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Rating: 
Summary: not his best
Review: 'In 1986, Architectural Digest asked me to do a piece on Malcolm Forbes's yacht, the Highlander,' the 38-year-old writer said in a telephone interview from his New York City office. Mr. Buckley said he learned that Forbes was planning a journey from Manaus, Brazil, to Iquitos, Peru, with the billionaire John Kluge. 'I was casting around for a book idea and thought, "There's one -- a comedy of manners about two billionaires going up the Amazon to the heart of darkness."' -Interview with Andrew Yarrow, NY Times Book Review I suppose there's some sense in which it's unfair to hold an author's successes against him, but Christopher Buckley's other books are so good, that this one, though adequate, seems terribly disappointing. He's taken the scenario above and turned it into a kind of cross between A Man in Full and Death Wish. When billionaire industrialist Charlie Becker's beloved granddaughter Natasha dies of a drug overdose, he sets out to wreak his terrible revenge on the entire drug apparatus responsible for her death. By the end of the novel, he's, you guessed it, on board his yacht in the Amazon on pursuing a Peruvian cocaine kingpin. There are many funny lines and the action is thrilling enough, though it does go on longer than it needs to. I suppose that if this was the first novel I'd read by Christopher Buckley I might be more lenient, but knowing how much better he's capable of, this one just gets the slightest of recommendations. Try Little Green Men or The White House Mess instead. GRADE : C
Rating:
Summary: not his best
Review: 'In 1986, Architectural Digest asked me to do a piece on Malcolm Forbes's yacht, the Highlander,' the 38-year-old writer said in a telephone interview from his New York City office. Mr. Buckley said he learned that Forbes was planning a journey from Manaus, Brazil, to Iquitos, Peru, with the billionaire John Kluge. 'I was casting around for a book idea and thought, "There's one -- a comedy of manners about two billionaires going up the Amazon to the heart of darkness."' -Interview with Andrew Yarrow, NY Times Book Review I suppose there's some sense in which it's unfair to hold an author's successes against him, but Christopher Buckley's other books are so good, that this one, though adequate, seems terribly disappointing. He's taken the scenario above and turned it into a kind of cross between A Man in Full and Death Wish. When billionaire industrialist Charlie Becker's beloved granddaughter Natasha dies of a drug overdose, he sets out to wreak his terrible revenge on the entire drug apparatus responsible for her death. By the end of the novel, he's, you guessed it, on board his yacht in the Amazon on pursuing a Peruvian cocaine kingpin. There are many funny lines and the action is thrilling enough, though it does go on longer than it needs to. I suppose that if this was the first novel I'd read by Christopher Buckley I might be more lenient, but knowing how much better he's capable of, this one just gets the slightest of recommendations. Try Little Green Men or The White House Mess instead. GRADE : C
Rating: 
Summary: Imagine a cross between Tom Clancy and Tom McGuane
Review: A simple premise ... a wealthy American businessman's only granddaugter dies of a cocaine overdose. He decides that he's going to kill everyone who had anything to do with it, starting with her boyfriend and ending with the head of the Columbian drug cartel. Along the way yachts are wrecked and burned, secret love affairs are revealed, priests are consulted, and plenty of smartass dialogue is emitted. Buckley obviously knows what really rich people are really like, and in addition to having a great plot and memorable charactes, it's full of consistently interesting observations. A good book
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