Rating: 
Summary: A great mystery book!
Review: I really enjoyed reading this book. Since I am a teacher, I can relate to the "hero" being a teacher. He had real life problems and delt with them in a realistic manner. This book fed on some of my fears about what can if your life gets out of hand through no fault of your own. I liked this book from the first page to the last.
Rating:
Summary: Blauner is one of the best!
Review: I'm ashamed to see that the one-star reviewer is from London, right on my doorstep. Blauner's deft characterizations - the Palestinian girl battling between the strict regime of her family and the new influences and freedoms of America, the teacher basking in the glory of appearing as a hero to his son - are superbly handled and were obviously lost on that reader. The others, thankfully, seemed to have picked up on the fact that Blauner is one of the most skilful, intelligent writers coming out of the USA right now. I agree wholeheartedly with the reviewer from Austin who can't understand why Blauner's not more popular. He should be up there matching Grisham's and Cornwell's sales - but for my money his writing has more intelligence and pathos than both.
Rating: 
Summary: A fun read that never quite fulfills its own promise
Review: I'm going to say right off the top that I plowed through this book. It moves at breakneck speed, and I enjoyed it almost every step of the way (which is why I gave it four stars). But I knew that something was wrong about halfway through when I realized that if I were to lose the book and never finish it, I wouldn't particularly mind. How can a book be so compelling and un-compelling at the same time?I began to think about the question in terms of genre. There is no reasons why thrillers can't be great literature. Sure, there always has been and will be a shortage of these literary thrillers, but that's no reason why readers should not expect a great deal from the thrillers they read. On the other hand, uninspired writing doesn't always have to keep a thriller from being very entertaining, and I've gobbled down my fair share of these, knowing that they were candy and that they were not particularly good for me. "Man of the Hour" is an interesting case because it has a literary thriller plot but pulp thriller writing, and for me that left me feeling a little unsatisfied. The plot concerns a school teacher who rescues a student when a bomb explodes on a school bus. First he becomes a media darling, but then the media turns against him and vilifies him, announcing he is the prime suspect, despite the fact that he has not been charged. This plot seems literary thriller-ish to me because it depends more on tension and character and mood than it does on body count. You have the ordinary person who finds himself dragged into an extra-ordinary, but basically plausible situation, a set-up reminiscent of the better work of Colin Harrison (minus Harrison's endless gratuitous sex scenes). This sort of story can be riveting, the problem with "Man of the Hour" is that the apparatus isn't quite up to snuff. His characters are often caricatures, with lines of dialogue designed not to be plausible but to raise the tension level. The scenes seem to me situation-driven rather than character driven, and frankly so do to the characters. In all fairness, the rude cop, the crazy wife, the out-spoken student, the belligerent lunch-lady make for entertaining reading, but they also leave me feeling like I've got something gritty on my teeth. Somewhat more interesting is Blauner's portrait of the terrorist bomber, who he describes sympathetically and in somewhat more depth than the school-teacher protagonist, Fitzgerald, who comes off as a two-dimensional fantasy of urban pedagogy. The bomber does things, he faces moral crises, he feels confused and angry and belligerent: all very interesting stuff. Fitzgerald, on the other hand - well, I suppose we are told he feels things, but I never quite feel what he feels. These two figures circle each other throughout the book, and any reader familiar with the genre knows there has to be some sort of confrontation, so the climax will be a surprise for absolutely no one, and getting there happens in very un-thriller-like ways. Fitzgerald determines that he is going to track down the real bomber, since the authorities aren't doing it, but his investigative efforts consist mainly of him asking people he runs into if they happen to know who did it. And how he manages to face off against the bomber at the end - well, I won't spoil it, but lets just say that it was tool novelistic even for a die-hard novel-reader. Ultimately, this book is far superior than the sum of its parts. I think anyone picking it up for a long airplane flight will get the kind of compelling entertainment they desire. It is just that I wanted it to be more than what it was: I wanted it to be what it was supposed to be.
