Choke: A Novel

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I've found I can't read any recent "Stone Barrington" novels by Woods, but CHOKE was written in 1996, so I gave it a try. This and his constant moves from one home to another have left Victor unable to form lasting and stable relationships with women. Palahniuk shows the common theme of feeling "choked" by society’s expectations that results in a loss of identity and direction. I liked this book as a contemporary suspense, but it wasn't as fast-paced and taut as some of his other books. If you would like to have your belief structures and social conventions challenged by one of the best new voices around, I highly recommend this book.

The plot moves right along in a very entertaining way with a dollop of violence and sex, and a couple of very nice twists and turns. A retired NYC homicide detective, Tommy Sculley, is seeing out his days as the Key West detective training a local rookie. An antihero for our deranging times, Victor's whole existence is a struggle to wrest an identity from overwhelming forces. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Enter Tommy Scully, a former New York Police Department homicide detective, augmenting his pension with a job on the Key West force, and his neophyte partner, Daryl, who may be smarter than he looks. In a strip club, Victor finds himself identifying carcinogenic moles on a dancer's inner thighs; wandering the corridors of his mother's hospital, he is wrongly identified by the crazed and deluded as the source of their neuroses, and he grimly takes on all the more repellent sins of the world to aid their therapy. He is also the author of Fugitives and Refugees, published as part of the Crown Journey Series, and the nonfiction collection Stranger Than Fiction. We later learn that Paige is a patient in the hospital who wears a doctor's uniform and impersonates a real doctor.

I often get the impression that CP gets a lot of credit for what he's trying to do more than for his ability to actually do it. He's also a perpetual addict who cruises sexaholic meetings for pick-ups and frequently makes extra cash by allowing himself to choke in fancy restaurants, then exploiting the sympathies of the Good Samaritan that comes to his rescue.In my efforts to explore my local library's offerings, I came across NYT Bestselling Author Stuart Woods.