The Town, revisited

Chuck Hogan's novel Prince of Thieves has been out for years. Prince of Thieves has been re-leased in a tie-in to the film, so the book is now called The Town. Trust me to only get around to it when Ben Affleck's head has been pasted on the cover.

I was enjoying it when I posted last time. I just finished the book, after doing nothing much else but reading for the last day or so. It's an engrossing, astonishing, compelling, incredible read. The last book I read that made me feel like that--jealous because the writing is so note-perfect, the story is so taut, the characters so alive, and their movements and reactions so true, was Mystic River. And Hogan's novel has a better ending than Mystic River.

Like I said last time, if the film is half as good an adaptation as Gone Baby Gone, The Town will be the best movie of the year.

You may say I'm building this up a bit too much, but consider two things: as mentioned in previous posts, the kind of films I like don't come out all that often anymore. And I haven't been waylaid--ambushed--by a novel this good in a long time. I hope the movie does it justice.