Customer Reviews

Big Fish

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

 

 

Let me tell you a little about my week. I've been working long hours, getting low pay and even less recognition. In the evenings I worked out and ate poorly. To relax, I tried to read Jane Smiley's "Moo".

Normally I read a book every couple of days. I've been slogging through "Moo" for weeks. I'm not sure whether it's exhaustion or lack of interest, but the fact is, I was bored and frustrated.

But then I found "Big Fish" by Thomas Perry. I'd known this novel existed for years, but have never been able to find a copy. I loved the author's "Metzger's Dog" and "The Butcher's Boy" and was intrigued. I opened to the first page, just to get an idea of the style, and the next thing I knew three hours had passed and I was done.

"Big Fish" is the story of two charming, relatively small-time gunrunners who become embroiled in a plot to control the world. I won't tell you how or why, because that's part of the fun, but I will tell you that along the way they collect a Hollywood agent and teach him to be a commando, and a Hollywood director and teach him to be a human being.

The writing is crisp and clean, with no words wasted on unnecessary exposition or description. Perry, in fact, is reminiscent of Gregory McDonald at his most terse and entertaining, but can be more goofy and relaxed.

This book was just what I needed to get the taste of the week and Jane Smiley out of my mouth. It's out of print, which is disappointing, but I bet you can find it used or at a library. And, who knows, as Perry's recent books become more mainstream, "Big Fish" just might be republished.

The best summer reading imaginable. Buy an old copy now and don't wait for the silly publishers to get off their butts and reissue it. This is classic Thomas Perry -- odd, violent characters that you come to care about, tight plotting touched with wit and irony that make it more believable not less, and scenes you'll remember. I have to say it; Thomas Perry has this trick about writing about "bad" people as if he were their guardian angel and could see how all their decisions and mistakes built up around them and yet left them human, not sweet, but somehow compassionate, and it balances the violence and the pratfalls. Oh well, take my word for it, there's a grace to his writing that lasts after the great entertainment is over.

It took some searching to find this book on-line. I read it twice because it didn't 'stick' in my pea brain the first time through; too many distractions at the time. This story had a slow start but I liked the way it built and evolved. The characters were forgettable. I'm glad Perry didn't stick with them for subsequent storylines. The Big Fish tale is not up there with the Jane Whitefield series but a worthwhile read nevertheless. I passed it along on paperbackswap.com and I hope it is still making the rounds as it is out of print.

This is Perry's third novel and it's a bit of a disappointment after his first two. Altmeyer is a Los Angeles "businessman" -- if supplying mostly illegal weapons to almost any government, corporation, or individual with the money is a business -- and his lovely wife, Rachel, helps out wherever she can. Their friend, Bucky, is a big-deal Hollywood agent whom they help to escape from a dangerous drug deal by killing off the other side. The early parts of the narrative are rather disjointed and episodic; they don't seem to have much to do with each other, rather than to introduce the characters. Then a shipment of 9-millimeter automatics to Japan goes wrong and it doesn't look like Altmeyer is going to get paid, but that's not the half of it. The Really Bad Guys were interested not in Altmeyer's guns but in his international shipping methods, which they adopt for their own use. And what they're shipping from one country to another appear to be terrorist-sized nuclear devices. Here the story gets more interesting, the three main characters being joined by a legendary film producer with all the right contacts. The plot is still a bit fuzzy, though, and Perry should have spent more time tidying it up. Not up to his previous work.