Deadlock

Rating:
Summary: Macpherson's Stereotypical Depiction of the Chinese
Review: "Deadlock" offers an intriguing premise but fails because of Mapherson's weak storywriting and ignorant and offensive social assumptions about the Chinese community, both of which become irritating to a decent plot. A jury member is suspected to be the real killer. This is an engaging idea, but unfortunately Macpherson twists it between incredulous character relationships. San Francisco's Cardinal happens to be childhood friends with the richest and most famous senator and a supreme court judge -- all of whom are involved in unraveling the murder case. This would not be so annoying to read except for Macpherson's style of writing. To say the least, I expected some of the sentences and dialogues to have been penned by high school mystery writer, incorporating boyhood perceptions and fantasies about what the elite lifestyle might be like. Women are depicted in secondary roles throughout. By far, the most offensive trademark of "Deadlock" is Macpherson's grossly ignorant vision of the Chinese community in San Francisco. I have not read anything more offensive to the heart of anyone human -- something Macpherson seems to fear the Chinese actually are. His writing carries a fixation on the Chinese in the worst stereotypes. Macpherson denies the existence of any socially acceptable Chinese American in San Francisco. All Chinese characters are either hideously dissimilar, impossibly evil, purely corrupted, or demeaning to American society. I cannot fathom that anyone as ignorant about a segment of the population would dare to write about them, because to do so would be an incomplete and generally bad venture. But Macpherson achieves a most offensive piece of writing by doing this. Even in this story's most plot-intriguing moment, Macpherson writes in a staunch ignorance obvious to any reader aware of the Chinese as human as anyone else.

Rating:
Summary: Macpherson's Stereotypical Depiction of the Chinese
Review: "Deadlock" offers an intriguing premise but fails because of Mapherson's weak storywriting and ignorant and offensive social assumptions about the Chinese community, both of which become irritating to a decent plot. A jury member is suspected to be the real killer. This is an engaging idea, but unfortunately Macpherson twists it between incredulous character relationships. San Francisco's Cardinal happens to be childhood friends with the richest and most famous senator and a supreme court judge -- all of whom are involved in unraveling the murder case. This would not be so annoying to read except for Macpherson's style of writing. To say the least, I expected some of the sentences and dialogues to have been penned by high school mystery writer, incorporating boyhood perceptions and fantasies about what the elite lifestyle might be like. Women are depicted in secondary roles throughout. By far, the most offensive trademark of "Deadlock" is Macpherson's grossly ignorant vision of the Chinese community in San Francisco. I have not read anything more offensive to the heart of anyone human -- something Macpherson seems to fear the Chinese actually are. His writing carries a fixation on the Chinese in the worst stereotypes. Macpherson denies the existence of any socially acceptable Chinese American in San Francisco. All Chinese characters are either hideously dissimilar, impossibly evil, purely corrupted, or demeaning to American society. I cannot fathom that anyone as ignorant about a segment of the population would dare to write about them, because to do so would be an incomplete and generally bad venture. But Macpherson achieves a most offensive piece of writing by doing this. Even in this story's most plot-intriguing moment, Macpherson writes in a staunch ignorance obvious to any reader aware of the Chinese as human as anyone else.

Rating:
Summary: BETTERS GRISHAM'S LATEST!!!!
Review: A literary rollercoaster ride!!!!! Anyone who is smart enough to grab this book is in for a realllly good read....great characters....very unusual plot and set in my hometown, San Francisco...what more could you ask for....i'd like to have this book about 150 pages longer.....this new author is definitely a keeper.....loved the author's background on this story....and hope he quits his day job and starts churning 'em out FAST!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Macpherson's Stereotypical Depiction of the Chinese
Review: Being a native born San Franciscan, this was an added treat....(it's Grant AVENUE not street)...only fault I could find with this page-turner!!!! I LOVED IT!!!!! Couldn't put it down....characters are marvelous...fully fleshed out, plot was quite different than the run of the mill legal thrillers....suspense was good....wish there were about 150 more pages....keep on writing, Malcolm....but FASTER!!!!!! I loved reading the background on this book....fascinating....thanx for such a wonderful read....all of you readers out there....get this book fast....you'll find yourself and total treat and a new author to follow!!!!

Rating:
Summary: WOW! WHAT A LITERARY ROLLERCOASTER RIDE!!!!!
Review: Being a native born San Franciscan, this was an added treat....(it's Grant AVENUE not street)...only fault I could find with this page-turner!!!! I LOVED IT!!!!! Couldn't put it down....characters are marvelous...fully fleshed out, plot was quite different than the run of the mill legal thrillers....suspense was good....wish there were about 150 more pages....keep on writing, Malcolm....but FASTER!!!!!! I loved reading the background on this book....fascinating....thanx for such a wonderful read....all of you readers out there....get this book fast....you'll find yourself and total treat and a new author to follow!!!!

Rating:
Summary: A book that makes you think about what you think
Review: If you ever get a copy of this book, I believe that it is a must read. For ones who are narrow in your thinking, it will make you broader. For those who are prideful, it causes a humbling effect. It makes you take a different look at race relations and regional stereotypes.

The ending paralyzed me in my chair.

