Robbers

Rating:
Summary: Cook¿s Tour of Highway Robbery
Review: Christopher Cook's Robbers is an on-the-run tale of stealing, shooting, and stalking. Robbers is of a faux-western cops and robbers brand written with neo millennium panache. Robbers' threshold for audience entertainment and captivity is Texas-sized.

Pulling over for gas and smokes

This book ignites into wild conflagration in the opening scene, when miscreant Eddie puts a bullet in the head of an "A-rab" cashier after squabbling over a penny and a pack of smokes. Cook opens Grisham-like with this injection of drama, tightening the reader's grip of the novel. After doing the deed, Eddie runs out to his ragtop Cadillac only to be chided by his partner-in-crime, Ray Bob, for neglecting to score the dough from the cash register. Ray Bob, instead of accelerating for a mad escape, runs frustrated inside the 7-Eleven to finish the job. His seemingly foolish and firebrand move is wont to make readers tense, but the delayed getaway drizzles a relaxing bit of humor.

In steps the law

Rule Hooks is a Stetson wearing, Dodge truck driving Texas Ranger charged to capture the two villains Eddie and Ray Bob. Hooks proudly comprises Texas cowboy stereotypes: drawl, racist tendencies and poor grammar, but with the do-you-feel-lucky schtick of Dirty Harry Callahan and the court-is-adjourned intelligence of Perry Mason. His lines are not as graceful as those of Callahan but his guarded emotions, steely eyes, and cold calculation rival even the Dirty one. He pursues the scoundrels relentlessly from Austin to Galveston, stopping along the way only to refill on women and rest.

Christopher cooks

For a first time novelist, Cook shows potential, and then realizes it with his vivid veritas, on the money metaphors, and pull no punches prose. Towards the beginning of Robbers Cook lays it on thick seeming eager and overstated. As the book progresses, however, he sheds his verbose penchant and settles into a comfortable niche. Also, his zero conversation quotation policy is annoying at the onset, but once the trend and pace of the book are revealed, it seems quotation marks would only inhibit his signature straight-story flow. Cook writes in a seemingly satirical fashion sometimes as he reaches for the hyperbolic limits of human depravity just to gloss over them without remorse in a paled Bret Easton Ellis fashion. Otherwise, his comedic attempts are straightforward and for the most part pointed in the roughneck/redneck Texas direction. As an Austin, Texas resident, Cook is fully aware of the Texas reality, which can at times be funnier than fiction.

Robbers in brief

Eddie and Ray Bob are killers. Hooks is the law, therefore he chases them. Eddie is usually kind, sensitive, slightly dim-intellectually speaking, and has no real intention to murder. Ray Bob however, fiends unabashedly for bouts of the ultra violence. Often, Eddie is merely along for the ride, a victim of circumstance, until he meets hitchhiker Della, and falls in love. Della brings out the soft side in Eddie, which infuriates Ray Bob because he doesn't want to lose his "runnin' buddy." Hooks is rather apathetic to the soap opera drama that is a bizarre crime triangle; he only cares about his numero uno objective: chase down the elusive convenience store killers. Robbers has the normal ingredients of a cop and robber story, but is saved from being trite by Christopher Cook and his chronically fast paced literary force feeding savoir faire. For a new writer, Cook brings intrigue and cannot be overlooked as a bright and upcoming fiction author.

Rating:
Summary: it's a good first novel
Review: Cook's first novel is a pretty good first novel. The plot is simple, two men on the run, chased by a ranger and a girl. there are times when the plot falters a little and cook's believability is uncertain. His characterization is a little shaky. you have della, who is just an uninteresting character, but that isn't unusual for a male to have trouble writing female characters. Ray Bob is too over the top, which does help you root for Eddie, because even though he is a bad man (trying to go right, a little cliche), we have Ray Bob's rabid behavior to make Eddie look good. at the last quarter of the novel, cook tries to show that Ray Bob isn't all bad and that maybe we could sympathize a little with him. but it is too little, too late. perhaps next time cook will humanize his villains earlier in the story. and finally there is the texas ranger, Rule, by far the most interesting character, but by no means a saint. Cook has a great ear for dialect and his locales are dead on (i live in beaumont and i know the places mentioned). _robbers_ shows that cook has huge potential as a regional writer.

