Customer Reviews

Absolute Rage

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Robert Tanenbaum's newest offering in the Butch Karp / Marlene Ciampi series is Absolute Rage, a book that drags the Karps out of New York City and into the lovely and dangerous West Virginia mountains. It's not Tanenbaum's best in the series, but it is a great, rollicking read that will satisfy Karpophiles everywhere.

Marlene Ciampi, we learn, has once again given up the gun. She has taken instead to raising and training Neopolitan Mastiffs on a farm on Long Island. Her financial windfall from her previous employment at a high-profile security company affords her the luxury of doing pretty much what she darn well pleases. This pleasant bucolic life comes to an abrupt end when she meets her summer neighbors, the Heeneys, from West Virginia. Husband "Red" Heeney is a union organizer who seeks to unseat the current corrupt union president and return some of the power to West Virginia's poorest and least-empowered workers, the coal miners. Red, despite his noble efforts on the part of exploited workers, is a drinker, a braggart, and a brawler who seems to bring misery to his family. Nevertheless, when Red, his wife Rose, and their youngest child Lizzie are murdered in their West Virginia home, Marlene is moved to help the two remaining Heeney sons find the killers and bring them to justice.

Butch Karp finds himself in the middle of West Virginia violence by way of a friend and former professor who persuades Butch to take the job of outside prosecutor in the Heeney murders. The West Virginia governor would like to "clean up Dodge," but he knows that the town's corruption runs deeper than the coal in the mountains and will take an outside force to effect any real change. Karp takes the job to escape a frustrating political situation in the city. In typical fashion, Marlene's approach to rooting out and punishing the killers runs counter to Butch's ingrained belief in the rule of law.

Readers who find Lucy Karp, the Karp's young language prodigy, an engaging and interesting character will enjoy her acquisition of a boyfriend. Lucy's insistence that she is too ugly and too peculiar to find love melts away under the attentions of Dan Heeney, Red's youngest son. Lucy discovers that she is quite possibly every bit as alluring as her mother was and still is. As she steps further from childhood, Lucy learns not only about her own heart but that of her lifelong friend Tran. The Vietnamese gangster has long been Lucy's friend and teacher, but she learns, this time out, that despite his outward veneer of civility and humanity, he is a cold killer underneath. The loss of this fiction, combined with the near-loss of brother Zik, shake Lucy's faith in God to its foundation.

Lucy's younger brothers, twins Zik and Zak, are also interwoven in this story. Tanenbaum has chosen to flesh out their characters rather than leave them, as he once described them, as "indistinguishable larvae." Zik, the gentle Giancarlo, is an artist and a humorist, while Zak seems destined to join French Legion or perhaps the Green Berets, as his passion is plinking at rats with a small-caliber rifle and blowing stuff up.

Tanenbaum seems aware that readers have favorite characters they wish to revisit in each novel, so he has managed to find places for Guma and V.T. Newbury in this venture. Even Murrow, Karp's deadpan assistant and one of the most promising new characters to come along since Harry Bello, makes a small appearance. As a result, the book is contrived, but happily so. It is a visit to familiar territory, a bus trip home, if you will. The reader must suspend belief-nay, the reader must stick her belief to the bedpost and remind herself to retrieve it in the morning-but the overall effect of the book is a tonic for the heart as well as the intellect. Few writers of popular, gobble `em-down fiction manage to work in Vietnamese folk songs, St. Theresa of Avila, and giant slobbery dogs with as much success as Robert K. Tanenbaum.

Voice artist Lee Sellars gives a finely paced reading to the latest thriller from New York times best selling author Robert. K. Tannenbaum.

In this, the fourteenth Karp family tale, the big city swelters in summer heat while the Karps are enjoying a leisurely respite at their Long Island farmhouse. Wife Marlene is training guard dogs, while Karp, New York Country's assistant district attorney, is asked to serve as special prosecutor in a West Virginia murder case. Actually, the victims were summer friends of the Karps: a coal mine union leader, his wife, and their daughter.

Karp finds more than killing in the little coal mining town - corruption and black crimes abound. Marlene soon joins her spouse, adding fuel to the already glowing fire of imminent death.

Daughter Lucy plays a larger than usual part in this story, while the ten-year-old twins provide mostly background.

Fans of Tannenbaum will find much to their liking in "Absolute Rage," and, undoubtedly, eagerly await the next one from this prolific author.

- Gail Cooke

I don't think that Robert Tanenbaum is really very fond of character Marlene Ciampi Karp. Over the years that this series has evolved (this is the 14th book in the series), Marlene and her over-the-top personality have been involved in any number of violent encounters. Her choice of professions (personal security for women) and friends (Tran,
A violent Viet gangster, devoted to Marlene and daughter Lucy) have embroiled her, husband Butch, and even the children in many unsavory situations. Butch has remained sort of a "devoted rock", while Marlene has flirted with guns, drink, toyed with the idea of an affair, etc.