Rating:
Summary: A fun read that never quite fulfills its own promise
Review: I'm going to say right off the top that I plowed through this book. It moves at breakneck speed, and I enjoyed it almost every step of the way (which is why I gave it four stars). But I knew that something was wrong about halfway through when I realized that if I were to lose the book and never finish it, I wouldn't particularly mind. How can a book be so compelling and un-compelling at the same time? I began to think about the question in terms of genre. There is no reasons why thrillers can't be great literature. Sure, there always has been and will be a shortage of these literary thrillers, but that's no reason why readers should not expect a great deal from the thrillers they read. On the other hand, uninspired writing doesn't always have to keep a thriller from being very entertaining, and I've gobbled down my fair share of these, knowing that they were candy and that they were not particularly good for me. "Man of the Hour" is an interesting case because it has a literary thriller plot but pulp thriller writing, and for me that left me feeling a little unsatisfied. The plot concerns a school teacher who rescues a student when a bomb explodes on a school bus. First he becomes a media darling, but then the media turns against him and vilifies him, announcing he is the prime suspect, despite the fact that he has not been charged. This plot seems literary thriller-ish to me because it depends more on tension and character and mood than it does on body count. You have the ordinary person who finds himself dragged into an extra-ordinary, but basically plausible situation, a set-up reminiscent of the better work of Colin Harrison (minus Harrison's endless gratuitous sex scenes). This sort of story can be riveting, the problem with "Man of the Hour" is that the apparatus isn't quite up to snuff. His characters are often caricatures, with lines of dialogue designed not to be plausible but to raise the tension level. The scenes seem to me situation-driven rather than character driven, and frankly so do to the characters. In all fairness, the rude cop, the crazy wife, the out-spoken student, the belligerent lunch-lady make for entertaining reading, but they also leave me feeling like I've got something gritty on my teeth. Somewhat more interesting is Blauner's portrait of the terrorist bomber, who he describes sympathetically and in somewhat more depth than the school-teacher protagonist, Fitzgerald, who comes off as a two-dimensional fantasy of urban pedagogy. The bomber does things, he faces moral crises, he feels confused and angry and belligerent: all very interesting stuff. Fitzgerald, on the other hand - well, I suppose we are told he feels things, but I never quite feel what he feels. These two figures circle each other throughout the book, and any reader familiar with the genre knows there has to be some sort of confrontation, so the climax will be a surprise for absolutely no one, and getting there happens in very un-thriller-like ways. Fitzgerald determines that he is going to track down the real bomber, since the authorities aren't doing it, but his investigative efforts consist mainly of him asking people he runs into if they happen to know who did it. And how he manages to face off against the bomber at the end - well, I won't spoil it, but lets just say that it was tool novelistic even for a die-hard novel-reader. Ultimately, this book is far superior than the sum of its parts. I think anyone picking it up for a long airplane flight will get the kind of compelling entertainment they desire. It is just that I wanted it to be more than what it was: I wanted it to be what it was supposed to be.
Rating:
Summary: Blauner's the Best!
Review: I've read all of Blauner's books and it is a mystery to me why he isn't one of America's favorite writers. "Man of the Hour" has everything that makes Blauner great. First off, a super exciting and realistic story. Second, note perfect dialogue - think Elmore Leonard with an edge. And finally, complex and sympathetic characters you can really root for. Having said all that, the best thing about "Man of the Hour" is that it's a great read. I polished it off in two days. That good. My advice to Blauner: Put some nitro in that pen of yours and hurry it up a little. I'm sick of waiting three years between books.
Rating:
Summary: I thoroughly enjoyed it
Review: Iam a reader who usually enjoys Grisham and DeMille, but this was easily better than their most recent books. I was gripped to the last page and could not put it down.
Rating: 
Summary: For a thriller, it's not very thrilling
Review: If this book had not been a selection of my book club, I would not have finished it. There are simply too many good books to waste time on this one. When I described this book to people who wondered what I was reading, they almost always said, "That sounds good." And I thought, "Yeah, it should be." So how does a writer who chooses such a clever premise for the book muck it up so badly. My theory is that maybe he "reported" the book. Someone told me that Blauner is a newspaper reporter--and maybe that's why he "reported" the way the characters were feeling, and why the characters responses "Oh no. The bus is blowing up" seemed so wooden. Perhaps as a reporter, the author is not accustomed to exploring the varied motivations and reactions of people to life events. Or maybe he's just a bad writer...Skip this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Boy, talk about a bad day at the office!
