBYE. The prose is electric and kinetic, but occasionally sounds like a parody of Raymond Chandler. For every great line like "Dupree had ... elevator-shaft eyes that went all the way to the basement" there's a cringe-inducing sentence like "She came a heartbeat later, and then he did too, with cries that had their origins in primordial ooze."
The characters are all interesting, particularly Scott as the actor who doesn't know how to do anything but act and can't even act all that well. But it's hard to forget that for the most part, they're types rather than people â Nick as the down-and-almost-out boxer is every alienated-man redemption trope ever written; Jenny is every hooker with a heart of gold, or at least gold plating; and DuPree doesn't have much for the reader to connect to beyond a screenwriter-fantasy snarl.
What ultimately makes A BETTER GOODBYE worth reading is its insight â into the pathos of the fallen athlete, and especially into the shadowy world of massage that operates beyond the law. The types of men who patronize such places, the way they relate to the women, the way the women have seen it all and done it all and still make the stupidest possible choices about who to see outside of work. Author John Schulian is a career journalist of high renown, and his cultural anthropology reflects a deep and careful and unsentimental study of worlds you and I will rarely if ever see.