Book Reviews of “Defending Jacob,” “Gods Without Men,” “Savages,” “Start Shooting,” and “Raylan”

While in the search of selections for Alabama Liberal’s “Book of the Month” club list, I come across books that don’t quite make the cut (either by an inch or a mile) but are worth discussing here anyway. [Note: April’s Book Selection is “C-Street” and May’s hasn’t been decided yet, none of these are official selections although I’d love to have a conversation about them in the comments section if anyone has read them.]

1. Defending Jacob by William Landay…What It’s About: An assistant district attorney finds himself on the other side when his teenage son is accused of murdering a classmate…Review: One of the finest John Grisham knockoffs you could imagine, a court room thriller that is also a pretty frightening examination about how little we know of our own children. I wish Landay (a former lawyer clearly more interested in legalities than character depth) had went a little bit deeper into the psyche of Jacob and the family dynamics felt more than just surface level but there’s no denying that this is a fast, satisfying read with a knockout ending. Grade: B+

2. Savages by Don Winslow…What It’s About: Two white California weed distributers (one a science major that controls the quality of the product, the other a former Navy Seal that controls the “business” aspect) get their mutual girlfriend kidnapped by a Mexican drug cartel that wants to force the pair into working for them…Review: The American characters are jacked up with a bit too much “badass” bluster for my tastes, while I found myself more drawn to the Mexican villains. This slick book was clearly designed to be a movie (certain chapters are written in screenplay format) and is becoming one later this year starring Blake Lively (the kidnapped girl), John Travolta (a DEA agent), Benicio Del Toro (a ruthless cartel enforcer who’s the highlight of the book), and Salma Hayek (the female head of the cartel as the widow of the former head, the second best character in it). Since this book feels like it was written in a weekend—-and with an obvious awareness that film rights and residuals are worth more than book sales—-I think you can definitely wait for the movie on this one, but the film may very well suck. Grade: B-…Still, the pages evaporated in my mind and you could definitely spend a night of your life on worse books, such as…

3. Raylan by Elmore Leonard…What It’s About: It takes the character of Raylan Givens (from TV’s Justified) and puts him through three loosely connected cases involving organ thieves, coal companies, and women who get high before robbing banks…Review: I love Elmore Leonard, and have read about ten of his books (the man has written over 40), and I’m a big fan of the series Justified, but this thing is a mess. It reads like weird fan fiction—-half of this material has already happened on the show, and some of the dialogue is lifted directly from scenes of the show that Leonard didn’t originally write which feels like borderline plagiarism on his part—-and the few original developments feel tonally out of place for the world of these characters (why do all of the villains seem like they’re more from Leonard’s Detroit than Raylan’s Kentucky?). This really feels like Leonard wrote it in a weekend, as nearly 90 percent of the book is just dialogue (maybe because he’s so clearly borrowing from Justified’s scripts). Not the finest from the 86-year-old Leonard, who could now write nearly anything he wants but still refuses to dig deep. I still say he should do one last, masterful Western (everything deeper he’s ever wanted to explore but hasn’t because he’s been too caught up in trends and plots), take more than a weekend to write it, and let that be his final work. Review: C-

4. Start Shooting by Charlie Newton…What It’s About: Two Chicago cop brothers (one corrupt, one accused of being corrupt) get embroiled in several scandals from the past and present and the story cuts between that and a 40 year old actress who knew the brothers “from the neighborhood” who’s trying to land a role in A Streetcar Named Desire…Review: Unlike “Savages” or “Raylan,” this book is not a quick read that’s heavy on dialogue so much as clunky, ponderous paragraphs of repetitive exposition that seem to say the same thing over and over again (who edited this?). However, the book is also a bit of a mess as it starts as a gritty Chicago noir tale but winds up sprawled out in a convoluted corporate espionage plot that takes a misstep into terrorism and World War II history. “Start Shooting” is clearly more ambitious than the other two crime novels, but that may also have been its undoing as I found myself frequently baffled at this all-over-the-place narrative that seems to think scenes of an actress’s quest to audition for “A Streetcar Named Desire” are as interesting as the sordid Chicago underworld (which never really comes alive as a unique setting). I give points for trying, but not so many points for satisfaction. Grade: C

5. Gods Without Men by Hari Kunzru…What It’s About: A sci-fi (ish) narrative that spans centuries as multiple characters grapple with strange doings in the desert (the most central plot line dealing with an Indian Wall Street engineer and his wife losing their autistic son there). Is it aliens? A crafty desert God named Coyote who’s trying to escape the land of the dead? Or nothing at all?…Review: This one is so infuriating because I halfway loved this book and was halfway driven crazy by it. This is a frustrating, sporadically rewarding narrative that keeps introducing fascinating ideas (the main character’s financial firm creating “Walter” a high frequency trading machine that can play God, losing their autistic son but having him returned very different, the exploits of an alien worshipping group in the 70’s) only to keep retreating into less interesting ideas (long stretches dealing only with the central couple’s families/backgrounds, rambling descriptions about characters that are peripheral at the absolute best) and continuing to introduce characters that go nowhere (a British rocker in 2008, a Native American researcher in 1920’s, a Spanish conquistador in 1775). Alternately puzzling and fascinating, this book could have lost 70 pages (and gained a better ending) and been eligible for May’s selection, but for now I’ll have to give it a…Grade: B