the book lost stars because at times the story dragged. part of this is cook's lack of quotation marks. i'm not sure what his purpose was here, but it made the story confusing at times and slowed it down at other times. a writer shouldn't try to be experimental just for the sake of being experimental. the book was a bit predictable (i can just see tarantino reading the book saying, 'gee, i'd like to make a movie of it, but i've done it already'). and what has to be the biggest flaw is the ending. the tidy little ending that wrapped everything up so nice and neat. over 350 pages and the reader is cheated at the end.

still, the flaws and the good points of the novel balance each other out. i look forward to cook's next novel. i see his potential and i know his sophmore novel will only be better.

Rating:
Summary: Promising, Promising
Review: Having just finished Christopher Cook's debut novel, I am struck by his vast talent as a creator of deeply interesting characters. They ring true from their physical discription to their speech. In fact characterization is the strongest part of this book. It is because of this strength that I had two problems. First his discriptive passages are in serious need of editing. Illituration gone mad is one way to describe it. The second problem for me was the plot. Cook has the reader invest a great deal in each of the characters and yet he will kill them off without compunction. He is illustrating that life is fickle and that death too comes without expectation. While that is probably true it takes away from the satisfaction of a good yarn.

Christopher Cook is an author whom I will read again and hopefully his next effort will not be quite a self conscious as his first. His talent is undisputed, his execution needs a bit of honing.

Rating:
Summary: A Good Storyteller
Review: I am not a practiced book reviewer, just a avid reader. It has been a long time since I have read a "new" story. I was about to take a pickup load of books, with the bookmark about halfway to the middle, to the dumster. It seems that the big name writers have quit writing and started just typeing. Mr. Cook managed to keep me awake nearly all night with his new book. I hope it catches on. Its time we had a good storyteller to make a breakthru to the best seller list. This is the guy.

Rating:
Summary: I loved this book!
Review: I loved this book and so did my 73 year old mother. Swift moving, suspenseful and full of surprises, this book contained no dead air. The replication of the dialect that is peculiar to the area is dead-on and extremely funny. Although the main characters were not necessarily the most likable guys, they are absolutely real. A minor provocation sets the "robbers" of the title on a brutal and self-perpetuating crime spree. As they cut a swath through an evocatively described southeast Texas, they gather a comet's tail of very well drawn hangers on and pursuers. Although you might take issue with the ending, you certainly won't figure it out beforehand. I really recommend this book to readers looking for something different. Christopher Cook is a truly unique voice in the overpopulated and many times undistinguished genre of crime fiction.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Read
Review: My 5 star pick of the month. Cook's style is very similar to Cormac McCarthy. Some may dispute whether Cook pulls it off. Once you become accustomed to the style of writing, you are hooked to the story. Ranger tracking robbers. Sounds simplistic. This book is anything but.

Rating:
Summary: the first chapter is good but ...
Review: The first chapter is good but it goes downhill from there. There are no redeeming qualities to these characters. So, in that respect, I think the book fails. Now, I like bad guys just as much as anyone. But there has to be something good about them, otherwise, I don't care what happens to them. Accordingly, I didn't care what happened to these guys. In other words, they are not three dimensional characters. They are merely caricatures. Which is OK for minor characters, but not the protagonists.

Rating:
Summary: Despite tough start, "Robbers" holds up
Review: Timing is everything. For Christopher Cook's manuscript of his first novel "Robbers," everything couldn't have been worse.

The day the book was sent out for bids from publishers was the day, two years ago April 20, of the Columbine school massacre.

Nobody, that day, was looking for a modern Western shoot-'em-up. Not one publisher made a bid.

"Robbers" eventually found its place between hard covers (Carroll and Graf Publishers, Inc., New York) and is on its way to finding widespread readership, chalking up excellent reviews, including The New York Times.

Here's my personal endorsement: I read it three times in the past month and have recommended it to most everybody I think would enjoy it.

That's not necessarily everybody.

"Robbers" puts you on the road with a couple of Texas psycho, good- ol'- boy bad guys on a murder spree of convenience store clerks, beginning with a fellow who was a penny foolish.

