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Summary: Westlake's latest a gripping look at the state of publishing
Review: What a good book this is! Westlake uses what must, by now, be a voluminous knowledge of the book publishing industry to put together an ingenious set up: best-selling author Bryce Proctorr, in the midst of a nasty divorce, has hit a blank wall creatively and the pressure is on, since his new book is months overdue. Proctorr runs into an old friend, writer Wayne Prentice, at the library one day and hears Wayne's tale of woe: in the new publishing environment, the computer and sales figures rule everything--a midlist author can't hope to make it anymore if his sales continue to decline. Eventually, a new book by that author, no matter how talented, will meet with indifference by a publisher. To combat this, Prentice has been writing books under a pseudonym, "Tim Fleet," but now Fleet's sales figures have become caught in that same downward spiral. Proctorr, whose deadline is looming, hatches a plan: he will take Prentice's new book, which will never find a willing publisher, make minor changes to names and incidents, and hand it in as his own, splitting the $500,000 advance. There's only one condition: Wayne must kill Proctorr's ex-wife, Lucie. Events proceed from there and nothing works out quite the way we might expect. Along the way, there's a lot of rumination about the state of publishing and writing today--if you're an aspiring writer, this might not be the best book to read (it doesn't exactly paint a rosy picture of your chances of being published). And it all moves relentlessly to an extremely chilling and understated conclusion. Westlake is an excellent writer and he continues to turn out amazing work. This book is highly recommended!
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Summary: Hooked by the Donald (Westlake )
Review: When I got to page 78 - I gasped and realized I never wanted this book to end. Pure entertaiment, where the next page is totally unpredictable and unexpected. I hope Donald is working on his next creation as I write this!
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Summary: The Hook is sharp, but not as sharp as The Ax
Review: You can't go wrong with Westlake, and while I wasn't as impressed with The Hook as I have been with his other stories, I still recommend it--highly. I would've rated it with five stars, but I deducted one because the ending seemed obvious. Other than that, The Hook is a great read. Exciting, perfectly paced and suspensful. Mr. Westlake is one of the very best.
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Summary: Don't get gouged by _The Hook_
Review: _The Hook_ leaves you hanging would have been more clever, but inaccurate, since, by the end of the book you've long since stopped caring about any of the characters. It's incomprehensible to me that the online reviews of this book average out to four stars. The only - the ONLY - point of interest in this book is the descriptions of the fiction-writing process, almost enough for a second star, but, no; I got this one from the library and still felt cheated. To engage us a thriller must make us care about the characters, pull us into an alternate reality where we can vicariously live someone else's adventure for awhile, and/or throw in enough plot twists to keep us guessing. _The Hook_ does none of these; the characters are shallow, smug and self-centered people with, apparently, no interest on earth aside from advancing their own careers; it's impossible to like any of them. But it's also impossible to believe that they are real; they have only the most amorphous backgrounds, nothing to explain why the three principal characters can agree on murder to further their interests as casually as they negotiate an apartment lease. There is no long process of descent into the depraved state of mind that would permit this premeditated atrocity, such as we observed in the marginally better _A Perfect Plan_ (more believable, but still about people we don't much care for). Apparently these are just two bookish men who find murder a convenience; no doubt such people exist, killers whom everyone would have described as quiet men, but in the course of a novel we should get some indication as to how they got that way. The details of the murder are also completely unbelievable. A minor spoiler follows (though this happens early on in the story): the one unexpected and effective moment in the entire book comes when Wayne actually commits the murder; he does it in a spontaneous and impulsive way that catches the reader off guard. But one reason it is so unexpected is that it is so illogical. Wayne has been comtemplating clever ways to do the deed; this should have been one of the more interesting aspects of the book. Instead, he just goes ahead and kills her while on a date, in a most graceless fashion, and hopes that her doorman, the waiter where they ate, no one they encountered will remember; murder by wishful thinking. The most sophisticated part of his plan is trying to avoid the security camera in the lobby of the apartment of Lucie, the victim. We are told that she has many women friends, prefers their company to that of men. When Wayne and Lucie first meet he gives her his real name, tells her he's an author, and discovers she's actually read one of his books. Isn't it just the least bit likely that she would have _told_ her friends about her date with an interesting new fellow, and that he would then become the prime suspect in the murder that happened on the evening of their date? Mr. Westlake is said to be a prolific writer; it's easy to see why: apparently, unlike the authors he describes, he never discards anything. The reader deserves better.
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