In "Absolute Rage", Marlene has settled into a different type of lifestyle, on Long Island, training guard dogs in the manner of her own devoted Neapolitan mastiff. Daughter
Lucy, now at Boston College, is back, and really shines in this novel; much of which is told from her point of view. The Karps become entangled with another family at the beach, West Virginians, the Heeneys. Violence directed at the Heeney family soon touches the Karps, and no one is safe. While Butch tries to stop the violence through legal channels, wife Marlene unleashes the fury of a woman whose family is threatened.

Still entertaining, with sharp characterization and a feeling that Karp will soon be deserting the DA's office for something different, Tanenbaum gives us another tale of family woven with violence that will keep your heart pounding until the end. Still, one hopes that in novel 15, Tanenbaum will give Marlene's wild side a little rest......

Excellent!!

I seriously doubt if Tanenbaum could write a book that wasn't an absolutely I-couldn't-put-the-book-down read. This is one of his best. It starts calmly enough, and gradually buillds up to a brain bashing crescendo as it zeroes in on some genuine hillbilly killers who hold an entire region of West Virginia in terror and who have involved Butch and his family by killing a friend.
Lucy is by now a young woman and happily is more deeply involved in the plot than she has been in quite some time. Needless to say, altho' Marlene starts out as a calm, civilized type, she reverts easily to the bull-bashing physical type that seems to be ingrained in her psyche.

No fan of Tanenbaum's will be dissatisfied with this book. Unlike many authors who write successive series, he doesn't spend page after page telling about the past or describing the personalities of his characters. He lets that information develop as part of the story, which is a real relief.

About the only thing I could find to strongly disagree with is Tanenbaum's tendency to make Butch overly idealistic. I think Butch's final assessment of the situation in West Virginia is far closer to reasonable than his puritanical view of how it was achieved.

I can't wait for another in this series.

This is the first Tanenbaum book I have read, and halfway through found myself wishing that the author had written a series with the same main characters. To my delight, I discovered that there are 14 books in the Karp/Cianni series, and tonight I ordered the first 5 - I am looking forward to reading all of them! What fun to discover a "new" author!

This book, for me, being my 4th Tanenbaum (having read "Hoax" and "Fury" first even though they come later in the series) explained a few things and helped to fill out some of the gaps in the characters. I find the on-going "Do I want to be a mom or a killer" internal debate for Marlene a little annoying at times. She's one of those characters who almost never has a nice thing to say, and that bothers me...and she wonders why Zak is the way he is...

Anyway, Lucy was more than a little annoying in this book. She is so prim and proper, devout and, well, almost perfect, in settings involving Dan, and yet, she's helping Tran to get high...seems like a little bit of a mixed message to me. While the scene with Tran helped to reduce some of the alienation and piety that I've come to expect from Lucy, I just can't seem to wrap my head around why she, little miss perfect, would do something like that...and evidently sees no problem.

I have enjoyed Giancarlo and Zak since my first Tanenbaum...their dynamic with one another is always a joy to read because they are so completely different. All of the sets of twins I know are very different from one another, but Giancarlo and Zak have a very unique difference...Zak is more into whatever is "hot" while GC tends to do his own thing.

Butch and Marlene annoy me a little. Frankly, Butch is almost too perfect, almost too good at his job to be believable. Although he frequently says he does not condone Marlene's actions, it almost seems as if he must on some level. I realize he loves her, but does he honestly think that nobody knows what she's up to? If it were reality, he'd be in a whole world of hurt because of her...particularly once you get into "Hoax" and "Fury"...if you haven't read them, I won't give anything away. If you have, you know to what I am referring.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. Being a Marylander, though, I had to wonder how many West Virginians read the book and cringed over the stereotyping. Sure, there are some serious hillbillies in WVA, as well as Arkansas and probably a plethora of other places, but I had to laugh while reading this book, because there was really nothing to indicate that Tanenbaum doesn't believe that the entire state behaves in such a way.

I did like the book, there were just a few things about it that make it impossible for me to give it a 5. Marlene's solution to her son's injuries bothered me to a point that I can't even begin to explain. I'd love to know the psychology behind such a decision. I still enjoyed the book, so here it is...4 stars.

I've been so disappointed in the latest Tanenbaum offerings that I've gone back and read the older books.

I was immediately struck by the fact that, despite its several flaws, "Absolute Rage" is light-years beyond "Hoax" and "Fury" in the quality of the writing. Yes, the plot is a bit over the top, particularly the denouement, but the the characters are so skillfully drawn, and their stories are so well developed that as it builds to the climactic battle, we can believe it, at least in the world of the novel.

"Absolute Rage" follows "Enemy Within" which seems to mark the beginning of the shift in this series; Marlene's surprising decent into drunkeness combined with the fantastical Mole People. But in "Absolute Rage" Marlene is in (for her) recovery, and I actually appreciate the added dimension this brings to the characters and situations - from the finely drawn minor characters like the recovering drug-addicts she hires at the dog farm, to the character of Ernie Poole, who rediscovers his humanity through his interaction with Marlene.

Although Lucy and Dan Heeney's budding romance is a little fatuous, and Lucy's piety is really annoying, it's written so that they come across as real people rather than cardboard characters. Lucy's combined spirituality and sexuality is complicated, and the author does a good job depicting it.

