Box Nine

Quinsigamond #1

by Jack O'Connell

Box Nine tells the story of the impact of a new synthetic drug - Lingo - on the depressed New England factory town of Quinsigamond. Detective Leonore Thomas is an undercover officer addicted to speed, rough sex, heavy metal and her gun'

Genres: Fiction, Crime, Mystery

326 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Part classic noir thriller, part mind-bending fantasy, The Resurrectionist is a wild ride into a territory where nothing is as it appears. It is the story of Sweeney, a druggist by trade, and his son, Danny, the victim of an accident that has left him in a persistent coma. Hoping for a miracle, they have come to the fortress-like Peck Clinic, whose doctors claim to have resurrected two patients who were lost in the void, hoping for a miracle. What Sweeney comes to realize, though, is that the real cure to his sons condition may lie in Limbo, a fantasy comic book world into which his son had been drawn at the time of his accident. Plunged into the intrigue that envelops the clinic, Sweeneys search for answers leads to sinister back alleys, brutal dead ends, and terrifying rabbit holes of darkness and mystery.
McConnell has crafted a mesmerizing novel about stories and what they can do for and to those who create them and those who consume them. About the nature of consciousness and the power of the unknown. About psychotic bikers, mad neurologists, and wandering circus freaks. About loss and grief and rage. And, ultimately, about forgiveness and the depth of our need to extend it and receive it.
"

Reviews

[Jeff Dickison · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hate to write reviews like this, but the world must be warned. This book is awful. It makes little sense, it is often incomprehensible, and in an effort to make his characters interesting O'Connell has made them weird assholes. I almost didn't finish this, but I struggled on. It centers around a street drug that affects the language centers of its' users. Some characters are murdered for no apparent reason, others die incomprehensibly, and the ending is a mess. About half way through I was hoping a covey of flying houses would land on every character and end the whole thing. Beware!

[Race Bannon · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought this book had an interesting premise and plot, and the first few sequences in the book were exciting, sort of an adrenalin rush feel, that I felt this was going to be a great book. Unfortunately it devolves into a mess somewhere in the second half of the book with head-scratching motives and actions by the characters that I lost interest and in fact was perturbed that I had invested the time in trying to read it.
It wasn't a DNF (I did have to see how it ended), but it was darn close, and the climax did turn out to be a cluster.

[Autumn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book started out strong with wonderful character and story development. However, as others have noted the last couple chapters seemed disconnected. I lost interest as I felt many things went unexplained throughout the book. I think the main character would have been more interesting if we had more insight into her thoughts regarding the investigation and the people involved. Also, a lot of filler writing that was not interesting and does not seem to connect with the point of the story.

[Dark Star · Rating 2 out of 5]

Strange little story that I just found to be tedious. The writer tends to go on and on about certain things that just made me yawn. It was like...get to IT already! We have Lenore, the crank addicted narcotics detective and her strange twin brother, Ike, who works at the post office. These two strange ducks are mixed in with a crazy new drug called Lingo and many other just off the wall characters.

[Emmy Jackson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn't finish this one, got a bit more than halfway through. A bit too wordy, a bit too passively written, a lack of particularly vivid characters, stilted dialogue and the weird present-tense writing style (as well as several other style "tricks") kept me from getting into it really, and I decided to move on to something better. The book might be a victim of its age, too; it felt really dated.

[Rachel Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Jack O'Connell. This is the first in his Quinsigamond (thinly diguised Worcester, Mass.) series. Weird-noir, creepy New England at its decaying best.
Wireless, Skin Palace, and Word Made Flesh are also great. Where did Jack go? Write another book, damn it!

[Laurel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Started with good characters and interesting situation, but the last several chapters left me extremely disappointed.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over the thanksgiving holiday, I finished my book too soon and wanted something I could read on the plane. I found this gonzo mystery, set in a version of my home town-- the very place where I was spending the holiday-- in a used book store and got a lot more enjoyment out of it than I might have guessed.

