Customer Reviews

Aphrodite

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

 

 

The concept of this book is that the government conspires with big business to provide for the "good of the country". Now we all know that never happens. That aside, this is a pretty good story that starts out great but bogs down about midway through the book. The plot is not inconceivable, but some of the situations the two main characters get into are somewhat implausible. The last half reads more like a action movie screenplay. Still, it is a good read.

After having read the first two titles (Gideon/Icarus) by this author (actually Russell Andrews is a pen name) I was delighted to find that Aphrodite had hit the shelves. The first two titles had a mystical feel to the mystery found in the book. This one was more of a main stream tale, and the concepts presented were almost Michael Palmerish.
The story is about a small town policeman, down on his luck, who stumbles onto a murder conspiracy involving the F.B.I., Persian War vets and ethics in medical development. The yarn moves quickly and it will certainly keep the reader's attention, just not to the extent that the previous works did.

I listened to this audiobook while riding the bus. If a book is boring or the details confuse me, I generally don't bother to finish it. But in this case, I was able to pick it up each trip and wanted to know about these characters.
One reviewer said why not kill the people who"knew the secret". Uh. They were being used as guinea pigs to test the anti-aging drugs, that's why not....
Thriller-only readers may not like the complications and philosophical asides, but as a literature reader, I found it worthwhile and engrossing.
Also, the main character was sympathetic. I don't read cop novels as a rule, so the material wasn't dated or boring to me.

For the type of book it is, it is quite well written, if a tad cliched. (How about we try the big city cop moves to small village because he's lazy?) Good characterization. Fast paced. BUT...work with me here. It takes place in the present day. The secret people are dying over has to do with stem cell research. And we find this out because some guy who should only be in his 80s is really 116. Well, by my calculation they must have started the secret treatments on him well over 40 years ago. Stem cells in 1966? I don't think so. Save this book for the beach.

I read a lot of thrillers, and I had high hopes for this novel given the good reviews for it. "Russell Andrews" is a pseudonym for a well-known editor in the publishing world, so I figured the book would be decently written.

Unfortunately, what I found was a remarkably weak thriller. Nothing in this novel rang true for me. The problems include cardboard characterization, cliched dialogue and situations, a completely unbelievable romance, and worst of all, an incredibly convoluted conspiracy plot. This is one of those books where you don't really understand what's going on until the author provides a 20-page explanation at the end.

There are far superior thriller writers out there that deserve your business. My advice is to read those authors instead: writers like Michael Connelly, Harlan Coben, Robert Parker, Stephen White, and Tess Gerritsen. These writers employ three-dimensional characters and much more believable, fully-developed plots. This writer, at least in this novel, does not do that. I strongly advise you to skip this one.

Aphrodite is most interesting to me as a window into what a certain prominent type of modern mainstream thriller really is, which is a formula that Lee Child has perfected.

You have:

1. The nod to hardboiled crime fiction (this is hb more than most, with an actual stock character, The Flawed Hero Who Must Be Redeemed).

2. A scenario out of Robert Ludlum - the stakes are always huge in these kind of books, with world-spanning conspiracies and Horrible Secrets -- and Aphrodite is very ambitious in this regard, throwing off a number of ideas that in previous years would've been handled by science fiction writers. (The relationship between certain types of thriller plots and classical sf is an interesting one worth an essay or two; I'll only start by mentioning that they both start with "what if?").

3. Villains (it's always the villains) straight out of Elmore Leonard by way of Quentin Tarantino -- the now "quirky" bad guy is pretty much de rigeur.

All of this is in Aphrodite, but it doesn't make it a good book. This is just terrible, really, embarrassingly bad: much of the novel's story is summarized, which is always a tell for where the author is losing interest; there are weird shifts in tone from the sardonically funny to the Heavy and Serious and back again; the plot is intriguing but doesn't fit within the environment being presented, which forces a lot of silly contrivances (example: hero and Love Interest get to go to England because hero's ex-roomie from College is apparently the son of the Staples guy). Hero becomes (quite unconvincingly) a superman, which is sort of needed to keep the plot moving but doesn't jibe with his earlier portrayal.

Etc. Really if anything Aphrodite makes one appreciate Lee Child all the more.

I was really enthused when I started reading this book - the plot and characters were terribly interesting and I could not put the book down. But the last couple chapters just kind of fell apart, and as other reviewers have stated, it 'wrapped up TOO neatly' with no plausability at all. Left me feeling like the author lost interest and was just anxious to finish the book. How disappointing. I will try his other books but will certainly be wary this time. I read 2-3 books a week minimum so am always looking for good authors.

Justin (Jay) Westwood of Providence, Rhode Island, was a legendary crime-solver, until the Mafia murdered his daughter before turning their guns on him. Left for dead, Jay managed to kill the intruders, stopping the rape and murder of his wife. One year later, his wife committed suicide, bringing to an end the life Jay knew. Added to this mess is Jay's father, who blames Jay for the loss of his granddaughter.
Six years later, Westwood is a cop in the resort town of East End Harbor on Long Island, NY, where his days are spent writing traffic tickets and putting up with the scorn of two, twenty-something, summer cops. Westwood is mocked for being out of shape and spaced out, while he drowns each day in booze and fogs his mind with old song lyrics. Crime is so rare in East End Harbor that police carry cell phones instead of guns. But everything changes when the dead body of a reporter is found.

At first glance, the reporter's death looks accidental, but Jay is nagged by something not quite right about the murder scene. Against his better judgment, Westwood investigate, and happens across a witness that saw the murder. Fortunately, the murderer is not aware of the witness, until bratty cop Brian gives a television interview, and he, too, turns up dead.

Jay takes the witness, Deena Harper, and her daughter Kendall on a race to outwit the killers, determined to keep them alive while unraveling the puzzle of more unlikely murders that keep cropping up:

* Cranky movie buff, Wallace P. Crabbe
* The mistress of a prominent government official
* Nursing home residents who coincidentally have the same niece or nephew, one of which is missing and the other dead after the FBI is called in.

If that's not enough, Westwood and Deena are then implicated in some of the murders and become fugitives, forcing them back to Jay's hometown of Providence for the help they desperately need.

Throw in some creepy identical twin males whose hobby is killing people, an FBI man torn by his conscience, a brilliant scientist, the FDA and some top-ranking political figures and Andrews has written a true, not-to-be-put-down thriller.

I picked up this book with alot of hope and was sadly disappointed. I am so tired of the same ole, "I was cop of the year in the big city, but something horrible happened and I am hiding from my past in a little tiny never heard of town where no one knows about my past" stories. It has been done and re-done and there is nothing left to add to it. It's dead and boring.

The book had a good idea, it just didn't execute well. It was about all I could do to finish it. The only reason I gave it 2 stars was it did intrique me enough to want to know how it ended, but not enough to recommend it to anyone I like.

First, can we please put to rest the "haunted by his family's death big city cop who moves to a small town to escape his past and is forced to deal with dumb local cops until a big case revives his passion" character? He shows up way too much in books like this and has been done better (if you want a good one, read John Connelly).

Second, I realize that fiction can be rather boring if too realistic, but can we remain within the realm of reason? Come on, in this one we have a multi-billion dollar evil corporation which is willing to kill to protect its secrets. Yet, rather than kill those who know the secret, it hides them in rest homes throughout the country and only begins killing them when they actually begin to reveal the secrets. Ever hear the one about shutting the barn door after the cow already got out? And in the end, the head of the corporation which employs ruthless henchmen waits for our heroes in his country estate with virtually no security. Yeah, that's going to happen.

Save your time on this one.