Blind Eye: A Benjamin Justice Novel

Rating:
Summary: Benjamin Justice deserves better
Review: As a fervent Justice fan, I was excited that Wilson had chosen to explore the man's arrival at middle age, an ironic and poignant time for anyone, but especially for the fascinatingly flawed and complex hero of the series. And while we do get some touching passages on this theme, they are unfortunately drowned out by a wild and improbable plot that left me cold. Must the poor man, after having (1) shot his abusive father dead as a teenager, (2) professionally disgraced himself in a lurid scandal, (3) lost his lover to AIDS, and (4) turned seropositive after being raped, now also be revealed to have been sexually molested as a child, to say nothing of subjected to excruciating physical torture? Even an implausible tryst with a 19-year-old hunk fails to save the balding and paunchy Benjamin from this grand guignol ride through hell, culminating in a Dante-like climax straight out of a Christopher Lee movie.

Wilson has lost none of his pageturner skills, but Benjamin Justice deserves a lot better than this superficial and tiresome potboiler.

Rating:
Summary: Justice Is Blind?
Review: BLIND EYE, the latest volume in John Morgan Wilson's mysteries about Benjamin Justice and the first without the word "justice" in the title, could have just as easily have been called "Blind Justice." Justice, our ex-newspaper reporter, is back with a vengence and has recovered from much of his self-pity that permeated THE LIMITS OF JUSTICE. I like him much better this time around. He takes his meds regularly and only occasionally lapses into immobilizing depressions. He also has moments of self-awareness and becomes quite a sympathetic character.

Justice, when this novel begins, has just received an advance to write his autobiography and in order to set the record straight, attempts to find a Catholic priest who began molesting him when he was twelve. As you would suspect, the plot gets quite byzantine as more and more high church officals are implicated. The story obviously is as current as the news of the last couple of years. Although there are some evil church people here, there are good priests and nuns as well.

Some of the previous characters return-- they are almost like old friends now-- and Justice is still reading Walter Mosley. This time it's BAD BOY BRAWLY BROWN. He also reads Graham Greene, an appropriate writer for such a Catholic story.

With Michael Nava apparently in retirement, Mr. Wilson gets my vote for the best writer of gay mysteries around.

Rating:
Summary: I love this series.
Review: I was absolutely thrilled when I found out that John Morgan Wilson had written a fifth Benjamin Justice novel, because I was heartbroken when the series ended (or so I thought). I wasn't sure how Wilson could top The Limits of Justice, but he did, managing to take on vaunting ambition, the Catholic Church, institutionalized pedophilia, corrupt media, and spiritual alienation, all in one fell swoop.

Ben is, as ever, a fantastic character...a man of both nobility and carnal appetite, of deeply felt compassion and reckless bravado. He's a lost soul, struggling not to succumb to fear and darkness and despair. I adore him and his struggle, which always, inevitably, costs him something in the end. This story is no different. I actually gasped out loud at one point in the book, stricken to my very heart by the price Ben pays for contending with evil.

I would highly, highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: "Bless me father, for I have sinned."
Review: It's so nice to see Benjamin Justice back again, as I thought that we had seen the last of him after his last outing. John Morgan Wilson has written yet another timely, fast paced and speedy thriller, as Benjamin delves into his Catholic past, and opens a Pandora's box of lies, betrayals and murder within the Catholic church. Wilson, like Britain's Val McDermid and Ruth Rendell, just loves to insert current controversial events into his stories and Blind Eye is no exception. With so much in the media lately about pedophilia and the Catholic Church, it's not surprising that Wilson felt the need to explore this issue, and he does it in an extremely confrontational, and damning way.

Under contract to write his autobiography, Justice is trying to pull together his life for the first time. While searching out a priest, Father Blackley, from his childhood, Benjamin enlists his best friend, Alexandra Templeton's fiancé Joe Soto - a journalist - to tell the hidden truth about this almost forgotten priest. When Joe is killed in a tragic hit-and-run accident and Justice starts to investigate the so-called accident, he finds himself in the midst of a case involving a child murder, a powerful and controversial cardinal, and elements of his own past. Again, Wilson sets the story in the frenetic, hurried world of Los Angeles, and the action is placed deep down into the heart of the City: Silver Lake, the cultural district of Little Tokyo, and the action and liveliness of West Hollywood or "Boys Town" are all set pieces.

