Customer Reviews

Act of Revenge

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Tanenbaum really knows NYC. As a native New Yorker, one of the things I enjoy most about his books is his intimate and accurate descriptions of NY neighborhoods, travel, food, accents, and attitudes. He really nails it. Why does he live in California? He's obviously still in love with NYC. So am I, and so I enjoy his books' settings. I also enjoy the character of Butch and Lucy. Marlene, though, is becoming tiresome in a wonderwoman, action heroine way. Act of Revenge is an interesting phase in the chronicle of the Karp family, but next book around he should send Marlene on an overseas assignment and concentrate on Lucy and Butch.

People Magazine selected Tanenbaum's last two books, RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT and IRRESISTIBLE IMPULSE as "Page Turner of the Week" and "Beach Book of the Week." They're right. If you haven't yet tried Tanenbaum do it now with ACT OF REVENGE. You'll love it .... and then have his ten backlist Karp titles to truly indulge yourself.

This review is about the latest Karp as it connects with all 10 previous Karp thrillers. The typical hero of a thriller is a lone wolf - private eye, disaffected cop, intelligence agent - at odds with the system, and works outside it to resolve the plot, catch the villain and restablish justice. He, usually a he, may have emotional attachments, but they're typically romantic, and after a certain amount of sexual fireworks, they fade in the final pages, so that in the next book 'he' can start fresh with another romance. Rarely is there a family around. The writer inside this convention provides thrills but can't penetrate deeply into real life, for society's means of ACTUALLY coping with crime is highly bureaucratized, and the solution and punishment of crimes a group enterprise. Also, conventional thrillers finesse the effects of immersion in violence and corruption of family life. Your typical thriller hero is unmarried, or has a broken family. The Karp books try to deal with the question of how a family responds to an atmosphere of danger and violence. Butch Karp is a senior official with the N.Y. D.A. His wife, Marlene, is a private detective who specializes in protecting women from stalkers and domestic violence. Their teen-aged daughter, Lucy, is a language prodigy, speaking dozens of languages fluently, who, as a result of this facility, is able to penetrate the various immigrant communities of N.Y. (and their criminous elements) in ways unavailable to her parents. This set-up allows these books to deal with the conflict between law and justice, between the demands of work and child rearing, between the moral assumptions of the established culture and those of newcomers, between men and women, between parents and children, at a depth not usual in the average thriller. Essentially, these are domestic comedies layered upon the tragedy implicit in society's need to impose a single order on the near infinite variety of individuals that compose it. As well as being a "good" read, they're a serious read. This writer obviously knows a great deal about novel writing and has high standards. Hope to see the writer unfold his talents in other genres, which he's obviously capable of doing.

From Publisher's Weekly - Publishers Weekly: Veteran authorTanenbaum (Reckless Endangerment, Irresistible Impulse etc.) pens alethal family outing for series protagonist Butch Karp, his vigilante wife, Marlene Ciampi, and their linguistic prodigy daughter, Lucy, in this take-no-prisoners tale of mob violence, Asian incursion and political corruption that spans decades. All become embroiled in a labyrinth of interconnected plot lines and intersecting lives during an Asian gangsters plan to take over Italian mob turf in Little Italy next to Chinatown. Chief Assistant District Attorney Karps team is stumped when the usual mob suspects dont pan out in the killing of Eddie Catalano, a capo for Big Sally Bollano, don of the Mafia crime family, but he has bigger problems when two Hong Kong triad biggies are murdered in Chinatown. Karps daughter, Lucy, witnesses the killings, but refuses to talk because it would endanger the Chinese family she grew up with... The closed society of Chinatown proves a formidable barrier to police probes and only Lucy and Tran can make headway and flush the killer when attacks on the Karp family get starkly personal. Former New York City homicide chief and trial attorney Tanenbaum has crafted a believably twisted gem of a gangster tale with visceral action and smooth comic relief in a technicolor, Big Apple setting that waxes nostalgic for the gentleman killers of yesteryear. Lucy is an engaging adolescent addition and Karps quirky extended family provides enough depth for years of sequels. (May)

"Act of Revenge" finds Assistant District Attorney Butch Karp, his security specialist wife Marlene Ciampri, and their teenage language prodigy daughter Lucy all tangled in a web of Chinese and Italian organized crime machinations. Butch and Marlene are involved in different Mafia-related investigations; meanwhile, Lucy - who enjoys more personal freedom than any young adolescent outside of literature intended for that age group - has witnessed a killing in Chinatown and is now a target herself. Fans of the series will be interested in Lucy's evolving relationship with her parents as she grows older. I seem to be working my way through this series backwards, so I can't compare this book to previous installments, but I can say that it is primarily action-oriented and lacks the sort of compelling issues that were at the center of "True Justice" (the book that followed in the series). I was also disappointed at the extent to which the story's resolution is achieved through lucky coincidence rather than investigation.

One of life's great pleasures is to find a talented writer with whose books the reader is unfamiliar...and to discover a whole series of prior books to order. This is simply a great read from a very talented guy. As a retired lawyer who avoids books & movies about the profession, I'm a hard sell for this kind of book. But I'm sold! I just ordered 5 of his other books.Try it and see if you don't want to read more. Great plot( mafia vs tong) and memorable characters with some heart-jolting action. But don't plan on reading this one in segments!

This book was perhaps his best book to date! A real grabber! Karp is up to his neck in trouble and he has to get out! Great dialogue. Mr. Tanenbaum tells a great story here.

My first taste of the author's work, I've since gone back and read most of his catalog. While I'd recommend any of his books, this probably stands as my favorite. I find nothing more vapid than a mystery that I can clearly see through before the books last pages, and this one kept me off balance until the very end.

Excellent characterization: likable, dysfuntional types that come across as distinctly out of the ordinary and believable all at the same time, a difficult task for any author and doubly difficult with characters the author has lived with for so long. Yet Each of Tanenbaum's books stands as a story on their own, one can jump on board anywhere in the series and not miss a beat.

Surprisingly, Lucy has become one of my favorite fictional characters, which is a stretch for me, as I normally detest when an author feels the need to introduce a "cutesy" kid into the mix. Nothing "cutesy" about Lucy, she's every bit as complex and quirky as Tanenbaum's adult characters. Heh, and Sweetie gets the nod as fictional dog I would most like to own.

Having read many of the books in the Karp/Ciampi series by this writer, I noted that I was able to depend on a story that was well written with a rather simplistic plot, characters that had depth as well as a good mystery. The writer supplies one of his most complex plots with numerous characters being intoduced in a rapid fire manner. This is done while juggling numerous plotlines that do not seem to intersect until one has completed almost seventy percent of the book. At that time, the stories finally intersect and the action is fast and furious. Although good, it really is not worth the long wait. The characters are almost cartoonish unless one has been reading this series and are not really well developed. There is Butch the Honest along with Marlene the Vigilante and daughter Lucy, now twelve, the Child Prodigy. This book is fair, yet appears to be in search of direction. Although good, it is not one of Tanenbaum's better works.

Variety is not usual with crime novelists. Variety, of the best kind is what this novel offers. It causes me to want to read more of Robert Tanenbaum's works.