Akong the tangents the story explores, there's the presence of a new street drug, lingo, which is like crack for the speech areas of the brain, a brother and sister who have their own unique communication problems, weirdness among the staff at the post office, and an exploration of the wages and intelligences of the local crime organization. Throughout, it never quite settles into being a procedural, which I think is very much to its credit, though as a result, there are plot threads that I couldn't piece together in the end, like who killed the mayor's mole? But there are sequels, I guess, so maybe some of those ideas are addressed there?

Because really, this wants to be a novel of ideas, and strange ones at that. It's much more hallucinatory than say, Auster's crime fiction, but not as neon -lit Lethem's noirs (Gun with occasional music, mostly) either. I struggled to find an adequate comparison-- it's trashy without that being redeeming, but it also never feels like it's slumming: it's just where it needs to be to tell the story O'Connell set out to tell. A strange and wonderful artifact of a mind that buzzes on a strange frequency.

[Johnny · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a lot to like about this book. It is really trying to do something interesting, and for the most part succeeds in its execution. It refuses to fall into a genre, while it feels comfortable using genre elements of mystery (both procedural & hardboiled), science fiction (but more in that three-years-in-the-future way), and even horror (there are some genuinely unsettling moments).

It's probably not a book that is to everyone's taste, but it's a book that any reader will think about long after they've read it. That's something.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 1 out of 5]

strange!
tedious!!

every character is a creepy asshole

people seem to totally hate 80% of the book
yet some love little bits of it in the beginning

somehow the smell from this book is one that just doesn't work very well at all

like it has none of the good creepiness in Blade Runner
or a real character like christopher walken

something just feels massively annoying that there is some new drug that fucks up the speech centers of people, that just screams like some tacky quirky gimmick

I think it would be far better with just a teenagers smoking PCP laced cigarettes or maryjane laced with PCP, hitting them like a sherman tank

and then get a shotgun out when the drool pours down their face, and they can barely talk and a

Just Wait Till Your Father Gets Home
moment happens

at least there isnt any addictive Virtual Reality goggles like a bad Star Trek The Next Generation sorta theme here, thank goodness

just boringly weird assholes
with boringly weird drugs

...........

And NOW

A narcotics detective wages war against a deadly new stimulant

The drug is called Lingo, and it's the most powerful narcotic Lenore has ever seen. This cheaply manufactured pill races straight for the brain's language center, supercharging it so that even a dimwitted person can speak and read at 1,500 words per minute. It induces giddiness, confidence, and sexual euphoria, with a side effect of murderous rage.

The drug has come to Quinsigamond, a fading industrial center in the heart of Massachusetts, and it's going to tear this town apart. Lenore believes she can stop that from happening.

A narcotics detective with a few addictions of her own, amphetamines and heavy metal, to name a couple, she loves nothing more than her gun, until she meets Dr. Frederick Woo, the linguist assisting her on the case. Together they can stop the drug, if it doesn't take hold of them first.

Blech!

sigh, you need a linguist to help solve crimes

reminds me of 17 Murder She Wrote episodes where the cat helped solved crimes and two of them were when the the cat helped the lady on Remington Steele!!

yeah yeah heard it all before, Poirot with his addiction to cocaine, has Dr. Sausseure help solve murder mysteries based on the notes having unusual grammar from the Langdoque accent from Provence, and the right amount of saffron garlic and fennel is on the poisoned dart.

As the Univac 1100 spits out on the card reader, Flint

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Life has been a lot lately — nothing too bad, just new developments — and it’s affected my reading. Usually, I knock out around 10-12 books a month. This month, I’ll get to maybe 7 if I’m lucky. Hopefully, I’m back on the horse by next month when my library’s summer reading bingos begin.

At any rate, part of why I read so fast is not just retention but also so I can keep up with the momentum of a story. When I don’t have the time or desire to read — for whatever reason — it can make books (fiction in particular) feel stale.

So it should say something about Box Nine that it took me almost a week to finish despite not being very long. I still don’t know how I feel about it overall but I’m not sure if that was because I couldn’t keep pace with the story’s momentum or if I didn’t like it as much as I thought I did. It’s sort of a weird in between. But I didn’t regret reading it, so there’s that.

