Hey, Mechanic: My Suspension of Disbelief Needs Some Work!
Amazon says:
Banes & Noble thinks:
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Author: Robert K. Tanenbaum
Title: Act of Revenge Genre: mystery There was a point (page 276, to be exact) in Act of Revenge in which I slammed the book shut and tossed it on the coffee table. "I knew he'd do that!" I groaned. Robert K. Tanenbaum had struck again. My wife, after lo these many years inured to my muttering while reading ignored me, but after I picked it up and finished it she asked me why I didn't just go to the next book in the stack instead. The answer is complex. My first venture into the worlds of Marlene Ciampi, Butch Karp, and their twisted little family came in the form of Irresistible Impulses. "Irresistible, schmirresistible," I said. And I also basically said, that Tanenbaum can write. He builds a sympathetic character, he's created more than one fascinating subplot, his dialogue is strong... but he needs help in the plot department. So, in fairness, I figured I'd try another of his novels and see if he got the help I suggested. Act of Revenge, my second Tanenbaum read, has precisely the same strengths, and also the same weaknesses. Once again, we visit the Karp-Ciampi household, inhabited by the following:
The plot? It's best described in terms of a partially unravelled rope -- and therein lies Tanenbaum's greatest weakness...
Now, as I've said elsewhere, it's not unusual for a single protagonist in a mystery to learn that two seemingly unrelated threads in his caseload are actually connected. Happens all the time with Kinsey Milhone, Dave Robichaux, even Gabe Wager. Maybe it doesn't happen in real life, but that's what the "willing suspension of disbelief" business is all about. And I might be able to see the three threads of this plot intertwining if the characters were in Cicely, Alaska, or Chugwater, Wyoming -- where the population is under 1000 people. But that all three Karp-Ciampi-Karp characters are simultaneously involved in the exact same case just stretches my suspension too darn far -- especially in a city of about 10 million people! Why did I slam the book shut at page 276? that's where one of Marlene's interviewees drops the information that a homeless woman holds the key to her case -- and we've already seen this otherwise flat character hanging around Butch in the park as he eats his lunch. Twice. Gimme a break. Tanenbaum has built interesting characters in the Karp-Ciampi series, and his use of the oddly adult Lucy as a third protagonist sharing equal billing with her parents gives his books an approach that is, to say the lest, fresh. He appears to bring in secondary characters (e.g., Tranh) for a book or two and then phase them out, something Robert Parker also does (see Rita Fiore). His individual plots are unusual -- a decades-old faked suicide, a Tong-Mafia war, and Vietnamese gangsters trying to make inroads in the States. But his reliance on a set of massive coincidences to tie everything together goes a step too far. As the old TV series said, "There are 8,000,000 stories in the naked city..." What makes Tanenbaum think that one household (however bizarre the inhabitants) can tie all eight million together? Two stars: one for characters, one for subplots. If he'd just get away from this unravelled rope plot business, Tanenbaum would get another two stars; maybe even three more out of me! all content copyright © 2001-present by scmrak
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