The Cactus Garden

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding
Review: Couldn't put it down! Simply one of the best books I have ever read! Hollywood should option this one!

Rating:
Summary: Hollywood or bust
Review: I pictured this book as a movie, almost from the opening page, and the fact that a large portion of the book is set around Hollywood is no coincidence. This probably would make an entertaining action thriller on screen with all the tongue-in-cheek comic-book violence and one-liners, but as a book, the frailties are a little more obvious.

Take the hero with the hero's name, Jack Walker. First of all, in order for any of the book to be taken at face value, you must be prepared to believe that he is rather stupid and terribly hampered by arrogance. Each plot twist can be deciphered shortly before it is revealed, and then the twist at the end seems arbitrary, tacked on instead of the result of insight and forethought. The heroine, Charlotte Rae, who it initially appears will be a mysterious, dark, seductress is also in the end bound down by stereotype, conventionalized and predictable.

Still, if you can put aside Jack's obvious lack of intellect, and try to ignore what Ebert would call the "Fallacy of the talking killer", where the bad guys decide not to dispose of the hero as they would anyone else, until they have prolonged their life by talking to them and left them alone just long enough for them to plan and execute an escape, then this is a mildly entertaining saga with a few nice touches.