Rating:
Summary: A mesmerizing work
Review: In San Francisco, Chinese immigrant Feng Shao-Li, who virtually does not speak any English is accused of murdering Holly Hawkes, the granddaughter of Senator Stanton Hawkes. The presiding judge, Daniel Barr, figures that the indicted woman has little chance of an acquittal, especially since the deceased's family has been pushing for an immediate conviction.

However, the trial takes a bizarre twist when Judge Barr receives an anonymous note that claims the real killer sits in the jury box. The police, interested in a fast conviction, think the note is a fake. Barr is not so quick to write off the note. He obtains the help of an old friend and begins to personally investigate the murder of Holly even though there are powerful elements who will commit murder to keep the truth from ever coming out.

DEADLOCK will please fans who like the emphasis on LEGAL in their legal thrillers. Judge Barr is an interesting individual, but this reviewer cannot see him do what he did (unless he is related to Commissioner Macmillan) without calling for a mistrial. Despite the demonstration of some incredible writing talent on the part of Malcolm C. MacPherson, the book expects the audience to make quantum leaps of faith that will instead turn off most readers that are not rabid fans of the legal procedural.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Lacklustre
Review: The synopsis sounded exciting enough but I was disappointed when I started reading it.Characters did not have much depth.The plot was fairly predictable after a while and all I wanted to do was to skim through the book to confirm my conclusion.I was also disappointed with the portrayal of the Chinese community in the book as its perception is that they are made up of gangs and thugs and Chinatown is a dangerous place to be in especially for a white person.As a Chinese,I was certainly unhappy with the unflattering image given to the Chinese characters in the book.

Rating:
Summary: Writing DEADLOCK was hardly a lonely job
Review: Unlikely as it now seems, I was staying a few days in an almond tree on the coast of Kenya south of Mombasa when the O.J. Simpson thing came over the BBC World Service. Short-wave snippets about the murder led me to wonder about the trial, and because I was as far away from the "facts" as humanly possible, my wonderings focused on how this case could get any screwier. In that tree I found a way: a celebrated murder like the Simpson thing in which the judge learns on the opening day of the trial that the real murderer is one of the twelve jurors. If that didn't grab readers by their eyesockets (and doesn't make the best legal thriller of 1998), I thought, I should stay up in this almond tree forever. With my readers hooked, I wondered, what story will reel them in? Growing up in California, my parents once drove me up to San Francisco for a vacation at an age when I was terrified even of Bambi. My father and I wandered through Chinatown, which was a child's galaxy of total weirdness -- I mean, orange gutted suckling pigs in windows, thousand-year-old duck's eggs, a sing-song language that tricked the ear? We hired the services of a Chinese barber with a long wispy beard, a black coat with frog buttons, and fingernails like Fu-Manchu's. I held my breath in terror through the entire snip. And I never forgot Chinatown as a place of immense scariness and mystery. And now I wanted to put its complexities, confusions, and foreignness where they belonged. (I won't spoil the fun.) In these days of rampant gore-inflation, it was not easy to find a novel crime, but that was what I needed next. While still in my African tree, I dredged up a conversation I once had with Dr. Arthur Janov, the creator of the Primal Scream and an old friend from my days as a Newsweek correspondent. Art and I had been sitting around his place in St. Tropez doing not much of anything, and I asked him his thoughts. In his professional life, he had treated some seriously deranged victims. He was a good one to ask about the most heinous of crimes. Without hesitation, he said, "Incest," and explained why in great psychological detail. He had also provided me with my story's ultimate monster. Now I was out of the woods, if not yet out of that tree. Before I leaped down, I asked myself, who should tell this story? It was not a question that answered itself, because of the choices -- the defense attorney, the prosecutor, the chief of police, the mother of the victim? Once more, a friend came along, this time from Israel. The writer Ze'ev Chafets heard the facts of the fiction over liberal pourings of bourbon and said, as if he had thought of nothing else for months, "The Judge, of course." And in the silence that followed, I could almost hear him utter, "Dummy." As for legal niceties -- first and foremost I was writing a legal thriller that I knew could beat Grisham at his game -- I felt reassurred by the humdrum lives of most lawyers. In other words, who needs a law degree to write legal fiction when there already are too many lawyers with nothing more useful to do than to sue you and me? Indeed, legions of them fell all over themselves, thankfully, to suggest what would/could be done in the courtroom I was creating in my mind. By the end of the day, they had showered me with enough legal advice to earn me a degree. The last thing I'll mention is the book's title. Down on the ground once more, thinking it was time to start writing, I flew home from Kenya via the Philippines, where I joined a friend who by chance was directing a film, shooting that day on Manila's huge and hugely odiferous garbage mountain. Sam Fuller ("Big Red One," "The Crimson Kimono," "Steel Helmet," etc.) was gagging on the stench while cueing hapless extras with an army Browning .45 automatic. I told Sam my story line. He stared at me as hard as a petrified egg, then wagged the .45 at my person, and I thought surely he was going to cue me in a role I wasn't yet ready for, and he shouted, "DEADLOCK, Malcolm. That's your title. DEADLOCK!" And to think, some people think of writing fiction as a lonely job. (Malcolm MacPherson/Deadlock.)