Justice is forced to confront the duplicity and hypocrisy of the church, and Wilson through the novel raises some serious questions about religious pretense: How can gay priests support a church that demonizes gays? And how can gay priests, innocent though they may be of molestation, who know that children are suffering, do nothing to stop it? Benjamin feels "immersed in a perplexing sadness" as he prepares to write his autobiography, and in Blind Eye this sadness reaches a catalyst as he ruminates on his raging bouts with alcohol and other self-destructive habits; the baffling murders he's solved with Alexandra Templeton; his rape at the hands of a lethal ex-cop four years ago, and his subsequent sero-conversion to HIV. Blind Eye is a hard-edged thriller; a real page turner, and highly recommended.

Michael

Rating:
Summary: Long awaited sequel is best of the bunch!
Review: Now in his mid-40's, HIV+ and single since his boyfriend moved out of the country, the Benjamin Justice we find here seems
significantly subdued from the fiery, brash investigative journalist we met in Wilson's first four books in the series, which started a dozen years earlier. Back then, Justice had managed to short-circuit a promising journalism career by fabricating some interviews for a story which won a Pulitzer Prize, and was caught. Writing assignments had been few and far between since then. In the past five years, Benjamin had not worked, living simply and frugally, but recently got an advance to write his biography, which gives him some apprehensions about reliving part of his past he'd rather not revisit. His only current link to his former profession is his best friend Alexandra Templeton, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, who is secretly engaged to columnist Joe Soto, a longtime friend as well.

In making notes on his biography, Justice faces his long-buried
feelings about having been molested at ages 12-13 by a parish priest back in Buffalo NY. To bring closure to that episode in his life, he seeks out information about the priest, and learns that he actually had been transferred to the Los Angeles archdiocese a few years after his encounters, and died in a reported hiking accident about ten years ago. Justice presses the local diocese officials for more information, whether there had been further reports of molestations or if he had indeed been "rehabilitated," and is surprised when the "sorry, that's confidential" response comes from the office of the Bishop himself. Justice smells a coverup, and talks his friend Joe Soto into doing a column about an "anonymous" reader who reported abuse by the priest, and the strange reaction
received from the diocese.

The mystery quickly grows from there, as Joe Soto is killed in a suspicious hit-and-run accident, with some evidence suggesting that the driver may have been an infamous South American hired assassin, who usually works for drug cartels. At the same time, reaction to Soto's column triggers letters from readers with additional reports of mollestations by the priest, creating more questions than answers, especially when one such reader mysteriously dies in a fall from the hospital where she worked. When the diocese offers him a million dollars to end his investigations, Justice becomes more
assured that the bishop (which had been a close friend of the priest in question) may be involved, and perhaps even the presiding Cardinal, who is under strong consideration to be the next pope.

Absolute nail-biting suspense, with passages of outright terror, make this, in my opinion, the best of the series. Realistic, street-saavy characters and scenarios, with an eye for detail that makes him one of the best.

Rating:
Summary: excellent!
Review: The saga of Benjamin Justice continues and excels. This latest volume brings richer qualities to the characters and raises genuine issues for analysis and discussion. The writing is touching, moving, and suspenseful. A must-buy for any fan of mystery writing - gay or straight.

Rating:
Summary: Fast and furious revelations about the church
Review: Wilson's latest book is not for the weak stomached, nor for those who would "blindly" follow the Church's orders. There is a lot of hard boiled grit here. Much of it is about the gay society in West Los Angeles. To my surprise, I didn't find it much different from the other areas of LA. Wilson's writing is fast paced and shocking. He gives the church its due, and it's about time! This is a book to keep you reading right to the end. And don't forget to think about the multi-meaning of the title!