Rendezvous Eighteenth

Rating:
Summary: Strange Goings-On In Paris
Review: Although I am not a fan of murder mysteries, I do love to watch characters come to life between the covers of an entertaining book. This is exactly what happens in Jake Lamar's latest book, and his first one set in Paris.

Ricky Jenks is a guy who said goodbye to the USA and headed to Paris, as many Americans had before him . Ricky is someone who I'm sure I had met before. He has a soft, forgiven heart, a sharp mind and a love for his simple life in his adopted homeland.

The plot is pretty amazing and, although I do not usually read this type of book, it was really entertaining. It's one of those rare books where something is always happening when at the same time nothing is. I find it fascinating that so much can happen in so little time. It is a rare book where there are no dull parts to it.

The words and style that Jake uses allows him to paint vivid pictures as he visits cafes, walks down Pigalle and shops at the local market, really brought the book to life for me. He does this as he brings in local culture and expatriate culture into his little corner of Paris.

Being a great fan of football (soccer!), I loved the way he incorportated the get-together of Ricky and his lovely Muslim lady with the back-drop of the World Cup 1998 held in France.

The book is a must read not only for fans of Paris but for those who appreciate a well contructed novel.

Rating:
Summary: Strange Goings-On In Paris
Review: Although I am not a fan of murder mysteries, I do love to watch characters come to life between the covers of an entertaining book. This is exactly what happens in Jake Lamar's latest book, and his first one set in Paris.

Ricky Jenks is a guy who said goodbye to the USA and headed to Paris, as many Americans had before him . Ricky is someone who I'm sure I had met before. He has a soft, forgiven heart, a sharp mind and a love for his simple life in his adopted homeland.

The plot is pretty amazing and, although I do not usually read this type of book, it was really entertaining. It's one of those rare books where something is always happening when at the same time nothing is. I find it fascinating that so much can happen in so little time. It is a rare book where there are no dull parts to it.

The words and style that Jake uses allows him to paint vivid pictures as he visits cafes, walks down Pigalle and shops at the local market, really brought the book to life for me. He does this as he brings in local culture and expatriate culture into his little corner of Paris.

Being a great fan of football (soccer!), I loved the way he incorportated the get-together of Ricky and his lovely Muslim lady with the back-drop of the World Cup 1998 held in France.

The book is a must read not only for fans of Paris but for those who appreciate a well contructed novel.

Rating:
Summary: Looking for Answers
Review: I'm in the final pages of this book. I came to Amazon looking for answers, hoping someone wrote a long and revealing review that would tip me off as to the ending. I'm afraid to go forward. This mystery-thriller has me biting my nails. I'm so afraid of Cash and what he is going to do to Rickey, his naive cousin who is too good for revenge. The missing money. The missing grenade. The missing Serena. And what part does Marva play in all of this?
If anyone wants to save me from biting my nails off, email me: [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: refreshingly different and totally enthralling thriller
Review: In a family of overachievers, he was considered the only African-American in his generation not living up to his potential. For instance, his cousin Cash grew up to become an internationally renowned surgeon whose income was in the seven figure range. When Ricky Jenks was jilted at the altar because his bride ran away with Cash, he left America for a job playing piano in a quaint Parisian Bistro.

After living there for nine years, his cousin Cash begs him to find his wife who walked out on him. Cash believes she's in Paris but when Selena meets Ricky, her face is black and blue from the beating her husband gave her. Rickey confronts his cousin who shows him the knife wound Serena gave him after he found out she was once a high priced call girl pimped by her twin brother. Besides the marital fiasco, Rickey becomes entangled with unsavory people including the bodyguards of Serena's brother and Cash. Then there is a policeman asking why his keys were on the body of a murdered prostitute in his building.

RENDEZVOUS EIGHTEENTH is a refreshingly different and totally enthralling thriller. Readers will finish the book in one sitting because they need to know what motivates the various antagonists. In the middle of all this drama, Ricky barely copes with his pregnant girlfriend, who he loves. She refuses to marry him because he isn't a Muslim. Inside the action, Jake Lamar gives his audience the experience of the African-American expatriate life style in 1990's Paris with a brilliant visual display that forms a panorama in the reader's mind.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: refreshingly different and totally enthralling thriller
Review: In a family of overachievers, he was considered the only African-American in his generation not living up to his potential. For instance, his cousin Cash grew up to become an internationally renowned surgeon whose income was in the seven figure range. When Ricky Jenks was jilted at the altar because his bride ran away with Cash, he left America for a job playing piano in a quaint Parisian Bistro.