Review: In MAN OF THE HOUR, the reader is reminded that glory is fleeting, especially when driven by the capricious print and television media. David Fitzgerald is an English teacher, and a darn good one, at the Coney Island High School. (I consider teaching one of the most honorable of professions, more so than even medicine or law. I can still remember the handful of really excellent teachers in my life. But, I digress.) One day, the bus on which David is to take his class on a field trip is destroyed by a bomb. Luckily, only two people were aboard at the time, the driver and a pregnant student. The driver dies, but Fitzgerald risks his life to save the girl. He immediately becomes the media's darling hero of the moment. Unfortunately, because of circumstance, ambiguous evidence, and confused statements David made after the blast, he soon becomes the chief suspect, and the media turns on him with a savage vengeance. We know from the very beginning that the real bomber is limo driver Nasser, an ex-student of Fitzgerald's, who is a 24-year old of Palestinian birth previously imprisoned by the Israelis. This experience leaves him hating Israel and, of course, the pro-Zionist American society and everything for which it stands. Now, in America, Nasser has fallen in with a couple of moth-eaten, sad-to-be-alive Arab terrorists that manage to give even that profession a bad name. Thus, the plot inspired very little suspense in this reader, only a mild curiosity as to how the author would redress the balance in order to achieve the de rigueur happy ending. David is a likable enough character, especially as he's also embroiled in a child custody battle with an ex-wife who, in the technical jargon of psychiatry, is "just plain nuts". As a bombing suspect, he also faces loss of his job and imprisonment. Definitely the makings of a bad hair day. Nonetheless, neither my sympathy for Fitzgerald, nor my esteem for teachers in general, compels me to award this novel anything more than a marginal "thumbs up".
Rating:
Summary: Boy, talk about a bad day at the office!
Review: In MAN OF THE HOUR, the reader is reminded that glory is fleeting, especially when driven by the capricious print and television media. David Fitzgerald is an English teacher, and a darn good one, at the Coney Island High School. (I consider teaching one of the most honorable of professions, more so than even medicine or law. I can still remember the handful of really excellent teachers in my life. But, I digress.) One day, the bus on which David is to take his class on a field trip is destroyed by a bomb. Luckily, only two people were aboard at the time, the driver and a pregnant student. The driver dies, but Fitzgerald risks his life to save the girl. He immediately becomes the media's darling hero of the moment. Unfortunately, because of circumstance, ambiguous evidence, and confused statements David made after the blast, he soon becomes the chief suspect, and the media turns on him with a savage vengeance. We know from the very beginning that the real bomber is limo driver Nasser, an ex-student of Fitzgerald's, who is a 24-year old of Palestinian birth previously imprisoned by the Israelis. This experience leaves him hating Israel and, of course, the pro-Zionist American society and everything for which it stands. Now, in America, Nasser has fallen in with a couple of moth-eaten, sad-to-be-alive Arab terrorists that manage to give even that profession a bad name. Thus, the plot inspired very little suspense in this reader, only a mild curiosity as to how the author would redress the balance in order to achieve the de rigueur happy ending. David is a likable enough character, especially as he's also embroiled in a child custody battle with an ex-wife who, in the technical jargon of psychiatry, is "just plain nuts". As a bombing suspect, he also faces loss of his job and imprisonment. Definitely the makings of a bad hair day. Nonetheless, neither my sympathy for Fitzgerald, nor my esteem for teachers in general, compels me to award this novel anything more than a marginal "thumbs up".
Rating:
Summary: A Great Novel!!
Review: In these jaded times it sounds corny and false to say that a writer just keeps getting better and better, but in Peter Blauner's case, it's the absolute truth. Although his novels have the pacing of thrillers, I consider them to be the very best urban fiction of our age. From "Slow Motion Riot" to "Man of the Hour", Blauner has brilliantly dramatized the perils and rewards of life in urban America in a way that makes the territory his alone. If you dig a great story...if characters you'll never forget are your thing, make "Man of the Hour" the next book you read.
|