Rarely do I come across a highly recommended series that I’m not at least somewhat familiar with but this one was plugged by David Peace and James Ellroy…and I hadn’t even heard of it. A character-driven crime novel set in a depressed Massachusetts mill town hit by drugs, this book is light on thrills and perhaps too long on characterization. And yet, it worked because the characters are interesting and textured, the setting appropriately bleak. It reminded me in a way of a more intense, more urbane version of KC Constantine’s Mario Balzic series. It knows its people and it knows its place.

Also, for a book that meandered to its conclusion, it certainly had a great one.

The series isn’t in wide circulation; my local library had the first copy but not the second. So I don’t know when I’ll get to book two but I will some day. It’s an interesting presentation for a mystery tale.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

While having heard a lot about O'Connell's debut book over the past decade, I figured it was time to sit down and read it. It gets three stars since it has both some high and low points.

High points--at least for Lenore and her brother Ike, characterization is excellent. These two flawed characters come to life throughout this novel from their words and actions. To a lesser extent, Ike's fantasy love interest, Eva, comes off as another flawed character. O'Connell's writing style is what I like also: the prose is spare, not overly detailed and scenes are broad brushed and you aren't wading through pages of minute detail that have no bearing on the story.

Low points--while Woo starts off as a almost believable character, his transition to villain, is abrupt and makes no sense. The new drug that is being introduced into Quinsigamond also seems hokey; why O'Connell just didn't stick with heroin or some other drug that was breaking onto the scene in the 1980s or 1990s is beyond me. Storytelling is not O'Connell's strong suit either; at times this book seems episodic and has very little linear storytelling in my opinion. There are also some procedural mistakes--I don't know many police jurisdictions that would still allow an officer to be active and on duty after they shoot and kill an individual.

I'll try another in O'Connell's Quinsigamond series. That will determine if I go for a third or more of his books.

[Bryan Winchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have this experience with a lot of fiction these days: I’ll be reading the first several chapters and will think, “This author is a skilled storyteller; he is adept at creating both the interior world of his characters and the external world they live in.” Yet as I get toward the middle of the book, I’ll lose some steam/interest/focus. And as it winds up, I’ll feel like, “Yeah, a decent read but nothing special.”

This might be more of a reflection of my personality (an ENFP in MBTI terms), my age (46), or all the bold I’ve read so I’ve become more spoiled.

Anyway, for those who enjoy crime stories based in the drug world, this is a solid read. Just didn’t end up being a great one.

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I hadn't read the reviews at the top of the pile here, I kept looking for places where things began to fall apart - from a writing point of view anyway - and not finding them. The holes in the plot mentioned, not evident.

Whilst I accept that this was not the best, it is certainly worthy of more than the 1 star. I saw the story as a series of small islands of action in a sea of mind-numbing and watery filler. Starts well enough but the action drops away and I found myself (rather appropriately as it happens but without the buzzing of the bees), speed-reading through the rest.

I doubt I'll be picking up the second...

[Jonathan Alexander · Rating 2 out of 5]

O'Connell's style and sense of setting makes this an engaging read, and Lenore is a gripping, complicated, if magically capable heroine, but the route the plot takes is remarkably straightforward, leaning a bit too much on side-character digressions to chop up the reader's expectations.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the few slipstream novels I've read recently. The last being Perdido Street Station. Although, this is not full-blown slipstream like that book. Box Nine is a noir, science fiction-esque, X-over about what comes from the intro of a designer, drug with Bath Salts-like effects to a Gotham-like city.

Writing was pretty good. Dialog, descriptive prose, and action scenes were well done with some interesting use of metaphor. Although, in places the prose verged on purple. This gave the story its somewhat baroque flavor.

There were several architectural issues with the story I disagreed with.

For example, the use of micro recorder transcripts to deliver soliloquies was over-done. Also, the story was written in a multi-person POV. Although, Lenore is clearly the main character. The author was technically up to this complicated construction, but the multi-POV felt like too much a literary affectation adding little to the story.

