A Jigsaw Puzzle Made of Pieces of Others' Plots
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Author: John Saul
Title: The Manhattan Hunt Club Genre: thriller Q: What do you get when you cross "reality" television shows with B movies? A: You get the plot of John Saul's latest novel, The Manhattan Hunt Club. Yep, boys and girls, it looks very much like John Saul has waayy too much time on his hands, and from appearances he spends his extra time watching the tube. His favorite fare, apparently, is "Fear Factor" and "Survivor," but when they're not on it looks like he watches old movies on cable -- maybe the old Michael Douglas vehicle The Star Chamber and that hoary "manhunter" flick that shows up on TNT about every six hours. Surely you know the one: a dreadlocked street guy running through deep woods with a pack of heavily-armed crackers hot on his trail. How else, I ask you, would Saul have constructed a plot that's so entirely unoriginal without lifting it straight from all those hours parked in his Lazy-Boy? It could have been worse, I guess: he could have included the old "innocent man convicted by vindictive DA" plot. Oh, wait! as the Prego Spaghetti Sauce people so often say, "It's in there!" WARNING: the following contains all manner of spoilers for this book's plot -- such as it is. Building a Plot Out of Pieces of Other Plots Our hero is Jeff Converse, a young architecture student and part-time Good Samaritan who happened upon a brutally beaten woman in a Manhattan subway station. For his troubles, he's tried and convicted of attempted murder. Heather Randall -- the pampered daughter of the New York District Attorney no less -- is in love with Jeff, whose dad is the handyman at her family's beach house. Of course she's absolutely convinced of her beloved's innocence, just as her father's convinced of his guilt. One of Jeff's parents (his mother) has retreated into a religion-laced stupor, resigning her son's fate to God's hands and His Will. Jeff's father Keith, though, is (like Heather) certain his child is incapable of the crime for which he was covicted. During transport to prison at Rikers Island, the prison van carrying Jeff crashes and burns, killing everyone on board... or so his parents are told. In reality, though, Jeff is spirited away from the burning van and hidden in a warren of tunnels beneath the streets of Manhattan. His first night he falls asleep, locked in a barren room, with one word on his mind: "Why?" When he awakens, Jeff finds that he has been "partnered" with a gigantic sociopath named Jagger, who is believed by the world above to have escaped from Rikers. Jagger had been convicted for a string of particularly nasty murders (while at Rikers, he committed another just like the others). Meanwhile, a group of Manhattan's most powerful citizens is girding its collective loins for The Hunt; and they ain't planning to hunt those giant alligators rumor claims inhabit the New York sewer system. It is the custom of this band of movers and shakers to mete out their special brand of justice where they believe the judicial system to have failed: Jeff is chosen because his sentence was relatively light; Jagger was fingered 'cause he's a serial killer with homosexual overtones. This will be the first time the Manhattan Hunt Club has hunted a pair -- for Jeff and Jagger are their human prey. The MHC has never failed to bag its quarry. Their bearers, beaters, and herders are the true denizens of Manhattan's depths: the homeless who have lived there for decades will keep the quarry from escaping the tunnel system. Alerted to Jeff's survival, Heather and Keith descend into the tunnels themselves in a search for the missing man; they're aided by a teenaged runaway named Jinx. From that moment on, the plot becomes increasingly predictable. Without reading another word, we can be certain that before the final page:
You may think there are too many plot spoilers here -- I suggest that the plot was already spoiled when I picked up the book! Living On Borrowed Time Only one element of this plot is original (to my knowledge): Saul has placed the hunters in the tunnels under Manhattan. Everything else is assembled piecemeal from: Movies:
Television:
And on, and on. Stupid Mistakes, Unbelievable Coincidences For one stupid mistake, check this out: after Jeff's "death," his mother has the body cremated and holds a memorial Mass for him. Cremated? Excuse me? A woman who spends half her time fingering her Rosary? I don't think so! For unbelievable coincidences, try these: in at least four levels of tunnels under Manhattan (twenty-six square miles, right?), Heather and Keith walk right to Jeff! Wow! Hope they bought lottery tickets that day, too! And these three folks -- only one armed with a pistol -- tumble to the idea of the hunt and take out four hunters, one at a time, before any of the others is the wiser! Double Wow!! make that two lottery tickets! More plot holes: the MHC grabbed Jeff by staging an accident with the prison van and grabbing him at the site. Wait a minute -- what about the two policemen killed when the van crashed? Didn't the NYPD do any investigation? Huh? And on, and on... Overall Saul keeps his plot spinning at breakneck speed -- I suspect so that we'll overlook all the logical and factual holes in his tale. While the book is written in a very readable style, it suffers from poor plotting and characters with the depth of a sheet of onion skin. This is most definitely the literary equivalent of cotton candy. My advice is to pass on it. all content copyright © 2001-present by scmrak
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