The villians are not cartoon evil characters; they are simply weak, greedy, venal, cruel, human beings that sometimes behave out of fear - kind of like real people. I particularly like the drawing of the character of Bo Cade, the bad guy who doesn't really want to be a bad guy.

The book is more contemplative and full of wonderful little scenes, such as Karp's observation of the dog trainers; the picture of family life chez Heeney; Dan Heeney's visual assessment of Lucy as they ride the train, and the depiction of Mose Welch and his family. There are great minor characters, like the offensive brain surgeon who nevertheless performs wonders, and Hendricks, the state trooper. This book doesn't move like a thriller until the violence starts to pick up at the end.

The plot, for a Tanenbaum, is really simple - there are no double lines that intersect with unlikely coincidence as in previous novels; just a simple case of murder and small town corruption. But it moves swiftly, and lets us see the Karp family stymied a little by a culture unlike their own, which is refreshing.

"Resolved" follows this book, and it is the last of the books where the characters are recognizable. After that, they morph into stereotypes.

"Absolute Rage" is the latest entry in the long-running Butch Karp-Marlene Ciampi series about two lawyers who marry and have kids, but who otherwise lead unusual lives. Butch works as the chief assistant District Attorney in New York City, where he encounters endless bureaucracy and constant political pressure from his superiors. Marlene runs a business training guard dogs, and she is determined to avoid the violence that marked the earlier part of her life. She has always had a penchant for trying to right wrongs, which more than once has placed her family in the line of fire. However, Marlene has decided that the satisfaction and excitement of bringing bad guys to justice is not worth the risk to herself and her loved ones.

Alas, resolutions are made to be broken. Marlene and Butch meet the Heeny family on Long Island. The Heeneys include Rose, her volatile husband, Red, and their three children. Red Heeney is a firebrand union agitator who is trying to clean up the corruption in the coal-mining town of McCullensburg, West Virginia. However, Red's outspoken stand against corruption has tragic repercussions. Before long, Dan Heeney, Red's son, calls on Marlene to come to West Virginia to help him. Butch also gets involved in the ugly situation in West Virginia when the governor makes him a special prosecutor. It is Butch's job to bring justice to this lawless town.

Tanenbaum's books all have several common threads. The dialogue is hip and saucy, and is often laced with sarcasm and flip humor. The prose is effortless and entertaining, and there is almost no objectionable language or gore. His books usually deal with important social issues. In "Absolute Rage," Tanenbaum's effectively describes how a small town gradually becomes completely corrupt. In McCullensburg, the mining company owns everything, including all of the elected officials.

The characters in "Absolute Rage" are, as always, colorful and vivid. One of the most fascinating characters is Butch and Marlene's daughter, Lucy, who has grown up before our eyes. She is now a student in Boston College. Lucy has been a language prodigy for years and, unlike her parents, she is an ardent Catholic. In this novel, she experiences her first romantic encounter. Tanenbaum also brings back the fascinating Tran, a former guerilla fighter from Vietnam who has been a Karp family friend since the early days.

"Absolute Rage" has a number of predictable elements. As always, Marlene and Lucy are offbeat and unconventional. It is a foregone conclusion that the Karps will be up to their ears in danger before the final page is turned. However, Tanenbaum writes so engagingly and his books have such heart, that most readers will fall in love with the Karps and will root for them to prevail over the forces of evil.

Summer in the city means a lot more than just a loving spoonful of humidity so Butch Karp, his wife Marlene Ciampi, and their twin ten-year-old boys (Zik and Zak), cool off on their Long Island beach property. After completing the spring semester at Boston College, their "eaglette" daughter Lucy joins them on the North Shore. Their neighbor Rose Heeney tells Marlene about her hometown in McCullensburg, West Virginia where family feuds make the Hatfields and McCoys seem like Manhattan debutantes.

Not long afterward, Butch and Marlene learn that someone murdered Rose and her husband, Red, a union organizer. The West Virginia governor appoints Butch as a special prosecutor to investigate the Heeney deaths. Butch accompanied by Marlene between canine discussions and their three children travel to West Virginia. However, the quintet will soon find that Manhattan is a safer place than the small coal mining towns of West Virginia, as no family member will come out of this summer unscathed.

The latest Karp-Ciampi tale takes long time fans on quite a twist as the action occurs in West Virginia with the kids playing pivotal and dangerous roles and tragedy hitting home. Though humorous, the story line is much darker than the previous novels with the stunning misfortune striking one of them and with Marlene seemingly going crazier as her dogs hold conversations with her and not just letting her know what they want. Still Robert K. Tanenbaum provides a powerful thriller albeit that leaves readers satiated and the Karp-Ciampi crowd ready for their next adventure still filled with ABSOLUTE RAGE.

Harriet Klausner

I am an avid reader of Butch Karp & Marlene Ciampi series. However, the each one becomes more and more ridiculous. Absolute Rage was so ridiculous that is was unenjoyable reading. Also, the more I read Mr. Tanenbaum the more I am beginning to dislike him. I find his ridiculing of any place other than New York City very offensive. He constantly degrades anyone and their capabilities if they do not work in New York. This time West Virginia...a novel before Delaware. Get a grip Bob....there is a life outside of the Big Apple.