from his parents. He soon becomes a minor celebrity and tries to use the exposure to turn his life around.

The other three main characters spent a lot of time in the neighborhood, but were not as close to the disaster as Anthony. Mary Roe is a neighborhood cop on the verge of a divorce, who splits custody of her children with her soon-to-be-ex-husband. She also splits the time living in the apartment with him, each spending several nights a week there on custodial nights. Her current love life is an affair with a married fellow cop that’s exclusively a series of short-term motel room encounters. Mary’s latest assignment is to find one unaccounted-for building resident who can’t be found within or without the wreckage.

Felix Pearl is a young man from out of town who fell in love with the neighborhood and moved there. He scrapes by as an amateur videographer, filming private events for little money and street scenes for no money. (The book predates the smartphone boom that will soon make Felix’s vocation obsolete.) After the building collapsed, he documented what happened afterward, including the various memorials and rallies held nearby.

The fourth main character in Lazarus Man has a direct pecuniary interest in the tragedy. Royal Davis owns a neighborhood funeral parlor that’s in poor financial shape. Since few people come to him for funerals these days, and fewer still have the funds to pay for an expensive funeral, he has to hustle up money any way he can. That includes being on call to pick up and transport bodies from senior living centers or the city morgue. It also includes renting out his parlor to a film crew that was making a low-budget zombie movie (and playing a zombie).

The characters are interesting, especially Royal, who I would have liked to have followed through a wider variety of offbeat business propositions for an entire novel. However, by the end of the book, none of them seem to have experienced the sort of memorable cathartic moment readers typically expect from books like Lazarus Man. I didn’t feel depressed by any of their fates (that would have been an emotional resolution), but I was disappointed to have followed them for over 300 pages, only to wind up with little to show for it. I didn’t feel the tragedy seriously affected their lives (except for Anthony).

Although I was disappointed by the ending of Lazarus Man, I didn’t feel I had completely wasted my time. The author provides a rich, realistic view of life on the streets in that neighborhood. The book contains many entertaining anecdotes, including an incident in which Mary apprehended a suspect in a bank robbery. He left a note in the bank, walked out, and patiently stood across the street, awaiting the police’s arrival. As Mary pointed out to her perplexed partner, the would-be robber was homeless and the accommodations in jail would be better than what he would face otherwise. Mary noted she “felt more like a homeless outreach worker for the DHS than a cop.”

Lazarus Man contains many examples of the author’s ability to capture the essence of day-to-day street life with his language. He describes a playground basketball game for fifteen-year-olds: “[T]he two teams ran up and down the full court, the ball handlers flashy and smooth until they found themselves in traffic under the boards and were unable to finish, a kid on the other team grabbing the rebound then showboating his way down to the other hoop before last-minute losing the ball under the same circumstances.”

Lazarus Man is a book that’s better savored for its minor pleasures than as a whole. Unlike some of the author’s previous works, such as The Wanderers and Clockers, this material is not cinematic unless screenwriters make significant revisions. And readers who are expecting a cinematic experience will be disappointed. However, I’m glad I had a chance to enjoy the book for the pleasures it provided rather than regret not getting a big payoff at the end.

NOTE: The publisher graciously provided me with a copy of this book through NetGalley. However, the decision to review the book and the contents of this review are entirely my own.