Rating: 
Summary: Excellent!
Review: As a youngster, I was blessed with a good mind and always excelled in school. However, I always had trouble reading. Instead of working on my shortcoming, I avoided it as much as possible. I only read what was required and seldom, if ever, read for pleasure. Now, in my seventies, I realize what a terrible mistake that was. This point was recently driven home when a friend of mine, who is an avid reader, told me about Blood Brothers written by Sol Wachtler and David Gould. Since this person is not only a friend but someone whose opinion I respect greatly, I decided to purchase a copy of this book. To my delight, it was one of the best decisions that I have made for quite some time.I have always been a slow reader. However, when I started reading Blood Brothers, I quickly became engrossed in this exciting fictional legal thriller. I couldn't put the book down. I actually stayed awake into the early morning hours reading this exciting story of two young men, Luke and T.C. Simmons. Despite their different ethnic backgrounds, their lives became so intertwined after a separation of some forty years when Luke defends T.C. in a murder trial. The book has wonderfully compelling courtroom scenes and throughly explores the minds of Luke and his capable associate attorney as they work together to defend T.C. Blood Brothers is filled with excitement, suspense and a unique ending. It is 381 pages of reading bliss with more than enough food for thought. I highly recommend it to all.
Rating: 
Summary: Show, not tell
Review: Every writer, when learning the craft, is told to "show, don't tell" when writing a novel or story. This advice is ignored totally by Wachtler and Gould in "Blood Brothers". What could have been an exciting courtroom drama unfolds instead as a not very interesting narrative about an ex-clan member on trial for a forty-year old murder. Oh, the former clansman and the attorney representing him became "blood brothers" when they were 15, before the Jewish boy who became the attorney moved from Georgia to Brooklyn - hence the title.
My beef with the novel is that it is basically just a long strung out narrative. Every scene that would have crackled with excitement and suspense if "shown" was simply "told", to the detriment of the story. I love a good courtroom drama, and the heart of a good one is the trial, the testimony of the various witnesses and the way the attorneys conduct their examinations and cross examinations. Very little of this will be found in "Blood Brothers". Only two or three witnesses are questioned so the reader can see what's going on; the rest of the trial is simply "told" to us.
I'm sorry, but I can't recommend this one. Send these guys back to creative writing class!
Rating:
Summary: Show, not tell
Review: Every writer, when learning the craft, is told to "show, don't tell" when writing a novel or story. This advice is ignored totally by Wachtler and Gould in "Blood Brothers". What could have been an exciting courtroom drama unfolds instead as a not very interesting narrative about an ex-clan member on trial for a forty-year old murder. Oh, the former clansman and the attorney representing him became "blood brothers" when they were 15, before the Jewish boy who became the attorney moved from Georgia to Brooklyn - hence the title.
My beef with the novel is that it is basically just a long strung out narrative. Every scene that would have crackled with excitement and suspense if "shown" was simply "told", to the detriment of the story. I love a good courtroom drama, and the heart of a good one is the trial, the testimony of the various witnesses and the way the attorneys conduct their examinations and cross examinations. Very little of this will be found in "Blood Brothers". Only two or three witnesses are questioned so the reader can see what's going on; the rest of the trial is simply "told" to us.
I'm sorry, but I can't recommend this one. Send these guys back to creative writing class!
Rating:
Summary: A Rich Bodied Page Turner With An Enigmatic Ending
Review: For thise who love legal thrillers and court room drama, this novel is a must. The characters have genuine depth. The book captures, like few other legal fictions do, the workings of a trial lawyer's mind in the midst of battle. The action is paced at just the right speed to keep your curiosity on the edge of your seat. The social commentary and settings are what places this book in a special class. Wachtler and Gould make a great team. I hope their collaboration continues.
Rating: 
Summary: I tried to like it....
Review: My hopes were high for this book but for whatever reason, it simply did not deliver. It was not particularly well written and the character development was not believable. It missed as a serious literary effort and if the goal was to express some other perspective, it got past me. The authors need to keep their day jobs.
Rating:
Summary: old hatreds revived
Review: Rebeccasreads highly recommends BLOOD BROTHERS as a fascinating look into the practise of law for the latter half of the 20th century: corporate & criminal, Northern & Southern.
BLOOD BROTHERS is also a gripping reminiscence of the power of evil & good, & how intertwined they are. Luke, the liberal optimist, has a streak of naivete a mile wide. TC, the impoverished pessimist, has all the charm of a 'gator & has discovered not only can he make people believe him, he starts to believe himself.
BLOOD BROTHERS is also a study in race relations & social mores: how they once were, & how they still are, underneath all the modern PCness. & about the bigotry of Blacks & Whites; Jews & Christians; the wealthy & the poor; the powerful & the powerless.
Absolutely spellbinding, with one helluva twist toward the end.
Rating:
Summary: Blood Brothers Delivers Bigtime!
Review: Sol Wachtler and David Gould bring the reader right into the courtroom and smackdab into the minds of the lawyers who passionately argue a tightly contested racial murder with major national impact. The tale is gutty, the stakes are high, the characters are vivid, and the moral challenges complex. Get ready for a jolt of an ethics-challenging tale. The page-turning plot starts in a remote southern mangrove swamp and then fast forwards into a judicial cauldron in which everybody sweats and nobody looks pretty. The emotional turbulence ramps up at every page, and the depiction of the workings of the lawyers' minds as they create and present their case is a masterful display of fiction writing. Nothing is formula or predictable in this edgy legal powerhouse of a superb novel, and the authors' skills at twisting the events and causing doubts in the mind, even of the conflicted first-person narrator, are adroit and surprising, right up to the last page. After reading BLOOD BROTHERS, I'll never look at the criminal legal system in the same way. Kudos to the authors! I'd love to see a big budget film to bring their compelling and important story of BLOOD BROTHERS into the forefront of a national racial discussion.
