Customer Reviews

Deadly Deception

5 star:		(3)
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I don't know what book the reviewer who appears on the product page was reading but it was not this one. This is a really good, solid glimpse into the lives of the characters.

Jack Engelhard has knocked around in his time...immersing himself in the casino world as well as many others. When this man writes you are right there with him.

I hope he arranges to have this book carried by amazon. though it is easy enough to get thru the Marketplace.

Bravo Jack!!

I have just finished reading DEADLY DECEPTION. I'm not capable of honoring this literary, philosophical masterpiece the way it deserves to be. I'm wondering if anyone is. But, Cassell and Mahoney did a good job of it. I salute them. In days past I could X-ray read a novel, collect my thoughts about it, and express them in a relatively cohesive format. These days I'm lucky to remember the previous sentence I read, or to pick out a few pieces of appeal I saw in the book. With apologies I will attempt to honor at least parts of this novel. It is too richly complex to do justice to even a few of its assets.

In some ways I could say this is Jack Engelhard's best book, but each of his books gives its own unique piece of the whole of the value of great literature.

In this novel Engelhard seriously and humbly reaches to God Himself. In my view this novel touched God, and He responded. Even if all readers don't comprehend that success, each reader will feel it.

Maybe this is why responses from readers of DEADLY DECEPTION will spread along a long continuum, from being in awe, to being personally threatened, maybe even in terror of the book. I can't imagine anyone who could read any part of this book; and not read every word of it, with his soul awakened. Yet, for too many people today, when the soul awakens, the first response is to slam it back into oblivion, and then return to "live" on the pabulum and perversity which form the basis of many of today's cultures.

The feelings I had while reading this book were precisely what I seek from novels. I looked forward to the next time I would be able to sit down and read another segment. I wanted to have more time more often, to continue reading this novel, and resented anything which came up causing me to have to retire too late to have at least an hour to read. At the same time, I wanted to slow my reading pace because I didn't want to come to the end of the book and have no more of it to read each time a lull in my life allowed a space for reading a great story.

In creating this great story Jack Engelhard seems to have dug into every corner of his psyche, his past, including the history of what he has read, heard, been told, contemplated, beheld, held, and experienced. In Jack's other books he gives worthy, functioning answers to life's puzzles, answers not found elsewhere; at least he gives whiffs or hints of them, for those with courage to read Engelhard's works with eyes open and soul focused. In this novel the author has composed incredibly gifted lines and passages of rarely seen truths, lines which should be quoted and hung on sacred walls of sanctuaries. But he doesn't give a clear, simple (or even complex) final answer, which is as this book was intended to be, to be true to the art and gist of it. Well... there is an answer in the final line of chapter 40, and a doozie of a line it is!

Yet, this book nudged me to return to an answer I have given myself about one of the simplest, main gifts of life for me, which is my always available refuge, if I remember it when I fall from a spiritual high of blissful ecstasy, or descend further from a low which is already in one of my personal pits of hell. I shared that answer in a couple of my reviews posted here, a few years ago. But, it was clear that no one quite got it, cloaked as it was in simplicity and mundane subtlety.

I was mesmerized by the mysticism/spiritualism unearthed in DEADLY DECEPTION, by the delving into a few of the potent secrets of religious archives. The Lamed Vov concept (relating to 36 Just Men, see the novel for details) is fascinating to me; it rings of truth, and resonates with some of my theories developed in a series of books based from my first novel, The Rose and the Pyramid (The Books of Gem: 1), i.e., my concept of one mind thinking clearly while embodied on Earth being able to transform the Universe.

No writer other than Jack Engelhard could spotlight (without dishonoring) spiritual secrets as he has here. No one but Jack could show the depth of craps as he has here; no one but this artist could succinctly divulge the connections, convolutions, and concoctions of the Hollywood subculture; no one but this man could dramatize the hormonal struggles men and women war with, each within his personally unique, dynamic chemical chaos. No one but Jack Engelhard could honestly, seriously, respectfully call upon God through a novel and have Him answer.

As it appears to me, He, God Himself, answered, through many quotable lines in this book...

Yet, what about the life lived by Sasha Spivak and so many like her. This book asks but does not answer the why of that, even though the book does give a type of resolution. That the book asks yet does not give a canned answer is much to its credit.

The writing style in this novel was subtly different from Engelhard's other books which are all so artfully composed another author can't help but pause to admire the beauty of the composition. In this book, the characters and story take over so completely, there is no perceivable writing style; there is just the story and the characters... which may be a feat beyond style, though I relish style, too. Either way Engelhard puts together his novels, they work. They are always enthralling, edifying reads, as well as providing literary class, either with awesome art in the purest of styles, or with the story taking all.

