Rating: 
Summary: an enjoyable thriller
Review: Ace lawyer writer J. F. Freedman delivers a gratifying suspense thriller in his latest - `wrong place at the wrong time' novel Bird's Eye View. Ever since I read the author's Above the Law, I had made it a point to read all his legal thrillers including Disappearance, Against the Wind and Key Witness. This time around, the author takes a leave from the legal thriller genre, and the protagonist herein is a history teacher, and not a lawyer.
Fritz Tullis, a Texas University Professor of History and an amateur photographer is on a sabbatical after being suspended for having an illicit affair with the wife of one of the patrons of the University. Disillusioned and an alcoholic he now spends his time near the Chesapeake Bay watching migrating birds and taking their photos. He has a particular interest in Ollie, a Whooping Crane and an endangered species that has found its way to Chesapeake Bay. One day while watching the antics of Ollie, Tullis is distracted by the sounds of an approaching plane, and through his camera Fritz sees a murder being committed and he catches the same on film. The victim is a senior Russian Diplomat, and the primary villain is James Roach (Roach, a most apt name for a bad guy, right?), an Assistant Secretary of State. What follows is thrilling action with the Professor trying to bring to book, the murderers, placing his life, that of his family and that of Ollie in danger.
Suspense wise, this book is a good read. The convoluted twist in the tail plot is interesting, and page-turning. However, after reading the fantabulous Disappearance and Above the Law, I expected something in those lines, and I was dissatisfied. For one thing there is no legal action, and secondly the taut narration and storytelling prowess that is the hallmark of a Freedman work, especially Disappearance, is absent herein. Sometimes that's what happens when a writer delivers a masterpiece, readers begin to expect more, and in that level, Bird's Eye View is a disappointment.
So in the end I must say, to the uninitiated Freedman reader, Bird's Eye View would prove interesting, but to the seasoned reader of Freedman works, it is a letdown.
Rating:
Summary: I'd Like to Give it More I Really Would
Review: Again I feel the editorial reviews summed the plot up enough, it would be redundant if I gave an additional summary.
First though let me say I am a big fan of Freedman's works, however I couldn't in good conscience give this offering more than 3 stars.
As thriller's go it is interesting, and has many elements I look for in thrillers namely excellent characterization, after all if reader doesn't feel he/she can genuinely care or sympathize for characters why read the book? Freedman again presents an anti-hero worthy of readers' emotion, and it is not there I failed to totally fall for this story.
It is just not exceptional. The tie-in with Ollie the Crane was nice play on title, but the overall plot didn't make me go wow I've gotta stay up all night reading. I know Freedman is an extrememely talented writer and although this could be he most mature work I can't claim its his best. Having said that I am reviewing it not necessarily to give it the ol' 2 thumbs up but to at least praise it as being worthy for a quick read.
Rating: 
Summary: Good suspense story
Review: Although this is a suspense novel, J.F. Freedman departs from his usual field of legal thriller and his usual setting of California to tell this story of Fritz Tullis, the black sheep of a prosperous Maryland family, and the murder he witnesses.Tullis, a former history professor forced to resign in disgrace, has carved out a minimalist existence in the woods on his mother's estate. He spends his days bird-watching, and on one expedition, he sees (and photographs) a murder on a neighbor's land. Touchy about breaking out of his isolation, Tullis is initially reluctant to report a crime that doesn't seem to impact him. The novel deals with Tullis's decision to quietly investigate the crime to see if he should actually report it to the authorities. Along the way, he begins to undergo a healing process that can restore his life. As is typical with Freedman, this book is written in the first person and, unusually, in the present tense. The departures from his usual story and setting work okay, but he is usually stronger on his more familiar ground. There is very little that is wrong with this story, but it is not exceptional enough to merit five stars. Nonetheless, it is a fast and entertaining read for those who like mysteries.
Rating:
Summary: strange disparity of language
Review: Bird's Eye View is the story of an academician on "sabbatical"--
euphemism his high-brow, genteel mother uses to describe her son fritz's termination as a tenured history professor--who finds himself an accidental witness to an international incident. others have reviewed the plot at length, but not many have pondered the strangest disparity of language ever seen in a novel, which in my opinion makes fritz an implausible character. fritz is highly educated, fairly likeable and expresses himself intelligently in dialogue and narrative with one GLARING exception. all physical contact with women throughout the book is referred to as [bad word] and his descriptions of female anatomy and sexual situations are straight from a bad porn script. imo, this totally undermined his character's credibility. on a few occasions, i felt like shutting an otherwise decent book for good, because of it. i'm not sure i comprehend the author's reasons for using such vernacular, but i feel it detracted from the story as a whole, and wasn't true to the main character's other traits--a glaring flaw in any novel.
Rating:
Summary: Suspenseful tale sets good pace, not just for the birds!
Review: Freedman has six prior novels, but was unknown to us until a friend insisted we read "Bird's-Eye". We weren't sorry, as our author combines solid writing skills with the ability to capture our interest immediately and keep us turning pages in a hurry with mystery and suspense. Already in Chapter One, we meet our leading man, Fritz Tullis, but have no idea why this thirty-something high-achiever, from a land-owning family wealthy for generations, is living in a shack on his mother's property in the swampish backwoods of the lower Chesapeake Bay. He spends his days doping, drinking, and enjoying ready sex partners, with occasional forays into the swamp to photograph birds (hence the title) with long telephoto lenses. By chapter's end, his camera catches a murder on a nearby property with a private air strip from a concealed, on the water, vantage point no one would ever know about. Tullis spends much of the first half of the story staying uninvolved - but as he learns more about the potential culprits, or at least the conspirators involved, he cannot resist doing the right thing (solving the crime) while seeking little help from the authorities, with whom he knew he would have little credibility. Meanwhile, another new lady friend takes just a little too much interest in both the birds, one of which is a rare whooping crane, as well as the murder mystery; and we readers get enough info to smell a rat much sooner than does Tullis. Corruption and politics soon enter the fray as an Assistant Secretary of State, James Roach (presumably no pun!) turns out to be the neighbor who owns the air strip. Along the way, another murder or two adds to the intrigue and the dangerous nature of the chase, with the action and affairs of the heart reaching crescendo pace by book's end. Freedman develops a fine plot without engaging so many characters we lose track. The suspense is realistic, as are the players and their thoughts and feelings. In sum, we not only enjoyed this novel immensely but will seek out his earlier works soon. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: International Intrigue comes home to roost in Maryland swamp
Review: Freedman wrote one of my favorite thrillers ever--Against the Wind, and several dynamite follow-ups. This is not one of them.
The basic plot elements are all great. Ordinary guy falls on hard times, too much alcohol, too much self-pity, too much self-absorbtion. Then a series of events, rooted in gun running in decades past, mixed with political intrigue, conspire to intrude into hero's neat little self-contained world.
The plot twists and turns; no one is quite who we thing he (and, most significantly, she) is. The story unfolds with Freedman's great writing, and the pages keep turning.
Two problems. First, the scenes between Maureen and Franz feel extremely forced, and even to the point of being long winded. Second, the story simply peters out at the end. We don't know if the bad guy gets away with it. We don't know if true love will out. We don't even know what happens to the birds.
I suspect that Freedman got bored with thrillers, and tried to do something more "literary". The title is an excellent double (triple, more?) entendre--it is by viewing his birds that Franz gets sucked in; but it is also by trying to live life from a bird's point of view--above it all, with no cares about the world--that Franz gets sucked deeper and deeper into trouble. Finally, the whole problem is caused by the fact that Ollie (our hero's whooping crane) is not where he belongs--several thousand miles from Texas, where he "belongs". This is also Franz' problem, who got lost in Texas, and ended up a few hundred feet away from Ollie in the Maryland swamps.