Rating:
Summary: Can This Pass as Civil Rights History?
Review: The novel, BLOOD BROTHERS, by Wachtler and Gould is a mixture of well tuned and finely orcastrated passages juxtaposed with long lumbering stories that have no real bearing on the plot. In other words, while I enjoyed much of the book, lots of it was aggravating at best and infuriating at worst. It is quite obviously written by two people.
The best parts of the novel are when the authors are telling stories about the two main characters. The youthful lives of both Luke and T.C. are heart warming and pull you into the novel.The problem is that they lose their meaning when the authors, who are not themselves "Civil Rights" historians, try to convince you that they are by having bits and pieces of faulty American History woven into the plot. It was unfortunate that they did not have a well read, Civil Rights historian read and correct their copy. Though this country has stooped, in many ways, to accept falsehoods and meciocity as the truth, these lawyers were abliged to do more.
It is also a tired and boring analysis of "Class Conflict." In the so-called "New South", which actually refers to a long period of history post Civil War, the authors attempt to present you with a fresh look at tphe fuel behind the Ku Klux Klan. While they are technically correct, such books and movies as TO KIll A MOCKINGBIRD, circa 1960, did a much more powerful job of presenting the class vs. race conflict. The book by Wachtler and Gould is a dismal failure in this regard. They couldn't even correctly identify the notorious killer of the early Civil Rights leader, Medgar Evers, as a member of the White Citizens Council in Sumner, Mississippi. He was not "white trash" as they called him but rather an integral part of the white working/middle class. These kinds of mistakes are very upsetting because they could so easily have been avoided by some careful consideration before publication.Part of the problem may well be the fact that they were too arrogant to do the job many of us would do as a regular course. Anyone who writes about anything should have their sources and facts checked by someone who knows more or has access to more than the author does. Lawyers, though they think they know everything clearly do not.
The other thing I would change about the book is its length. I think it would have been much more powerful and had much greater impact on its readers had the long drawn out history of Lukash Lipton's career with the Wall Street law firm been shortened to a minimum. It adds nothing to the story line and probably does harm to the book in the long haul.
Repetition in the novel is also a problem that pulls at the reader and detracts from the story. I found myself saying reapeatedly, "you've said that aleady, I got the point."
What truely made me sad about the book was that it took up my precious time and while I enjoyed parts of it I think that the abridged version will be better.
Rating:
Summary: Can This Pass as Civil Rights History?
Review: The novel, BLOOD BROTHERS, by Wachtler and Gould is a mixture of well tuned and finely orcastrated passages juxtaposed with long lumbering stories that have no real bearing on the plot. In other words, while I enjoyed much of the book, lots of it was aggravating at best and infuriating at worst. It is quite obviously written by two people.
The best parts of the novel are when the authors are telling stories about the two main characters. The youthful lives of both Luke and T.C. are heart warming and pull you into the novel.The problem is that they lose their meaning when the authors, who are not themselves "Civil Rights" historians, try to convince you that they are by having bits and pieces of faulty American History woven into the plot. It was unfortunate that they did not have a well read, Civil Rights historian read and correct their copy. Though this country has stooped, in many ways, to accept falsehoods and meciocity as the truth, these lawyers were abliged to do more.
It is also a tired and boring analysis of "Class Conflict." In the so-called "New South", which actually refers to a long period of history post Civil War, the authors attempt to present you with a fresh look at tphe fuel behind the Ku Klux Klan. While they are technically correct, such books and movies as TO KIll A MOCKINGBIRD, circa 1960, did a much more powerful job of presenting the class vs. race conflict. The book by Wachtler and Gould is a dismal failure in this regard. They couldn't even correctly identify the notorious killer of the early Civil Rights leader, Medgar Evers, as a member of the White Citizens Council in Sumner, Mississippi. He was not "white trash" as they called him but rather an integral part of the white working/middle class. These kinds of mistakes are very upsetting because they could so easily have been avoided by some careful consideration before publication.Part of the problem may well be the fact that they were too arrogant to do the job many of us would do as a regular course. Anyone who writes about anything should have their sources and facts checked by someone who knows more or has access to more than the author does. Lawyers, though they think they know everything clearly do not.
The other thing I would change about the book is its length. I think it would have been much more powerful and had much greater impact on its readers had the long drawn out history of Lukash Lipton's career with the Wall Street law firm been shortened to a minimum. It adds nothing to the story line and probably does harm to the book in the long haul.
Repetition in the novel is also a problem that pulls at the reader and detracts from the story. I found myself saying reapeatedly, "you've said that aleady, I got the point."
What truely made me sad about the book was that it took up my precious time and while I enjoyed parts of it I think that the abridged version will be better.
Rating:
Summary: Blood Brothers...about all of us
Review: This book goes beyond the characters so vividly portrayed. In our world of sound bites, fast-forward & delete buttons, and t.v. therapy sessions, "Blood Brothers" is a story that stirs the heart and stimulates the mind. Thoughtful and thought provoking, the reader will end the book feeling differently than when he/she began it. What a refreshing experience...to have read a book that actually makes a difference rather than merely becoming part of the blur of media hype tossed at us daily.
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