Returning to concepts and content in DEADLY DECEPTION, I'll note that Engelhard wrote in an essay which he intriguingly translated into a review of my DARK DIAMOND TWILIGHT: Last coal load out from Energy Fuels (Short True Story w/Photos) that men don't know what women want. I might add that women don't know what they want, either. And I might ask whether men know what they want, or whether they even think they know what they want. If a person knows what he wants and gets it, there is an experience of pure satisfaction which doesn't dissolve with the next breath; at least that is my test of a person knowing what he wants. Of course that would be qualified by the want of the moment, Vs the greater, deeper wants which we can't always define, let alone isolate well enough to effectively pursue.

Yet, this book isn't about the politics or desires of men and/or women, or about Right Vs Left. It isn't about flat characters that reside in fake miens repeated with minor variations, for this book does not have a single flat character. It has only living human beings trapped willingly within a work of fiction. Certain female readers might take issue with how their gender is portrayed through a female character here, yet I believe that Engelhard gets it right. He gets the psyches of the particular (non stereotypical) female characters in this novel, and he expresses them accurately. He does not pretend to represent most types of men or women; he is developing (exquisitely) the characters that live in this particular story and setting... did I mention that it is set perfectly in Atlantic City in the casino environments? Engelhard has captured each human being walking the pages of DEADLY DECEPTION as a unique individual character, as the true people who populate the gambling, gaming world in which this novel lives.

It still lives. It is smoldering until it can be resurrected and presented within a setting it deserves within the world of virile, visceral, vital literature.

If you'd like to begin reading Jack Engelhard with a more recent novel, check The Bathsheba Deadline: An Original Novel, or read the real story behind his world acclaimed Indecent Proposal (yes the movie was based on Jack's novel). Both those novels are available directly from Amazon. And The Girls of Cincinnati is currently available on KINDLE.

In awe of great works of literature when I find them, and all Engelhard's works are crown gems,
Linda Shelnutt

A BOOK TRANSCENDANT
DEADLY DECEPTION by Jack Engelhard

Remove the dustcover from this hardbound book (sorry...I can't abide snakes) and it is a medium blue....the same color as my Atlantic Ocean on those early autumn, sunny, crisp days when I'd stare at it from the windows of Atlantic City High School where I was busily flunking Spanish II [actually it was all the fault of Khrushchev and Castro, but that's another story].

The comparison is apt... because much of the story takes place in Atlantic City...in fact the protagonist, Julian Rothschild [not one of those Rothschilds], lives on the street in Margate City where I grew up...he lives about four blocks away. He attended the elementary school my mom taught at for sixteen years and the high school where I flunked Spanish II...and geometry and probably a few other subjects too [the others NOT the fault of Khrushchev and Castro, but that's another story still].

This, however, is not the basis for my breathless, enthusiastic, unequivocal five star recommendation of this book. In fact it was these references that almost made me put it down...you see I left home once upon a time and now am unable to get back... and I miss it terribly.

It made me homesick.

No...I recommend this book because it is a moral, social, cultural, spiritual MASTERPIECE. Seldom have I seen such a multi-faceted masterwork, so truly and utterly compelling [you won't even think of putting it down...unless of course it makes you homesick]. Enticing action, fascinating characters... both sublime and every day....in short, those we all have met in the course of a full, unsheltered life, from the so-called "beautiful people" of Hollywood and the "comp'd" millionaire suites at the top of the casinos... to the hustlers on "Fun Corner" [what the locals called Kentucky and Arctic Avenues in my day...yes, the book goes there too]....to the homeless dying on the beach in the very shadow of millions of dollars. Love and lust, Good and Evil...action and adventure...this one has it all.

...And dialogue...yes DIALOGUE...that leaves writers of my ilk wondering what rock we were hiding under when such talent was handed out.

Of course we know where...in Jack Engelhard's case...the talent comes from...El Camino Duro [as my Spanish II teacher would say]...the Hard Road. Starting life fleeing in terror from the Gestapo...living an impoverished refugee in Montreal, Canada...knocking about in Greenwich Village [during the Golden Age of Dylan, Cosby, Lenny Bruce and Peter, Paul and Mary], also Cincinnati, Haifa, New York, Jerusalem and Philadelphia....a journalist...combat soldier...hustler...martial arts expert and lover of thoroughbred racing.

He has seen it all. Like his character Slim Sam Belmont in this book he is one of a kind and his passing, G-d forbid, will leave a gaping hole never to be filled again ...society is different now. But there are his writings, such as Deadly Deception, and with these writings we can SOAR... become something of what we were.

But Jack's experience isn't the reason this book is one of a kind...it's his ability to pass it on to his readers. In my own experience I've known Boardwalk hustlers, mobsters, too many corpses, a few champions and even some beautiful women...I can tell you this man writes with authenticity. These people are REAL. If you've been there you will see it right away and maybe feel a lot younger...maybe even vaguely threatened... while reading. If you haven't you'll learn something...as I did in this story about everything from the game of Craps to Hebrew Biblical mysticism to the history of the Sinai Desert.

I finished it in two sittings...and still am gulping for air.

This book is MAGNIFICENT. Five stars...for everything.

The Mad Blogger----satisfied no one can tell anything about me Mr. G. Jeffs?