This Is What We Do
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“[This Is What We Do] is...Atlas Shrugged jammed in reverse and with the tires smoked. It's Ayn Rand for people with a brain. And a gun. It's a kick. Read it.” —Sean Beaudoin, author of You Killed Wesley Payne and The Infects
James Nethery is at the end of his rope. Unable to find meaning in his comfortable life, he has cut himself off from everyone and fled to Paris. His mission; to rid himself of a lifetime of baggage, erase the past, and start over. He wanders Paris aimlessly until he meets Lily, a Ukrainian model and hooker. They form a unique bond, and together take the first steps toward writing new stories of their lives. Soon, Lily’s past catches up with her and they are forced to go on the lam in a strange country. Together they must decide between justice and vengeance, and, when forced to take action, between what is too much—and not enough.
This Is What We Do is part neo–noir thriller, part love story, and part cautionary tale of the perils of trying to write a new life from nothing—and the stories that will be written for you by others if you find yourself in the public eye.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hansen's noirish debut novel charts recovering alcoholic James Nethery's curious role in stoking a global revolution. Wandering aimlessly in Paris, Nethery catches news that the Occupy-like People's Mafia has begun murdering bankers, leaving their slogan, "This is What We Do," scrawled near the corpses. He meets Lily, a Ukrainian former model turned prostitute, in a brothel and the two develop a primal attraction to one another. Nethery kills Claude Dutronc, Lily's cruel former modeling agent, when he discovers Claude and his minions viciously assaulting Lily after she tries to reclaim her passport. Nethery then muses, in heavy-handed omniscient narration, on the Camus-like clarity violence has brought to his life. The two flee to the idyllic shores of the Mediterranean with a duffel bag of serendipitously found cocaine, pursued by Claude's powerful friends as well as the French government, who think that Claude's murderer and the leader of the People's Mafia are one and the same. Hansen is dealing with interesting themes, yet his prose is clumsy and the initially exciting plot fizzles out in a dense but flaccid conclusion; the novel coming out, just as Nethery's first come on to Lily, like so many "half-baked cookies."