When one of the pair, Eddie, comes up one cent short for a pack of cigarettes at an Austin 7-Eleven, the clerk --"a plump young man with burnished bronze skin and a black mustache, either Indian or Pakistani" -- refuses to cut the price even a penny.

"'What kind of !#$% country you come from?'" Eddie says, flipping the top of his Zippo open and shut in one hand.

"'Very fine country,'" the clerk says. "'Where we pay for what we get.'"

"'Listen to me. This is America. Gimmee them cigarettes.'"

"Only the guy didn't budge. Not one word, just standing there like a chocolate Deputy Doright. A corner of his mouth lifting slightly, either a smirk or twitch."

That's when Eddie "hoisted a leg and reached into his boot. Pulled a .22 revolver, an old Colt Police Positive with a four-inch barrel, looked like a toy. Pointed it at the guy. Arm straight out, finger on the trigger. Saying, 'Gimmee them !#$% cigarettes.'"

"'Robbery,' the man squawked. He stared at the gun, dark eyes blinking, teethed his upper lip, jaw thrust forward. 'I call the police. Get your license plate.'

"So Eddie pulled the trigger. A sharp crack, the barrel kicking up. The bullet caught the clerk square in the forehead. His head snapped back, a small black hole in the bronze curvature. He stood there with his hands on the counter a moment, eyes crossed, then slid down onto the floor out of sight."

Too real for you? Then don't read "Robbers." It is real Texas -- really violent, really sexy and really religious.

If the mix of religion with sex and violence seems out of place, then you don't know the place Texas is, especially the rural regions.

The author, Christopher Cook, 48, knows it well. He grew up in what's called the Golden Triangle of Southeast Texas, where the petrochemical industry pulls country boys up by their roots from the Pineywoods and into the refineries along the Gulf Coast.

That's where the killers wind up, with a Texas Ranger closing in on them. One makes it all the way to his home county of Jasper, where the dragging death of a black man is a fresh memory.

I'll tell you this much about the conclusion of its finely crafted plot: Good guys don't always win, bad guys don't always lose. But don't worry: nothing awful happens to the little puppy.

Cook has the Texas vernacular nailed, which he expertly utilizes in description as well as dialogue, one blending into the other without quote marks to separate the line of thought.

I would have liked the style better with normal punctuation for quotes, which I took liberty in adding to the section excerpted above.

Cook, whom I met in Austin recently, explained that what his characters think and what they say can't be easily distinguished. It's a literary thing. Maybe you understand.

What I know is simply this: "Robbers" is well written, well-plotted and superb in its characterization of a deep dark subculture, deep in the heart of Texas.

P.S. The British edition of "Robbers" was just released; French, German and Japanese editions are coming out later this year. Cook has a short story collection, "Screen Door Jesus & Other Tales," that will be published this fall, and a filmmaker in New York is making a movie based on those stories. In May, Cook moved to Prague where he is working on his next novel.

Rating:
Summary: Ray Bob's gun and Eddie's soul
Review: What we got here are a couple of Texas lowlifes--Ray Bob and Eddie--only one of them is lower than the other, and the lower one, Ray Bob, is one mean SOB. Ray Bob would as soon shoot you as look at you, you don't say the right thing. Eddie is a more forgiving kinda guy.

But as runnin' buddies they're together and so Eddie gets caught up in Ray Bob's karma. Not good. Meanwhile we got Della Street who's on the lam for defending herself against a scumbag, and the law, in the form of Rule Hooks, who's out to nab whoever killed his friend, another lawman.

This Cook guy is one helluva writer. I was you, I'd pick this up and read it. You'll have a great time; these are characters who talk to you same time they're talking to each other, you catch my drift. This has heart, soul, and some nasty stuff in it which being a crime novel's bound to happen.

I loved this. Think you will too.

Rating:
Summary: It's not James Lee Burke
Review: When the publisher compared Cook's writing favorably to James Le Burke, I was hooked. And I stayed hooked through part of the book, but then I thought the story came a part. Too many first time novelists try to "out kill" established writers, I suppose, because they think "more gore" sells. I'm not at all opposed to a high kill ratio, but I thought Cook made a real mess of the ending. If Cook is James Lee Burke, then I'm Stephen King.