Maggie Terry

by Sarah Schulman

Overview

"Maggie Terry is the most beautiful, most bitter, most sweet, and all around best detective novel I've read in years. Precise, insightful, heartbreaking, and page turning." —Sara Gran, author of The Infinite Blacktop

Post-rehab, Maggie Terry is single-mindedly trying to keep her head down in New York City. There's a madman in the White House, the subways are constantly delayed, summer is relentless, and neighborhoods all seem to blend together.

Against this absurd backdrop, Maggie wants nothing more than to slowly re- build her life in hopes of being reunited with her daughter. But her first day on the job as a private investigator lands her in the middle of a sensational new case: actress strangled. If Maggie is going to solve this mystery, she'll have to shake the ghosts—dead NYPD partner, vindictive ex, steadfast drug habit—that have long ruled her life.

Sarah Schulman is a literary chronicler of the marginalized and subcultural, focusing on queer urban life. She is the author of several books, including The Gentrification of the Mind, Conflict Is Not Abuse, and The Cosmopolitans. She is Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at CUN Y, and teaches creative writing at the College of Staten Island.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781936932405
Publisher:	Feminist Press at CUNY, The
Publication date:	09/11/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at CUNY, Sarah Schulman’s honors and awards include a Guggenheim in Playwriting and a Fulbright in Judaic Studies. A well-known literary chronicler of the marginalized and subcultural, Schulman’s fiction has focused on queer urban life for thirty years. She is the author of several books; recent works include The Gentrification of the Mind, Conflict Is Not Abuse, and the novel The Cosmopolitans. Her plays and films have been seen at Playwrights Horizons, the Berlin Film Festival, and the Museum of Modern Art. An AIDS historian, Schulman is cofounder of the ACT UP Oral History Project.

Editorial Reviews

07/16/2018
Although it features a murder mystery, Schulman’s successful novel (after The Cosmopolitans) is less a whodunit and more an exploration of drug and alcohol addiction. Ex-NYPD detective Maggie Terry is just out of rehab after 15 years of alcohol and cocaine addiction. Her addiction cost her a career and her relationship with her partner, Frances, and daughter, Alina—and now Maggie is unmoored, adrift, and desperate to establish sobriety and stability in her life. And she bears tremendous guilt over the death of her detective partner—her addiction having played a role in his death. She now has a second chance as an in-house private detective for a small law firm. To avoid a Broadway show-business scandal, a well-known actress hires the firm to investigate the murder of an actress in the show. Little detective work is actually done, however, as Maggie lurches from Narcotics Anonymous meetings to stalking her former lover, wracked with self-doubt and craving a drink or a line of coke. Readers shouldn’t go in expecting a fast-paced mystery, but Schulman delivers a vivid depiction of Maggie’s addiction, punctuated by the gritty New York City setting. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Traversing the personal to the sociopolitical, Schulman’s latest offers a strikingly rich portrait of lesbian identity." —Lambda Literary Review

"A vivid depiction of Maggie [Terry]’s addiction, punctuated by the gritty New York City setting." —Publishers Weekly

"A sprawling exploration of New York nostalgia, police brutality, addiction memoir, and queer love, with a mystery as the cherry on top." —Kirkus Reviews

“A classic Schulman tale that’s as much murder mystery as it is a grimly funny comment on our semi-dystopian moment.” —Lambda Legal

"Sarah Schulman’s startling brilliance and wry humor is everything." —Jacqueline Woodson, author of Another Brooklyn

“Maggie Terry is the most beautiful, most bitter, most sweet, and all around best detective novel I’ve read in years. This book has depth and vision to spare. Precise, insightful, heartbreaking, and page turning—read this book, now.” —Sara Gran, author of Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead

“Clear-eyed and beautifully written, Maggie Terry is classic Schulman. She flenses and dissects the human condition, weighs every organ—how we connect, what forms the beating heart of a community—then magically breathes life back into the husk and helps it rise, reborn.” —Nicola Griffith, author of So Lucky

“Inventive, boundary pushing, and absolutely electric, Maggie Terry centers women and queerness in the most exciting way, within a story you’ll never want to stop reading.” —Jill Soloway, creator of Transparent

"Entirely original and mixing many genres, this book is about imagining a way forward when there seems to be no way at all.” —Kaitlyn Greenidge, author of We Love You, Charlie Freeman

“Ex-cop Maggie Terry draws us inside the greatest mystery of all—herself—in a reverberating story of our times. Sarah Schulman is at the top of her very considerable powers in this deeply humane novel. It is profoundly, just stunningly good.” —Katherine V. Forrest, author of High Desert

"Sarah Schulman’s Maggie Terry is a page-turning murder mystery, yes. Yet what makes it so compelling and unique is the story of Maggie herself—a lovesick recovering addict, grieving for her former life and for a New York City that’s now unfamiliar to her. In this context, Maggie’s search for the killer, plus her own redemption, becomes something altogether more than a whodunit. Ultimately, Maggie Terry is a psychological portrait of a woman trying to make her way back from the edge, and an inspiring one at that." —Danny Caine, The Raven Book Store

From the Publisher

2018-07-02
An ex-cop and ex-junkie tries to turn her life around and, in the process, stumbles into investigating a murder.Maggie Terry has hit rock bottom. She's just out of rehab; her ex-girlfriend and their daughter are long gone. She's starting a new job in a law office after a beloved career with the NYPD went up in flames. And worst of all, Donald Trump's been elected president. On the first day of Maggie's new gig, famous actress Lucy Horne visits the attorney Maggie works for and asks his office to discreetly investigate the murder of a fellow thespian—she points them toward a potential suspect, Steven Brinkley, a famous novelist. But Maggie's struggling to hold it together, bouncing from Narcotics Anonymous meetings to spying on her ex to roaming the city, struggling to understand what's happened to it—and the country—in the years she's been distracted by addiction. Will she be able to stay sober? Work successfully with her new professional partner? Win back her family? And, on top of it all, catch a killer? Schulman (The Cosmopolitans, 2016, etc.) has written a free-wheeling novel that must surely be one of the first to juxtapose Trump-era politics with whodunit, and Maggie's political ramblings, about everything from Black Lives Matter to gentrification, are as central to the novel as the case at its heart. But even though most of Schulman's readers will likely agree with the politics here, Maggie still seems more a platform than a protagonist; her character never quite coheres. After all, how realistic is a 21st-century New Yorker who doesn't own a cellphone or know how to use the internet?Schulman offers, with mixed success, a sprawling exploration of New York nostalgia, police brutality, addiction memoir, and queer love, with a mystery as the cherry on top.

Kirkus Reviews