Customer Reviews

St. Barts Breakdown [With Earbuds] (Playaway Adult Fiction)

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

 

 

In Delta's Sky Magazine Mr. Bruns states he writes books in island locales to give people a "$4,000 vacation for $24.95". Pardon being direct, but it was more like a self-administered root canal. The story was predictable, the characters one-dimensional, the facts overly repeated and the descriptions of St Barts inaccurate and highly generalized - almost as if a few ideas were taken from a guidebook.

Perhaps my expectations were too high as both a recovering musician and frequent visitor to St. Barts who knows its people, its culture and the details of the island. But even without my knowledge of the island, I believe had Mr. Bruns spent a more time on both the content and the venue the outcome would have been far better.

In Delta Sky, he also stated he can expense his trips to the islands because his writing is his work. I appreciate writing well is difficult and Mr. Bruns style clearly has potential and I applaud his ingenuity to creatively fund his passion of writing and travel - however, it will be short-lived if the results are books like St. Barts Breakdown. One positive, perhaps there will be fewer people interested in discovering the unique paradise that is St. Barts.

This is a quick read. Man, is it a quick read. What i mean is, it's a really really really quick read --- mainly because there isn't one sentence in it that requires a millisecond's thought. In fact, you can skip a quarter to a third of the sentences to enhance the effect.

Mr Bruns is indeed a fortunate fellow to have so many loyal and devoted friends willing to write glowing reviews filled with outrageous hyperbole about a novel that is pedestrian at it's very best. An overly contrived and cliche ridden "plot" (I use that word generously) littered with cardboard characters and non-sequitur and nonsensical events. As suspected and noted by a previous reviewer, who was obviously not one of those Bruns acquaintances, the author either spent no time on the island or came one day, did a taxi-borne island tour, and left the same day. Although not the worst part of the book and allowing for "literary license", his descriptions of the geography of the island is fanciful and highly inaccurate. Nor is there, even today, any such thing as a regularly running bus system servicing the island! All in all, the book was more of a St Barts let-down. The best thing about it was that I received it as a gift from someone who knew of my affection for the island so I did not buy it! Oh, I did read it all the way to the end, it was kind of like the "train wreck" syndrome, I had to see just how bad it would get.

Entertainment journalist Mick Sever has been assigned to interview well-known, reclusive music producer Danny Murtz. Murtz is one of the best known, prolific, and powerful producers on the music scene. Sever travels to St. Bart's to interview Murtz expecting to be home within a day or two.

From the moment he received the assignment, Sever seemed to attract a disturbing number of near-fatal accidents - one before he even left Chicago. Thinking it was just a coincidence, he proceeded with his assignment.

In the meantime, Danny Murtz continues his downhill slide into booze, drugs, and abusive behavior to all around him. He has killed several people, but so far has not been caught thanks to his attorney and cleaner-upper Harvey Schwartz. He is also attended by long-time secretary Nancy.

As the attempts on Mick's life escalate, the reader is also privy to the actions of others including a mysterious woman who is keeping an eye on Murtz and the conversations and interactions between Murtz and his handlers. As more deaths occur, Sever is often reminded that there are no murders on St. Bart's - bad for tourism. Can Sever convince the police that there is a killer that must be stopped or will he end up the next victim?

St. Bart's Breakdown is a fast-paced thriller with more than one twisted character, multiple deaths and threats of death, and an increasingly deranged killer on the loose. Fans of Don Bruns will welcome this edition to the Mick Sever series.

In Delta's Sky Magazine Mr. Bruns states he writes books in island locales to give people a "$4,000 vacation for $24.95". Pardon being direct, but it was more like a self-administered root canal. The story was predictable, the characters one-dimensional, the facts overly repeated and the descriptions of St Barts inaccurate and highly generalized - almost as if a few ideas were taken from a guidebook.

Perhaps my expectations were too high as both a recovering musician and frequent visitor to St. Barts who knows its people, its culture and the details of the island. But even without my knowledge of the island, I believe had Mr. Bruns spent a more time on both the content and the venue the outcome would have been far better.

In Delta Sky, he also stated he can expense his trips to the islands because his writing is his work. I appreciate writing well is difficult and Mr. Bruns style clearly has potential and I applaud his ingenuity to creatively fund his passion of writing and travel - however, it will be short-lived if the results are books like St. Barts Breakdown. One positive, perhaps there will be fewer people interested in discovering the unique paradise that is St. Barts.

