Rating: 
Summary: somewhat predictable
Review: "Silent Joe" was my reading group's book choice for January. I had never read anything by T. Jefferson Parker before so looked forward to a new reading experience. I found it to be somewhat predictable but intriguing enough to finish reading it. As a young child, a brutal father scarred Joe for life, physically and mentally. Joe was removed from the home and placed at the Hillside Children's home where Will Trona (politician) and his wife Mary Ann adopted him. He had a safe and relatively happy childhood. As a grown man Joe is a deputy for the Orange County Sheriff's Department by day and by night becomes Will's driver/assistant/body guard. Will has "dirt" on a lot of people and has made many enemies. Joe was there to keep him safe. Will and Joe were out on one of their night jobs, this one involved dropping off ransom money for the safe return of a rich man's daughter and continuing on to another location to pick up the girl. Joe is an expert sharpshooter and skilled in martial arts but it wasn't enough and Will was killed right before Joe's eyes. Something went terribly wrong. Now Joe must avenge his father's death and sets out to put the pieces together. How does the kidnapping tie in with rival LA gangs, a charismatic minister, two immigrant's deaths and a radio talk show host? As Joe digs deeper into his father's past, he finds out some things about his own. Joe is a loveable character and you find yourself routing for him as he battles his demons and those of his father. Was Will's death an accident or murder? Joe is determined to find out.
Rating: 
Summary: I seldom put books down in the middle.......
Review: ...but the plot was sooooooo cheesy, unbelievable and repetitious that I had to give it up. I can suspend disbelief with the best of them, but unless I'm reading sci-fi I want the story to at least be plausible. Look, from my read of the other reviews you're either going to love it or hate it, guess which group I belong to. My advice, if you don't want to take a chance on wasting your time buy something else that has consistently been awarded good reviews.
Rating:
Summary: Irresistible Combination
Review: 24 year old Joe Trona is one of the best characters I've come across in a long time. Adopted by Will Trona (a policeman) and his wife Mary Ann when he was five, he now works full time in the Sheriff's department in Orange County, California and part time as a sort of assistant to his father who is now a county supervisor. There is something wrong with Joe's face and early in the story the reader is tantalized with the mystery of how this came to be. Joe is a fearsome looking character and he is well-trained in methods of destruction and self-defense. He is also very proud of his good manners (he feels that it makes for a good balance). As the story begins, tragedy strikes...Will Trona is murdered and Joe sets out to find answers. In an early scene in the book, Parker gives the reader a very clear picture of Joe's character. As Joe carries his dying father toward the doors of the emergency room: "I slipped to my knees but kept him balanced because it was the only thing I could do for him and I wanted to do it well". I surprised and embarrassed myself by bursting into tears at that point. I've been a fan of T. Jefferson Parker's since his first book. His writing is always very good but his subject matter doesn't always grab me. He has everything working in this book and the combination is irresistible.
Rating: 
Summary: What a pleasant surprise!!!!!!!
Review: After exhausting books by my favorite authors, I decided to try this one. I stayed up all night reading. I just couldn't put it down. I love Mr. Parker's style of writing and would like to see "Silent Joe" become a regular character in more of his writing. Just can't wait to read his other books!
Rating:
Summary: Why did I read the entire book?
Review: After the first few chapters there are no unexpected plot twists and this just becomes a typical, by the numbers, boring book. I bought this book based on the good reviews and kept reading expecting an interesting revelation to pop up. Nothing. The story has a soap opera/after school special feel to it and the idea of a hero with a horribly scarred face from an acid throwing incident is as laughable throughout the book as it sounds (I assumed the author would have made this interesting instead of silly, but I guessed wrong. Shame on me.) Find another book to spend your money on. This one's not worth it.
Rating: 
Summary: Silent Joe should have kept his mouth shut
Review: Although a vast improvement over "Laguna Heat", Parker's first novel, "Silent Joe" really should have not opened his mouth at all. This reviewer is amazed that this book won an Edgar. There must have been very slim pickings that year.
The characters, especially the protagonist, Joe Trona, are unconvincing. Most of them hardly rise above the level of trite stereotypes. The crooked, low-class bureaucrat with the working-class name who is almost indistinguishable from the same character cast as a union boss/thug. The venal, sinful, wealth-accumulating evangelist who gambles, womanizes, consults astrologers and is mixed up in every shady political deal in Southern California. The eleven-year-old girl who has a calmness of mind in a crisis that would be the envy of every James Bond wannabe on the planet is totally unbelievable as is her allegedly crazy brother who seems to have no plan beyond revenge against their filthy rich father. The only characters who seem to have any motivation are Joe and his father Will, who is stone cold dead before the end of page twenty-two.
Joe's motivations, in fact all his character traits, are totally unbelievable. He acts like an automaton one minute and like a person with impulse control issues the next. He defers to anyone and everyone, especially his adoptive father, Will, who treats him like a servant whom he does not like very much. Joe has bizarre habits that he claims come from being "institutionalized" in a county children's home from the time he was less than a year old until he was about five. This just doesn't wash. Nobody, not even this neurotic becomes so institutionalized by age five that they only feel comfortable eating from compartmentalized trays. If human psychology were so, we would all want to eat while sitting in highchairs. One of the most unbelievable things in this book is left unstated. That is the idea that someone who is this obviously neurotic and emotionally crippled could possibly have passed the psychological tests for any police or sheriff department in the country.
