Rating: 
Summary: The most unique mystery premise you'll ever read...
Review: This is a wonderfully crafted mystery. Perhaps more importantly though, in these days of you-gotta-have-a-gimmick mysteries (quilting mystery,cooking mystery,Jane Austen mystery,cab-driver mystery.....) no one has yet to match the unique central character of Caveman's Valentine. Romulus Ledbetter lets us into his world of schizophrenia and, hopefully by the end of the book, the reader understands and gains empathy for this illness that affects one in every hundred people in the U.S.. Romulus captures our attention, our compassion, and our hearts. I salute Mr. Green for finally casting the schizophrenic as the hero in this novel, instead of the killer at the core of far too many mysteries and thrillers to count.
Rating: 
Summary: Quite good -- some flaws -- a fast read.
Review: This is an entertaining and well written first novel, which is very reminiscent of Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem -- if you enjoy this, you will also like that detective story about a similarly unreliable narrator (in that case the narrator has Tourette's syndrome). Both books struggle with the same problem...with such an interesting and unreliable lead character, how do you keep the plot moving along, and allow the reader to "solve" the mystery along with the narrator. The problem is that the narrator must be relatively coherent in order for the reader to tag along, and this coherency occasionally seems at odds with the narrator's disease. Also, I had to put this book down a couple of times--there are some descriptions of torture, needles, and AIDS that are disturbing...I think the author could fairly be accused of exploiting homophobia for dramatic purposes (the purported villain is a Mapplethorpe-like character)--I don't know -- if you are one of those people who think that when the Indians are the bad guys it is an anti Native American movie, then that logic applies here as well. Or you can see his approach as an even-handed look at the unfairness and irrationality of these same fears, etc, etc. I thought it was more on the exploitative side myself, but that is just my opinion. One final thing--I think every new author wants to try his hand at writing a sex scene, and Green is no exception. He isn't that good at it. However, I am being too critical...this was definitely an enjoyable read...perfect for an airplane.
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