Another seemingly effortless page-turner from Bruns! I really liked his previous novel STUFF TO DIE FOR, and now I have to go back and catch up on the other Mick Sever novels. He's created a fantastic foil for Sever in the supremely nasty Danny Murtz, a record producer who has a nasty habit of pistolwhipping people to death. Fortunately for him, he's alarmingly rich, so he gets away with it. The ever-cranky Sever shows up in the island paradise of St. Bart to interview Murtz, only to find things are not so paradisiacal. Threats are made, hotel rooms are ransacked, cars are blown up - and no one seems to care. When it comes down to the showdown between Sever and Murtz, Bruns ratchets things up to a fever pitch and the ending somehow manages to be both inevitable and surprising. Another win for Bruns.

This is the fourth entry in Don Bruns' series whose protagonist is Mick Sever, `rock and roll journalist' who writes `entertainment' articles for the Chicago Tribune. Now working as a freelance writer, he still gets calls from the Tribune from time to time, and has now been offered an assignment to interview music legend Danny Murtz, long-time successful producer of hit records going back many years, and a man with a nasty streak. A sub-text to the assignment is the investigation of rumored incidents in Murtz' past - women last seen in his company who had gone missing, these events being the subject of some anonymous letters received by the publication. The women in question had never been seen or heard from after `dates' with Danny Murtz, described as a `one-man wrecking crew' who `used his celebrity status to wreak havoc on everyone he touched.'

At the outset the reader is privy to the latest of Murtz' attacks, following which Harvey Schwartz, his attorney/manager/handler /cleaner-upper, tells Danny he will take care of the situation, and urges him to take a brief vacation at his villa in St. Barts [which he owns in addition to his mansion in Hollywood and townhouse in Chicago]. Danny is a man who occasionally doubts his own sanity, apparently with good reason, given his perpetually addled brain from the constant drugs, pills and booze in which he overindulges.

Mick Sever and Danny Murtz' lives, eerily, have many parallels - both Chicago natives, having come up in their professions at about the same time and both having attained different degrees of success and celebrity that each man covets while at times finding it an annoyance, both drinking too much [although in Danny everything took on exaggerated proportions] and both with failed relationships [although, again, Danny's have a much darker cause]. The music business is described as a "fantasy world, where money was everything and trust and honesty meant nothing." Danny must himself travel to St. Bart, where he finds his life in danger as he goes about his assignment in a place where fun, sun and rum are the raison d'etre, and murder and violence are not possible in this tourist-oriented world. Fast-paced, well-written, suspenseful, with considerable schadenfreude, this was a great read, and is recommended.

Finally: someone weirder than Phil Spector...Danny Murtz is a Spectorian record producer whose made a career of stealing other people's songs and turning them into piles of money, drugs and guns. In a haze, he's killed a girlfriend or three along the way, but he's always had his trusty attorney to make things better. The problem - the walls might be closing in. A girlfriend who got away, a cop with the missing persons bureau and an experienced music journalist are all getting close to taking him down. Set amidst the rotting-fruit humidity of the Caribbean island of St. Bart's, where money can make everything okay, Bruns has created a showdown where the devil has taken over the Garden of Eden and is causing all kinds of trouble. Bruns is always a capable guide through these locales, and he doesn't disappoint here.

Rock n' roll and mystery - a beautiful combination. Don Bruns, obviously a music aficionado in addition to a strong writer, rips through this yarn about the ugly things that happen in beautiful places with gusto. He's concocted Danny Murtz, an insane music producer with buckets of money and hits, along with a penchant for guns (sound familiar?) and placed him against Mick Sever, a journeyman rock journalist who's been around long enough to know a good story when he hears one. He's also been up to his bad knees in trouble, experience which stands him in good stead on the "perfect" island of St.Bart's, where "no murders happen." Unfortunately, as long as Murtz is on the island, that's not true, but his money insulates him from the law. Sever has to take on Murtz, his bulldog attorney, the island's laissez-faire attitude and his own demons to find the truth. Bruns has a way with quick, rising action and keeping those pages turning. Great stuff.

Don Bruns plays this genre like the blood-stained Stratocaster on the cover - St. Bart's Breakdown is fast, mean and riveting. He pits a hard-bitten music journalist, Mick Sever, who has caroused with Rod Stewart and The Who, against Danny Murtz, an evil music producer with a lot of platinum records and skeletons in his closet. He's got a thing for cocaine, guns and young women, a few of who have gone missing over the years. Mick's editor smells a story and sends Mick down to St. Bart to get an interview out of Murtz. Within a day, Sever's car has blown up, his hotel room has been ransacked, and he's met a mysterious woman who may or not be after the same thing he is. The plot rockets along like a Keith Moon drumline and Sever is an appealing character, grizzled and dogged to the point of walking into the lion's den to get the story.