After living there for nine years, his cousin Cash begs him to find his wife who walked out on him. Cash believes she's in Paris but when Selena meets Ricky, her face is black and blue from the beating her husband gave her. Rickey confronts his cousin who shows him the knife wound Serena gave him after he found out she was once a high priced call girl pimped by her twin brother. Besides the marital fiasco, Rickey becomes entangled with unsavory people including the bodyguards of Serena's brother and Cash. Then there is a policeman asking why his keys were on the body of a murdered prostitute in his building.

RENDEZVOUS EIGHTEENTH is a refreshingly different and totally enthralling thriller. Readers will finish the book in one sitting because they need to know what motivates the various antagonists. In the middle of all this drama, Ricky barely copes with his pregnant girlfriend, who he loves. She refuses to marry him because he isn't a Muslim. Inside the action, Jake Lamar gives his audience the experience of the African-American expatriate life style in 1990's Paris with a brilliant visual display that forms a panorama in the reader's mind.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Great Crime Fiction!
Review: Jake Lamar's Rendezvous Eighteenth is set in modern day Paris's Eighteenth Arrondissement, a beautiful and decadent section of town that underachieving African American Ricky Jenks has chosen to call home for the past ten years. Ricky is leading a carefree bohemian lifestyle as a musician in a small café until his peaceful existence is interrupted by a desperate phone call from his least favorite cousin, Cassius, a renowned surgeon to the NFL and NBA athletes. Cassius is looking for his wife (Serena) who has fled to Paris after a heated domestic dispute and offers Ricky a thousand dollars to look in his expatriate circle of friends for clues to her whereabouts. Good-natured Ricky is immediately drawn into a quagmire that results in him being a suspect in the murder of a transvestite prostitute found in the lobby of his building with keys to his apartment. Complicating matters is the pregnancy of his French Muslim lover, Cassius's strange business dealings and partners, and the enigma behind Serena's cryptic past and reemergence in Paris.

The novel contains excellent characterizations - very full-bodied, rich descriptions that truly bring the characters to life; they have depth, color, and painfully human vulnerabilities. The cultural, political, and societal issues of Paris's rich multi-ethnic, multi-racial environment were relayed in clever dialogue and within the histories of each character, for example: a Serbian freedom fighter/mime, an African American woman restaurant owner with a "divafied" attitude, WWII veterans, a devout Muslim student struggling with worldly desires, etc. The novel was paced and moved very well - every chapter ended with a mini "cliffhanger" making it impossible to stop turning pages. This is a great addition to the crime fiction genre - it had romance, intrigue, and wonderful touches of wit and humor. This was my first exposure to Mr. Lamar's work - I definitely plan to add his other novels to my reading list.

Reviewed by Phyllis
APOOO BookClub, Nubian Circle Book Club

Rating:
Summary: Paris in the springtime
Review: Set in romantic Paris in the drippy, rainy springtime, RENDEZVOUS EIGHTEENTH is a delicious mystery about an expatriate African American. Rickey Jenks is escaping his family in New Jersey who he believes think he's fat and dumb. After his bride-to-be leaves him at the altar, Rickey decides he has had enough and moves to Paris where no one knows him. One night when he returns home from work, he discovers a transsexual prostitute has had her throat slit in the entrance to his building. After slipping in the blood and then fainting, he wakes up to find that the Paris police think he did it. To further complicate his life, a cousin he hates, Cash Washington, suddenly appears in Paris and wants to meet with Rickey. At the same time his African girlfriend begins having second thoughts about their relationship and his friend and French tutor, Valista the Serb, wants him to hide a box of hand grenades for her. Amid the confusion, Rickey knows he must solve the mystery or do time in a French jail.

RENDEZVOUS EIGHTEENTH is a wonderful travel guide to Paris. It is also a social commentary on the past and present expatriate African American community as well as a riveting mystery that holds the reader's attention to the last word on the last page.

Reviewed by alice Holman
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers