Jackie Disaster : A Mystery

Rating:
Summary: superb satire
Review: Former professional boxer Jackie "Disaster" De Sesto manages Allegation Services, a crisis-management spin-doctor firm. His offices overlook the gaming floor of the Golden Prospect Casino in Atlantic City, owned by his prime customer and girlfriend, Angela Vanni, daughter of a deceased Mafia boss. Jackie Disaster and his team of Imps handle and often deliver scams and cons to paint a rosy picture of his clients regardless of the truth.

Millionaire Sally Naturale hires Jackie Disaster and associates to restore her and her firm's reputation. Murrin Connolly filed a lawsuit claiming that the organic soymilk that Sally's company produces caused her to miscarry. Expert Jonah Eastman suggests a two front attack. First Jackie Disaster and team need to destroy the credibility of Murrin with a negative dirt smearing campaign and second Sally must act contrite in public as a counter to her posh upper crust living style. Instead of smooth sailing, Jackie lives up to his nickname as nothing goes right especially when Sally vanishes. Jackie and the Imps begin a new counteroffensive.

JACKIE DISASTER is a superb satire that showcases a professional who uses any means including dirty tricks to provide counter cover for the rich and famous. The story line stuns the audience with its relative simplicity that paints a dirty image making game by the in crowd to protect their reputation. A cast, starting with the antihero and his cohorts including his father, niece, girlfriend, and new client make for a wild ride down the Jersey shore. To protect the image of Eric Dezenhall, a sequel is required.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: a proofreading disaster
Review: I agree with the other reviewers that this book is great fun to read. But apparently no proofreader did so. This publication is absolutely RIFE with typos, punctuation gaffes and distracting errors. SpellCheck isn't enough, Thomas Dunne Books - a live human needs to proof it, too.

Rating:
Summary: Completely Bogus
Review: I could only get through 1/4 of this book because of the inconsistencies and outright errors. It spoiled what is decent writing. I live in Atlantic City and work in the gaming industry, so when I saw this book in the library I snatched it up (thank goodness I didn't waste my hard-earned money!).

First of all, his charaterization of Atlatnic City casinos is totally incorrect. He has a mobster owning an AC casino, something that would NEVER happnen in the 25 years of legal gambling in AC. It just can't happen because the regulations are so tight. And the hero, Jackie, is a consultant who has full run of the casino where he works. Again, would NEVER happen. Early in the book Jackie and his cohorts grill a woman in the "Hellivator," a specially adapted elevator to pressure cheaters. What an imagaination! It would NEVER happen.

But OK, for arguement's sake, let's give him some literary license.

The hero, Jackie, is an Italian American who supposedly has a problem early in the book with the "stereotype" of the Wop. But a few pages later, he makes fun of an Italian American who graduated college and is the casino's COO because this gentleman forgot how close he is to Siciily. You can't have it both ways.

And his introduction of characters (all of whom have the typical "mob" nicknames, another inconsistency for someone who doesn't like sterotypes) is like a shotgun. He tries to out-Elmore Leonard Elmore Leonard, and fails miserably.

An extremely disappointing book and for anyone familiar with the South Jersey/Atlantic City area, his errors are unforgivable. And spell check would have indeed helped.

Pass this one by.

Rating:
Summary: Master of Disaster
Review: I have just finished reading Jackie Disaster, Eric Dezenhall's second novel, and I feel an urgent need to get this review out immediately, in order to alert my fellow Delaware Valley natives (and more far flung South Jerseyans), to go out and snatch this book - or risk missing some of the biggest laughs of any novel you are likely to bring "down the shore" with you this summer. The new book has all of the page-turning hyper-drive of Dezenhall's first novel, Money Wanders¸ but the laughs are bigger, and the characters this time around are completely out of control.

It is possible that those that did not grow up within a certain distance of the Benjamin Franklin bridge may find some of the characters that Dezenhall has cooked-up to be somewhat over the top, but having come of age in crazy, class-and-ethnicity-obsessed South Jersey, I can vouch for the authenticity of even the most outrageous of these characters (the disgraced plastic surgeon, the obese mobster (wanabee) and the flamboyant queen with a gift for inventing the most absurd nicknames stand-out among some of the more hilarious and twisted characters). Make no mistake, no matter how clever (and sometimes diabolical) Dezenhall's improvisations, the real craft here is careful observation.

But there is much more to Jackie Disaster than just detailed description and belly-laughs. Dezenhall is also able to immerse the reader in a complex and highly nuanced world, where even slight gradations in social class and economic fortunes explain more about the behavior of adults (and, sadly, some children) than any amount of psycho-sexual Freudian theory could ever hope to explain. Dezenhall's trick is to give us enough of the social, economic and religious background of the characters and their environment so that we understand the motivations of the characters as they begin to unravel, without once slowing the down the juggernaut of his plot.

As with many of the best episodes of the Sopranos, Dezenhall knows that what draws in the audience is not simply a string of incredibly brutal acts of the protagonists, but that they live among us in a parallel universe with its own complex moral hierarchy - a code of ethics that allows them to sit next to us and participate at PTA meetings, while at the same time truly believing that murder and mayhem are acceptable (and even just) punishments for not showing the proper "respect" for a small-minded thug who oversees the crimes of other, smaller-minded thugs. Just describing the acts is never enough - you need to see the characters go through their normal routines and have (for them) normal conversations with their peers in order to recognize how deep the evil really runs.

And then there is the plot. It may be that Eric Dezenhall created an entirely new genre - the "public relations/crisis management thriller" - with his first book. In Jackie Disaster, he again gives us a two-layered view of the crisis-management game that keeps us flipping the pages; the high-level strategic and public opinion angle, as well as the street-smart capers that one sometimes needs to employ when the other guys just won't "play by the rules".

It strikes me that this book is required reading for any CEO of a public company in the post-Enron era, where the public now has real-life "proof" that nobody gets rich without cheating, and catching the fat cat with his (or her) hand in the cookie jar is just a matter of time (and the right "crusading" activist or journalist).

I have no hesitation whatsoever in recommending Jackie Disaster to anyone who suspects that there is more to the news than facts, and more to New Jersey than a turnpike.

Rating:
Summary: Fast paced fun
Review: Last year, I read "Money Wanders" and I enjoyed it so much that I decided to pick up "Jackie Disaster." This book was even better than the first novel by this author. While both books were fun, (I actually laughed out loud many times) "Jackie Disaster" had a really well developed feel to it. The cast of characters was interesting, the plot ran smoothly without telegraphing the ending and I found myself completely caught up in the action. I definitely recommend this one-as well as "Money Wanders." Can't wait for Dezenhall's next book.