This story was written in 1992. It dates itself in places with occasional period references. For example, with use of cassette tapes, the absence of cell phones, and pop culture references.

Finally, there are a few technical issues to be found.

For example in Chapter 17, when Woo first tries to seduce Lenore,

"No surprise there," he says , his fingers moving down soothingly over her Adam's apple.

Women don't have Adam's Apples. Lenore being born a man is a plot thread I missed?

Characters are good, but all are not great. I liked Lenore's quirky flavor of hard boiled. She and Ike are well done, but the other characters get thinner as you get further away from Lenore and Ike. Fred Woo, Lenore's complement and Eva who is Ike's are reasonably well-rounded. The Cortez drug kingpin character is too unlikely.

Plotting is a bit OTT. There was a definite surreal aspect to the story, which I couldn't completely slip into. While most of the characters are well within the noir trope, Eva and Cortez contribute in a highly unlikely fashion to the plot. I had to invoke suspension of belief to continue reading.

Quinsigamond, the locale, is an odd mash-up. In the real world, a second-string, down-on-its heels New England mill town would not be sporting such an extensive,metropolitan underworld. The city draws a lot of its location inspiration from Worcester, Massachusetts a city I'm familiar with.

For a first novel, this is actually pretty good. Although, its too arty to be *really* good. The story vaguely reminded me of Dark City (1998 film), although less science fictional.

I likely won't be reading the second in the series Wireless. There are too many other, better noir, police stories out there to be reading. Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis would be a better choice.

[Samuel Tyler]

The wind brushed against the review like a thousand kisses and Sam knew that something out of the ordinary was happening. It wasn’t since the long hot summer 1997 that he had the misfortune to read a book that had as much extraneous detail as this. He felt to himself that there was little point in actually getting to the meat of a review, when instead he could witter on about something that had little to do with anything – perhaps this would get a little annoying over 352 pages? Welcome to the world of Jack O’Connell’s ‘‘Box Nine’’.

Quinsigamond is a town that already has a drugs problem so when the new designer drug, Lingo, hits the streets it’s all that Narcotics Detective Lenore needs to real ruin her day. This is a drug that imbues the taker with magnificent language skills with a side order of pleasure, but when it all gets a little too much for them, it usually ends up in death. Can Lenore and her crack (taking?) team of detectives find the source of the outbreak before it is too late?

Experimental fiction is tricky to write and tricky to read. When an author’s vision does not quite marry with the reader it can be a painful and difficult challenge to read the book and this is what happened with ‘‘Box Nine’’. This book is very light science fiction elements i.e. the drug itself, but for all intents it is a straight slice of crime noir told through the prism of some pretty unlikable characters. Lenore is the main protagonist and she is feisty, but also prone to a little drug taking and cheating on her partner. These are all classic noir tropes, but O’Connell takes things too far by seemingly writing the entire book as if it is on drugs.

The drug of Lingo is all about language and the book of ‘‘Box Nine’’ seems to want to reflect this somehow. There is a jilted narrative that jumps a little from character to character and the plot itself is continually lost as O’Connell sends the reader down rabbit holes about a person’s past that has little to do with the events. It is almost as if the author wants to make the reader a little uncomfortable reading the book; you are being given the drug as you read. I found this method made some parts of book borderline unreadable as pages would pass with seemingly meaningless monologues from the characters. A more enlightened reader may pick up more from these sections, but to me they just smacked of a writer caught up a little too much in his own ideas and not catering to the narrative.

There is also a very odd sense of place about the book. Originally written in the late 90s it feels more like a book from the 70s, but the characters seem think they are in their version of the 90s. Is it a parallel universe? If so, this is not explicitly said and it is yet another layer of confusion for a reader that will already be struggling to get their head around the book. O’Connell would have been better either heightening the sci fi elements of the book, or scrapping them completely. You are left with a jumbled half way house that is unsatisfying for everyone. Original review on bookbag.co.uk

[Cat. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sort of postmodern noir, a la Carol O'Connell (I actually kept wondering if this was the same author--it's not). Set in the fictional town of Quinsigamond, somewhere in New England, this follows a set of twins who both get wrapped up in trying to figure out who has unloaded a crateful of a new drug called Lingo onto their city. Lingo makes one able to speak faster and remember everything you've said. It also makes you talk so fast your jaws are a blur and the words are a nasty insecty hum.

