Shoot the Moon

Rating:
Summary: OK for the airplane or beach
Review: Nice airplane or beach reading, this book is that sort of "witty" crime story featuring "characters" in both the underworld and law enforcement who all stumble their way through a big drug deal, providing lots of slang and "insider" info as they do. Like Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiassen, it's good fun, could make a good movie, but nothing that's going to stick with you. Actually Klempner does a pretty good job juggling the hero and his sidekicks with the NYCPD trying to take him down, the Bronx gangsters who are trying to rip him off, the Cuban gangsters trying to get even, and the mafia he's trying to deal with... In its zest to make everything work out and have all the lose ends tied up, the plot relies a little too much on police bumbling, and a crucial ally who betrays her past, but other than that it's fine.

Rating:
Summary: OK for the airplane or beach
Review: Nice airplane or beach reading, this book is that sort of "witty" crime story featuring "characters" in both the underworld and law enforcement who all stumble their way through a big drug deal, providing lots of slang and "insider" info as they do. Like Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiassen, it's good fun, could make a good movie, but nothing that's going to stick with you. Actually Klempner does a pretty good job juggling the hero and his sidekicks with the NYCPD trying to take him down, the Bronx gangsters who are trying to rip him off, the Cuban gangsters trying to get even, and the mafia he's trying to deal with... In its zest to make everything work out and have all the lose ends tied up, the plot relies a little too much on police bumbling, and a crucial ally who betrays her past, but other than that it's fine.

Rating:
Summary: hack fiction
Review: Shoot the Moon is perhaps the worst novel I have ever read. It concerns a hapless Everyman who gets in over his head when he discovers a load of pure smack in the spare of his rental car. What follows is even less original. The central premise is this: will this Everyman ("Goodman"...!), who is driven to drug-dealing to pay for his daughter's medical bills (at least it's not a sick-mother-in-need-of-surgery), successfully unload his product on the mean streets of New York? Despite the author's alleged background as a narcotics agent, there isn't a single character or line of dialogue that rings true here. But most annoying is the design of our "hero", a pathetic milquetoast who spends more time with the stray cat he shelters than with his so-called "Angel", his sickly 6-year old daughter who's been dumped with an uncaring Grandma just a few short blocks away. The transliterated "street-jive" of the token hustlers and junkies is ridiculous, not to mention bigoted and insulting. Then there's the myriad of other stock-types who pop-up, then disappear just as quickly. Worst of all, the book is filled with typos and other errors -- a testament to the disinterest which St. Martin's editors and printers have shown toward their own product.

Rating:
Summary: hack fiction
Review: Shoot the Moon is perhaps the worst novel I have ever read. It concerns a hapless Everyman who gets in over his head when he discovers a load of pure smack in the spare of his rental car. What follows is even less original. The central premise is this: will this Everyman ("Goodman"...!), who is driven to drug-dealing to pay for his daughter's medical bills (at least it's not a sick-mother-in-need-of-surgery), successfully unload his product on the mean streets of New York? Despite the author's alleged background as a narcotics agent, there isn't a single character or line of dialogue that rings true here. But most annoying is the design of our "hero", a pathetic milquetoast who spends more time with the stray cat he shelters than with his so-called "Angel", his sickly 6-year old daughter who's been dumped with an uncaring Grandma just a few short blocks away. The transliterated "street-jive" of the token hustlers and junkies is ridiculous, not to mention bigoted and insulting. Then there's the myriad of other stock-types who pop-up, then disappear just as quickly. Worst of all, the book is filled with typos and other errors -- a testament to the disinterest which St. Martin's editors and printers have shown toward their own product.

Rating:
Summary: Clever story premise. Interesting main character. Good read.
Review: This book was fun. Great story that grabs you early on. Sympathetic main character that is an "everyman" one can easily identify with. Well-written. Author seems to have a knowledge of police procedures without needlessly "showing-off" that knowledge - information is only described as necessary for the story. Police are probably depicted as dumber than they are, but hey, what do I know? Maybe this *is* close to mark -- if so, we should be worried. Nice depiction of a father-daughter relationship that you dont always see in novels of this kind.