Good read, but not as good as the other Freedman's I've read.
Rating:
Summary: Another Winner
Review: Friedman has a unique ability to entangle his readers in his protagonist's perspective as well as bring his scenes to life. In "Bird's-Eye View" he ensnares you in the life of Fritz Tullis, an up and coming history professor whose life is in disarray. This disillusioned, even shattered, young man (maybe I identify as a former assistant history professor) buries himself in the Maryland swamps around his family home and between booze, marijuana and taking pictures of birds attempts to get his life back together. Fritz discovers a whooping crane, the most famous endangered species in the United States, has shown up in his swamp among sandhill cranes and he comes back again and again to take pictures of this extraordinary bird. While photographing the cranes he sees a mysterious airplane land on a private field across the waterway and on an impulse starts taking pictures. He ends up photographing a murder. Soon we learn that the airstrip is owned by an assistant secretary of state and the victim is an important foreign dignitary. This is a well written, suspenseful and very human interest focused book that captures both the Chesapeake Bay area as well as the complex struggle 21st century men and women face trying to find companionship and continuity. Suspenseful till the end, "Bird's-Eye View" is both a good read and thought provoking.
Rating: 
Summary: Bird Brained Book
Review: Fritz Tullis is a belligerent pot smoking lothario now pushing forty who somehow evolved out of a smart athletic golden boy with a Ph.d. from Yale. He is, or was before he was fired, a well-liked college professor who presumably has book smarts but as much common sense as Ollie the lost whooping crane, which has more depth as a character than Fritz. Freedman goes on to make his villain an evil arms dealer in diplomat's clothing and names him Roach. Is he playing with his readers, or does he think these people seem real. Fritz's amateurish investigation of the murder he saw takes him into pitfall after pitfall, almost like the old Saturday serials where the audience wants to scream, "no, don't go there." Take the visit to his college buddy Buster who's now a big time Washington lawyer. "Can I trust Buster?" Come on! In the end Freedman needs to use a bad guy with a gun standing over Fritz and his babe to explain how everything ties together. It wouldn't flow from the story any other way, and Fritz certainly wasn't going to figure it out. Like its leading man, this story is all promise and zero substance.
Rating:
Summary: Reasonably Entertaining
Review: Starts out slowly, with a lot of back-story, then picks up nicely. Fairly implausible characters and storyline, but, hey, it's pulp fiction. Throw in a little allegory with a lost whooping crane, dangle a few red herrings, mix in the usual sex and a bit of violence, and you have the recipe for a typical modern mystery novel. (Personally, I have to admit I enjoyed the protagonist's penchant for vice. Everytime he reached for another shot and a beer, I got kind of thirsty.) One could almost use this as a study aid in a class for aspiring pulp novelists. Most of the standard devices for leading the reader are employed, but not to the point where one isn't aware of the manipulation. That's what keeps this from being a top rank story, yet at the same time it provides a useful guide for how to proceed. What always gets me about mysteries is how the main trick is to engage the reader with all sorts of misleading information, while at the same time planting some small clues as to what the denoument will be. In this case we are diverted for several hundred pages with the question of "is she, or isn't she?" Our flawed hero, meanwhile, stumbles in all the wrong directions, and the two or three paragraphs that contain the essential tip-offs are quickly forgotten. The very highest order of suspense novels will manage to fool us this way without our being aware of it. That doesn't happen here, but it's still interesting to see how well we've identified the author's intentions, and why. Not a bad way to kill an afternoon at the beach.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty Much A Waste Of Time
Review: The value of this book is that the author can write like you dream about writing. But the story itself is improbable if not downright silly. I won't dignify it by a synopsis. The characters are also wanting. Very few novels succeed in having the hero/heroine witness a crime and then give it the old "I won't go to the police because...". It does not succeed here, either. It's very difficult to believe that the protagonist can be as stupid as he is in this story. Freedman ought to get someone to plot for him. Don't waste your time.
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