The Big Picture

Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I ever read....
Review: This story was so cleverly woven and full of ironies...it was just fabulous!! I recommended it to everyone I knew and then even to strangers!! It would make a terrific movie! Can't wait to read the new one by Kennedy.

Rating:
Summary: Not the big picture
Review: A moral fable. Unfortanately for this reader, one written by Machiavelli in the yuppie 80's style. What distinguishes this from that great dusty bookshelf in the sky is its claim to be a 'real novel' dealing with grief, loss, finding oneself and the meaning to life. Pretentious? Mais Oui, certainment! It's this artifice that makes this book so easy to dislike. As an adventure yarn its is page-turner, albeit as a pastiche. Want to know how to explode a 30 foot yacht and make it look like an accident? If this was John Le Carre or Frederick Forsyth they would actually tell you. What you get here are the steps as in 1. Read the instructions covertly. 2. Build the bomb. 3. Use the bomb. The author tries to elicit sympathy and understanding for a basically unpleasant narcissistic character, rather like 'Bonfire of the Vanities' without the irony. So what we have is the ultimate have-it-all novel, a travelogue of the ego rather than the pysche. Ironically, given the title, the author fails to provide any insight, making this an under-developed smudge of ink rather than 'The Big Picture'

Rating:
Summary: Really good mind-popcorn
Review: If you're looking for something fun, fast and insubstantial - this is the book for you. There wasn't anything here that would broaden your moral horizons,and you probably won't learn anything useful, but you could blow an evening or two, or a day at the beach, and be none the worse for it.

Escapism at its best. Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: Edge of your seat suspense story from cover to cover.
Review: The Big Picture has a riveting plot that finds the reader staying up late at nite as he or she is comsumed by Douglas Kennedy's portrayal of a "you can take it with you story". Ben Bradford's guts vs ethics approach will find the reader actually being lured into the web of charisma for his character. A real weekend beach reader, a must have for all readers of suspense fiction.

Rating:
Summary: All Form, No Substance
Review: This book was a breeze of a read (I finished it in a day). While I agree that first half of the book was intriguing, the plot becomes a bit unbelievable after the murder.

What bothered me most, however, was the lack of depth the author failed to take into the moral implications of the main character's actions. He killed a man. He abandoned his family. He walked out on his kids. And this tumultuous turn in his life was washed clean by one or two isolated sobbing sessions. Unbelievable. Of course, then there's the message of the book: "Running like a coward from your misdoings is ok. Abandoning your family is forgivable as long as you start another one. Etc."

Take a look at Peter Gadol's The Long Rain for a much deeper dive into the moral tumult of an accidental killing and subsequent coverup. While less superficially suspenseful than this one, The Long Rain is smarter and morally credible.

Rating:
Summary: Plot holes + Product placement = utter dreck
Review: Those in marketing, take note: even the execrable can be sold if you push it hard enough. Within two pages, I was convinced that several corporations had purchased ad space in "The Big Picture" from Hyperion. Within twenty pages I was convinced they'd also purchased an editor or two. I love thillers and "page-turners," and am good at the suspension of disbelief, but there are limits...and this book goes so far over them that it's an insult to read. The book is a collection of plot holes thinly joined by two-dimensional characters, ridiculous "twists," and product placements. Worse than the worst that even television offers.

Rating:
Summary: Ammended review from 3/27/98
Review: My initial review (see 3/27/98) was posted after reading the first half (or so) of the book - which I thought was very good. However, as I noted in that original review, the story relies on lots of contrived plot twists and coincidences to move along and unfortunately the story could not maintain its momentum through the second half. The events leading up to and immediately after the murder are great, but I reached a point where I just could not buy into all the amazing things that started happening to the protagonist anymore (he becomes a world famous photographer within a few weeks, he runs into his wife and her new husband in the middle of Montana, the only person in the world who can reveal the truth is killed in a fiery car wreck which he walks away from with barely a scratch?). The end of the story could have gone one of two ways (either he gets caught or he gets away with it), and I did like the way that this got resolved, but hte second half of the book really needs a rewrite to make it more believable. I still stand by my "10" for the first half, but I give the second half a "2", so my overall rating is "6".

Rating:
Summary: You have better things to do than read this book!
Review:

This was probably one of the worst books I've read this year - - and I read a lot.

The story was too contrived...it was as if the author was just printing out what he would do if HE could fulfill all of his personal fantasies.

I hope his wife doesn't get too close to him when he has a wine bottle in his hands.

Find something else to do, like polish silver, iron clothes, clean house, do yard work or wash/wax your car. After you've finished those chores, at least you will have something tangible for your efforts.

"The Big Picture" is just a piece of fluff, easily tossed out by the spring breeze.

Rating:
Summary: Kept me up till 1:00AM last night!!
Review: First off, this story relies on lots coincidences and contrived plot twists to plow ahead, but forget all that - this is a page turner of the first order! I couldn't put it down. A lawyer whose real ambition is to be a photographer discovers one day that his wife is having an affair with their neighbor (who conveniently is a photographer). Lawyer kills photographer in a jealous rage and, using his legal skills, assumes the identity of the photographer. It's a fun read, the kind of story where you're always trying to figure out how the main character is going to get out of his next jam.

Rating:
Summary: A compelling book whose exhuberance outweighs its defects.
Review: This book was compelling and exhuberant. I finished it in 24 hours and thought about it for days. Forget the coincidences and unlikenesses, echoes of melodrama even, such as when Ben flees the photography PR schmooze thing just ahead of his wife. I couldn't forget the image of the town bum asking for a glass then removing his full dentures into them. That typified the sheer energy and to repeat myself, "exhuberance" of the book.