One of the twins, Lenore, is a cop who has not slept in 6 months. For her, working in the Narcotics Division means access to speed. So she's developed a use for it in her life. She is brought in to solve the Lingo issue. Her brother, Ike, is a postal worker who is about as milquetoast as a person can be, and he keeps finding icky (really, the only word) parcels being delivered to an unused mailbox.

Together they not only re-establish their need for one another but also open the question of which of them is actually the stronger.

There's virtually no one in this book who is decent and good, and certainly no one you'd want to hang around with for more than, say, uhm, 30 seconds. But, as in all noir, at the end, decency wins out and (some of) the bad guys are solidly defeated. For today.

[Leslee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting experimental noir fiction that really strives to transcend the usual genre tropes and has some big ideas but ultimately is let down by a trite ending and a resolution that while, tying up all the strings neatly, I think was a little *too* pat and resolves all the plot points without fully realizing the potential of the strong undercurrent of ideas regarding language and the power of words.

I'd be interested to check out Word Made Flesh, which I hear amongst the books in this Quinsigamond series is the most fully developed and really pulls together a lot of the ideas that Jack O'Connell is playing with. I do enjoy books like these (similar to Pontypool Changes Everything, another book that's on my radar that I haven't gotten around to yet) that really play with words and the destructive power of language in a different way. I would suggest to anyone that's interested in the theme of transformative art.

[Anderson O'Donnell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally published in 1992, BOX NINE remains as compelling and vital as the day it was first released. The book introduces readers to Quinsigamond, a a depressed New England factory down seething with violence and corruption that serves as the setting for O'Connell's next five novels.

In this classic noir thriller, O'Connell creates one of his most memorable characters: Detective Leonore Thomas, an undercover officer "addicted to speed, rough sex, heavy metal and her gun." Sounds like my kind of woman. But Thomas is no two dimensional caricature; she is one of noir fiction's most interesting personalities.

But perhaps the most compelling aspect of Box Nine is Lingo, a powerful new drug that acts on the brain's language centers. Its not just that Lingo makes for a hip new street drug; its unique relation to language allows O'Connell to explore the very nature of words and communication. The introduction of Lingo, and its attendant psychological and philosophical discussions, elevate this BOX NINE beyond mere genre fiction and into the realm of classic fiction.

[Andy Raptis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting combination of cyberpunk, psycholinguistics, and crime. Imagine a cross between Fouccault's Pendulum and Snowcrash written by James Ellroy.
Unfortunately it all falls apart in the last thirty or so pages. Until that point it was doing pretty well even with those Joycean passages that interrupted the flow of the action.
Entire chapters seem to be missing from the third act. Maybe because the publishers wanted to cut down the number of pages or maybe the writer got bored of writing.
Anyway, I should not be complaining too much. I nicked this book from a tourist shop on the island of Rhodes in the summer of 1993. There was nothing better on the stand so I decided to give this one a shot.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another reviewer used the word "creepy" and that is right but it's not a gross-out by any means. Its description of this meth-squared drug is creepy enough by what it doesn't say and I found this to be a step above in terms of police novels. Plot is kind of like the movie "Strange Days" (1995) in the sense of police trying to catch up with technology/drugs they don't understand. Maybe Kathryn Bigelow would be willing to direct this one too.

[Alisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this years ago so my memory is rusty (and frankly it could be worthy of 4 stars). I recall liking this book for its colorful characters and original plot. There were enough surprises in it to keep the story going to the end. The quote from Booklist is "a perverse joy from start to finish" - an apt description. Undercover cops, sex, drugs, and a post office box. Crazy, but fun.

[Jean Hontz · Rating 3 out of 5]

very odd but very good