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:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Deeper than it may seem, June 11, 2009
This wonderful book is deeper than it may seem to be. I am an economics professor and economics journal editor. I spend most of my time doing research, while reading and writing nonfiction. Because of the constraints on my time, I limit my reading of fiction to those novels from which I am told I can learn something important. I was told that about this book. It is true.
Yes, this book is a fun read. The book is hard to put down, once you start reading it. But if you take the time to think about what you are reading, you will find that you are acquiring remarkable insights into the history of Russia, Boston, Providence, Boca Raton, the Mafia, and Haiti. Much of that history dwells on the dark side, fits well within the book's gripping story, and is embellished skillfully by the story; but the ending breaks out of that mold and is very positive about the future. Once you have finished the book, you will likely find that you have learned more than you had anticipated about hate groups and intolerance and its manifestations over more than a century of history on two continents, as well as about human nature in general.
This book, by a brilliant new novelist and exceptionally perceptive observer, could not be more topical to the world today.
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