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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This Is a Seriously Good Book, June 26, 2009
This amazing debut introduces us to two great characters: the author, Steven Forman, and his alter ego, a sixty-something Boston cop, Eddie Perlmutter, who retires to Boca but brings Boston with him, in his bones. Perlmutter is destined to become a classic off-beat hero with one foot in the neighborhoods of Boston and the other in the golf courses and strip malls of Boca. Forman knows both worlds intimately and because he's such a good writer, they both crackle with authenticity. This is not only a terrific crime thriller, it's also a very funny book, with a pleasant mixture of wry observations and laugh-out-loud dialogue, the kind you'd expect from a polished Hollywood screenwriter. Hopefully, we'll see a lot more of Forman and Perlmutter, and if Harrison Ford is looking for an age-appropriate role he should look no further than Eddie.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Decent first novel, actually!, February 6, 2009
I saw an advertisement for this on one of the Shelf Awareness newsletters, and since I thought it sounded good I decided to check it out. For a first novel, it's not so bad!
Miss Marple Eddie is not. If you were expecting a sweet old man solving mysteries while trying to deal with arthritis, think again. Eddie Perlmutter is a foul-mouthed hothead, and he doesn't take nothing from nobody. The first third of the book is spent setting up the background of Eddie's life, including the very interesting of his grandfather. Then it focuses on Eddie's move down to Boca Raton, the history behind the place and what sort of people live there. The mystery part doesn't show up until page 103, but even then it doesn't play a big role. Instead, the plot meanders from Eddie's settling down in Boca Raton to his love life, his encounters with drug dealers, Neo-Nazis, snobs, and various conversations with his penis (which has calls Mr. Johnson).
It's an interesting book, for sure. I liked Eddie, even though he talks to his penis like it's a separate being from himself, and I liked some of the other people living in Boca Raton. I especially liked the history of Eddie's family; his grandfather was so fascinating! I was a little sad he was gone from the story so quickly, but I understood why.
There is, of course, the problem of the huge difference between Eddie and myself that kept me from understanding him completely-- he's a 60-year-old retired Jewish cop from Boston, while I'm a 20-year-old college student living in New Mexico (and my genitals don't talk to me)-- but from what I did understand, I liked him.
The writing was pretty good; some parts of the dialogue seemed more realistic than others, but it conveyed the events clearly and it was good enough to keep me reading. There were a lot of infodumps, though, especially in the last half of the book. I learned more about Boca Raton, Haiti, Boston, the Aryan Nation, and busing than I learned in all my time in school. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or what.
Er, anyway. Like I said, Boca Knights is a good first novel, though not so much a mystery novel (nor a thriller, as the summary says, nor a crime caper, as another reviewer said). I do plan on reading the sequel Boca Mourning-- I want to see who Eddie settles down with!
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Boca Knights, March 4, 2009
Eddie Perlmutter was always a street brawler, a "puny Jewish kid from the upscale suburb of Brookline," Massachusetts, and from the time he was very young he wanted to be a cop. It is not too surprising, therefore, when he becomes first a boxer and then a cop, professions not high on his parents' list of ambitions for their only child. As a boxer he was fierce: twenty-one Golden Gloves bouts, no defeats, three championships in two different weight divisions; as a cop he only wanted 'good things for good people and bad things for bad people,' in the process receiving two Police Department Medals of Honor, two medals for valor, three medals for merit, and a Mayor's Commendation.
When he retires with arthritis and his pension from the Boston P.D., he is "a fifty-five-year-old, unemployed widower with the long term prospects of a moth around a bright light." At the suggestion of one of his best friends, he takes a job at a country club in Boca Raton primarily handling security. He is told "Boca is great. It's just not perfect . . . Boca is unique. You'll see." And indeed he does. But who would expect serious crime there? Eddie, however, finds exactly that, or perhaps it finds him.
The story of Eddie's forebears in the Ukraine Peninsula is a fascinating one, some of which the reader learns in the book's first pages, but which Eddie himself learns only in his middle age. It seems he shares many of the traits of his grandfather, who was a hero and fearless.
There is much in this book about the choices one makes in life, some of them good, others not so much. The author displays a wonderful and offbeat humor and sense of irony, as well as a love of alliteration. The protagonist is a totally original and somewhat whacky character, and a true mensch. I must admit that I at first found it a bit off-putting when Eddie occasionally has conversations with a body part, one which I think it prudent not to identify, but that just became one more endearing part of his personality. It could be the shared Russian-Jewish heritage, but this reader was totally captivated by the novel and its protagonist, and I hope that Eddie Perlmutter returns in future books. I loved this one, and it is highly recommended.
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