Michael Northrop

So, GENTLEMEN received a starred review in the May 1 issue of Booklist. I am thrilled, not just because of the star but because the reviewer really seems to get what I was trying to do with the book, which makes me think I might have, you know, actually done it. In any case, I have now completed the debut novelist’s clean sweep: starred review, Publishers Weekly; starred review, Booklist; dissed by Kirkus. (1, 2, 3: Screw you, Kirkus!)


“I got… two stahs. One fo’… each a you!”

From Booklist:

☆Gentlemen.
Northrop, Michael (author).
Apr. 2009. 256p. Scholastic, hardcover, $16.99
This is a rare sort of book that may work just as well for reluctant readers as it will avid ones. Mike (the narrator), Tommy, Mixer, and Bones form the core of the remedial set at their small-town high school. When Tommy goes missing and their reviled English teacher, Mr. Haberman (who’s trying to get them to read Crime and Punishment), starts acting awfully strange, the three remaining friends jump to some alarming conclusions. Despite the teacher’s Raskolnikov act, this is not a reworking of Dostoevsky’s classic in a modern high-school setting; rather, the book works as an amplifier of both the boys’ suspicions and the plot’s intrigue, and while readers familiar with it (or the serviceable graphic-novel version reviewed above) will certainly glean more, it is by no means a prerequisite to get caught up in the mystery. The guessing game of what happened to Tommy, how guilty is Haberman, and what are the boys going to do about it propels the action, and the well-rounded characters and their plausible obsessions provide buoyancy to the story. Laced throughout is a steely and intricate look at the permutations of adolescent friendship and the various roles that teens adopt or are assigned in both their social and academic worlds. A riveting thriller? Yep. A nuanced examination of morality? Yep again. What’s amazing is that they never get in each other’s way.
— Ian Chipman
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