Parker also seems more than willing to display his almost complete ignorance of police procedure and firearms, including referring to a "Smith" .357 when it is clear that he means a "Smith & Wesson" .357. Of course it really doesn't matter what he calls it since he says its "always loaded and always ready" and then he put it back into a floor safe with a dial combination lock! Yeah, really handy there, Joe! That's what a push-button combination wall safe is for. The police procedure followed (or I should say, not followed) in this book is, to anyone in the know, laughable.
Beyond the unbelievable and one-dimensional characters and the sloppy and unconvincing police procedures is the general tone and quality of the writing. Short, choppy sentences and sentence fragments can and do add to the pace and tension of a mystery or suspense novel, but this entire book is full of them, even when they not only don't contribute to pace and tension, but actually detract from them. Parker's background as a writer with several small-market media outlets is painfully apparent in his style. He needs to elevate the sophistication of his writing beyond the fifth-grade level of modern American journalism if he expects to engage mature mystery novel readers. Yet this is still an improvement over "Laguna Heat" in which Parker seemed to be trying to prove to us that he actually owned a dictionary and thesaurus.
The lack of a convincing plot is the most glaring defect in this work. Despite several attempts to introduce plot twists and turns, they are all so transparent, simplistic, trite and derivative that they are hardly worthy of a bad made for TV Movie-Of-The-Week. Anyone who is genuinely surprised by any element of this plot should take Remedial Mystery Reading 101 and go back to reading "Nancy Drew" until they grow some sophistication.
As a former investigator, budding mystery writer and long-time mystery reader, I have, so far, been very disappointed in all that I have read from T. Jefferson Parker. He has been highly touted by members of the local mystery book group and I was expecting better. I was also expecting better from the MWA in their choice of Edgar winners.
All in all it appears that Parker really wasn't interested in writing a police procedural despite having a sheriff's deputy as his protagonist. Like his first book, "Laguna Heat", the police procedure takes a back seat to his attempt at writing hard-boiled noir. This attempt might have come off better if Joe had been a PI rather than a cop. One might have been more willing to accept Joe's neuroses, personality disorders, odd behavior and choice of personal weapons (which even Chandler's and Spillane's cheapest gunsels would have eschewed). Noir and 21st Century Southern California is a difficult enough concoction to brew without trying to add a cop protagonist to the cauldron. It just doesn't work.
Rating:
Summary: I Know it Will be a Really Great Book
Review: I am going to write a review of "Silent Joe" without ever having read it. How can I do this? For two reasons: First, I bought the book Sunday. I will begin to read it tomorrow. Second, I have read everything else T. Jefferson Parker has written. In my opinion, he is the best writer of crime fiction today. He paints a picture of the human condition, with an Orange County backdrop, that rings perfectly true in every paragraph of every book he writes. He is an artist of the fictive world; a scientist of human motivation. Most importantly, he tells a crackling good story. His characters live on within you, days after you have put the book down for the final time. When you finish a Parker book, the entire structure seems as logical as a mathematical equation. Yet, every twist and turn of the story leaves you surprised. Try to guess the ending? Better to make a stab at a weather prediction six years from now in the Congo. There can be no better summer read than T. Jefferson Parker.
Rating: 
Summary: Not as advertised !
Review: I bought this book based on the fact that it had won the edgar awards and three quarters of the book did demonstrate why it was selected for the prize. However, what let it down was the ending. Without giving too much away, the book starts off as a whodunit where the "hero" of the book has to find his father's killer but the revelation left me glad that the book was only about 400 pages so that I had not wasted too much time on it. Basically the book had a good buildup and joe's characterization was nicely fleshed out, especially his relationship with his father, but the ending was a real cop-out. I kept on expecting a twist in the rationale behind the murder but I was left disappointed. Once you get past the "novelty" of having a physically scarred hero and the challenges in life he has to endure as a result, there is little of substance left. Easy way to pass the weekend, though!
Rating:
Summary: I loved this book!
Review: I didn't want this book to end. I have reread it already and hope Joe Trona becomes a fixture in future books. I think there are a lot of possibilities for this character and the girl he loves. If Mr. Parker uses this character again I hope he gives the kid some happiness, as he deserves it.
Rating:
Summary: I won't keep silent about this great thriller!
Review: I had always heard good things about Parker's books, but never got around to actually reading one until "Silent Joe." So many times when writers come highly recommended their books end up being a disappointment. Not this time! I will definitely be reading more from T. Jefferson Parker in the future. He is a fine craftsman and this is an excellent book. "Silent Joe" has a more intelligent story and better characterizations that most thrillers out there. The people that inhabit Parker's world are much more realistic and lifelike than the norm. Joe Trona, especially, is an intriguing figure, with pain and hope and desires that draw you in and make you care. Not incidentally, "Silent Joe" also has a suspenseful plot that keeps you eagerly turning the pages. I don't know how I neglected reading T. Jefferson Parker's work before now. I won't make that mistake again!
| 
