Sacred (Bookcassette(r) Edition)

Rating:
Summary: You'd think Bob Dylan was sacred
Review: I'm annoyed by the Bob Dylan criticism. He does have a song "Positively Fourth Street" which no one is debating. As for the album deal, Jay says, and I quote, "'Songs,'he said. 'Not albums' (Sacred, 174)". I don't know why the title is italicized instead of in quotes but so far there has been no blatant reference to the title being that of an album. Rather, it was made quite clear that it was a song.

As for the rest of the book, that little fact can't help or hurt it. I personally find that this book is an excuse for Angie and Patrick to go to Florida, maybe an excuse to wear sunglasses too though they were doing that earlier in the book as well, so they don't need an excuse. It's funny and all, it cracks me up for the most part except the scenes with Bubba. Bubba is just getting old. I would say it's a good thing this book is funny (I mean really funny) because that's the only thing I feel it has going for it. That and the...uh...tension between Angie and Patrick. I hate to admit it but that's the way it goes. Oh yeah, and some observations based on Shakespeare's words "The ornament of beauty is suspect", this quote is even in the epilogue, summing the novel up.
Sacred is supposedly a loose reworking of The Big Sleep. It's about a greedy millionaire (or is it billionaire), hiring Patrick and Angie to find his missing daughter. Patrick's old friend and mentor Jay, who was the first person hired to find missing young woman, is also missing. The opening is great, with Patrick and Angie being followed by someone they dub "The Weeble". Patrick thinks he's James Bond and stuff, but he's not though he's the protagonist and I guess that results in ultimately the same thing. And there is a shower scene. Pardon me, two. There's two shower scenes. Though I highly doubt you'd ever see the ending of this book in a Bond movie, but I don't know, it's possible. Anything's possible, just look at Die Another Day. Joking.
Anyway, Patrick is as funny as ever in this, some great scenes like when he plays the raving lunatic at a place called Grief Release, going on about "fin de siecle", the end of the world. Oh yeah, and Patrick doing a Marilyn Monroe imitation. In Darkness, Take My Hand, Lehane alludes to Thomas Harris' series. In Sacred there's an obvious allusion to L.A. Confidential, or maybe I'm wrong. But it reminds me of the old Rollo Tomassi gag, with the "message beyond the grave". And I think I sensed an allusion to a Sharon Stone movie here too, the missing woman was even named Desiree Stone and there was a certain thing she said. Lehane blatantly promotes Toni Morrison and Gabriel Garcia Marquez some more. And Florida too, this book could be a brochure for the state where Lehane went to college, if only it weren't for the not-so-little jabs at the superficiality and the inner ugliness and the heat. But there's a great section where a character tells Patrick and Angie that "It's not fruitless" and Angie asks if the guy is referring to his drink or their business trip to St. Petersburg. I do think this book had to be written though. I can see the elements of Sacred that were later tied into the intricate plot of Dennis Lehane's first stand-alone novel. And I enjoyed reading it, great entertainment, darker than most, though not as dark as Lehane's other stuff. Still.

Rating:
Summary: Great read
Review: Though this book is a little less off-the-wall funny than his previous 2, it's also less violent. His writing gets quite poetic at times and I enjoy the twists and turns of the plot. If you live in Boston, Lehane's books are even more enjoyable because he's dead-on accurate with his depiction of neighborhoods, people, and events. The religious group he's talking about has just got to be the Moonies. I live in North Dorchester almost in the same neighborhood he describes and believe me it all rings true.

Rating:
Summary: great
Review: great book, hilarious, more so than his others, true its slightly more light than his usual books but its still good
also to the guy who says that dylan has no album called positively 4th street. The guy in the book said "look for songs, not albums". So when they found positively 4th street it is because they were looking for the names of dylan SONGS. And yes, dylan has a song called that.