Act of Revenge

Rating:
Summary: Not one of the better ones in this series...
Review: The unfortunate thing about reading a series is I personally feel you have to read them whether they're bad or not. Otherwise you feel out of the loop on the next one that comes out. This has been a long time favorite series of mine, but for some reason that eludes me still, this installment didn't quite satisfy me. The writing style is excellent as always, tight, gritty, with Tanenbaum's usual edge but the plot and subplots in this one were so tightly intertwined that it was sometimes too hard to follow. It took longer than usual to get into the story itself, it took some effort to keep me interested and I was also glad to finally wrap it up. Let's hope the next one is a more interesting read.

Rating:
Summary: lousy
Review: The young child and her parents, who are the lead characters in this book, are the most annoying abnoxious people I have ever read about. In short I would not recommend this book!

Rating:
Summary: A remarkable tale.
Review: This book was perhaps his best book to date! A real grabber! Karp is up to his neck in trouble and he has to get out! Great dialogue. Mr. Tanenbaum tells a great story here.

Rating:
Summary: Kudos to you if you can follow the plot!
Review: This is the first book I've read in the series. I enjoyed the characters and the gritty style of his writing. The plot was very hard to follow, in fact it made my head hurt. It's the kind of book while not a page turner you still have to finish it.

Rating:
Summary: Latest in series of thrillers radically creative in the genr
Review: This review is about the latest Karp as it connects with all 10 previous Karp thrillers. The typical hero of a thriller is a lone wolf - private eye, disaffected cop, intelligence agent - at odds with the system, and works outside it to resolve the plot, catch the villain and restablish justice. He, usually a he, may have emotional attachments, but they're typically romantic, and after a certain amount of sexual fireworks, they fade in the final pages, so that in the next book 'he' can start fresh with another romance. Rarely is there a family around. The writer inside this convention provides thrills but can't penetrate deeply into real life, for society's means of ACTUALLY coping with crime is highly bureaucratized, and the solution and punishment of crimes a group enterprise. Also, conventional thrillers finesse the effects of immersion in violence and corruption of family life. Your typical thriller hero is unmarried, or has a broken family. The Karp books try to deal with the question of how a family responds to an atmosphere of danger and violence. Butch Karp is a senior official with the N.Y. D.A. His wife, Marlene, is a private detective who specializes in protecting women from stalkers and domestic violence. Their teen-aged daughter, Lucy, is a language prodigy, speaking dozens of languages fluently, who, as a result of this facility, is able to penetrate the various immigrant communities of N.Y. (and their criminous elements) in ways unavailable to her parents. This set-up allows these books to deal with the conflict between law and justice, between the demands of work and child rearing, between the moral assumptions of the established culture and those of newcomers, between men and women, between parents and children, at a depth not usual in the average thriller. Essentially, these are domestic comedies layered upon the tragedy implicit in society's need to impose a single order on the near infinite variety of individuals that compose it. As well as being a "good" read, they're a serious read. This writer obviously knows a great deal about novel writing and has high standards. Hope to see the writer unfold his talents in other genres, which he's obviously capable of doing.

Rating:
Summary: A remarkable tale.
Review: Variety is not usual with crime novelists. Variety, of the best kind is what this novel offers. It causes me to want to read more of Robert Tanenbaum's works.

Rating:
Summary: Loved the family and setting
Review: Variety is not usual with crime novelists. Variety, of the best kind is what this novel offers. It causes me to want to read more of Robert Tanenbaum's works.