Hoax from bookish, a weblog by George Girton

Hoax . . . . . sep 13 2004 — bookish111.dat

Hoax [buy at amazon] by Robert K. Tanenbaum. Having read the previous 12 or 13 books in this series, I looked forward to the latest adventures of NYC DA Butch Karp, his vigilantism-inclined and troubled Catholic wife, the linguistic genius daughter Lucy, and their twin sons, one of them blinded by a pelletgun in a previous episode. Not to mention the gigantic and lovable slobbering mastiff dog.

And, except for the dog, I was rewarded, at least somewhat richly. By this point of course, there is a huge amount of back story in these novels, so it's kind of tough to fit any new characters into the first 90 pages, but Tanenbaum manages admirably, creating sympathetic new good guys and a cast of minor characters.

The bullet: Alejandro Garcia, a rap artist, is framed for the murder of L.A.- based ML Rex (Martin Luther Rex), in order to get files about a massive coverup of injustice out of the way of the hands of the new DA, who would in all probability do something about it. Also, be warned that there are many gruesome killings that in addition to subject matter make this novel inappropriate for the young. Scenes of sex, violence, and, as they say 'language' abound! What's not to like?

Something is a little unusual about the way the writing constructs the book this time around, though. It's as if Tanenbaum, who must have visited Taos New Mexico for research, so lyrical and realistic are the descriptions of the desert countryside, also got too near one of those vortexes (vortices?) of famed Taos New Age lore. Tanenbaum, afflicted with a touch of the supernatural of the old Southwest, writes around a lot of scenes, returning you to the present after a meandering visit to the past, and returning to a scene from another viewpoint to explain how the characters could possibly have been where they were, and then showed up at the right time with the right weapon. Is it fragmented as in cubist art? It's reminiscent of the wonderful movie Lone Star about a border sheriff, where a pan across a scene can take you, within the scene, to a time decades removed.

The effect is a little unsettling, and a couple of scenes don't really work plausibly but it doesn't really matter because from a plot standpoint it's pretty much a comic book anyway, with the bad guys stereotypically delineated, and the REALLY bad guy an evil villain right who maybe could have come right out of a Batman comic.

I'm a forgiving reader and I enjoyed Tanenbaum's humor, but I missed the big old dog.

Take your big old dog for a walk down to amazon.com and grab a copy of Hoax [buy at amazon] .by Robert K. Tanenbaum. Don't let the kids get their hands on this one, though.

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