Customer Reviews

Director's Cut : A Moses Wine Novel

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

Moses Wine, that wistful, ironic and always thoughtful P.I. has been with us through eight books and some thirty years, rambling from his beginnings in Berkeley to the capitals of the world. We've been along with him through marriage and family, divorce and acrimony, to what he hopes will be his final wife. Has Moses done everything? Well, not quite because now, in this new book, Moses Wine wants to direct.
In "Director's Cut," Roger L. Simon has rediscovered his satiric impulse. In "The Big Fix," the first in the series, Simon had fun with the Los Angeles-Chandler style. ("I turned left on La Cienega and drove right on Santa Monica...") This time around, Moses gets mixed up with the twin scourges of the present age: movie making and terrorism. He's game, if not quite ready, on both counts.
Book for book, I've always been caught up in the various capers and scrapes, and that, appropriately, is the case here. But this time, I saw something else. Moses Wine has become part of the American cultural landscape. Simon has created an American archetype, a fictional detective who has entered our collective mind and now stands for more than his adventures. Like Lew Archer or Sam Spade, Moses Wine -- who is just trying to get through the day -- finds people are shooting at him. Just like the country he reflects. What Simon has done to keep this series fresh is to let Moses grow and change. That's unusual for literary detectives who are usually frozen along one mean street or another. The joke is that as Moses ages, it seems that he's only going to make new mistakes, and he does, but then damned if he doesn't also manage to achieve a certain wisdom.
In "Director's Cut" he's in Prague with a pregnant wife, chasing down a completion bond problem (it's a kind of insurance)on a movie set. Moses winds up in the director's chair. He's not bad at it, at least he's no worse than the people who direct movies all the time, and after all Moses Wine can also collar miscreants, crack cases and crack wise.

Immediately following September 11th, Moses Wine's detective agency became seriously strapped for clients. They only had one case and his partner (who is also his wife) was handling it. Moses was puzzled when he was called into the local FBI office and questioned about the destruction of the Twin Towers, the Czech Republic and Radio Free Europe headquarters in Prague. Of course he knows nothing about the subjects the FBI asked him about but matters become a little clearer when he receives a call from a friend who is in Prague.

Arthur Sugarman, a completion bondsman for movies, wants him to come over there and act as private security for a film being shot in Prague. Almost as soon as he arrives, Islamic fundamentalists kidnap Moses and the film's leading lady. When government officials rescue them, the kidnap leader escapes. Moses becomes the film director because his predecessor was badly injured during the abduction. Moses works with CIA officials to try to stop a terrorist cell who infiltrated the movie set from carrying out their diabolic agenda.

DIRECTOR'S CUT is a wild and wacky thriller that satirizes the games one has to play to make it in the motion picture industry. It is also a somber reflection about the effect September 11th has had on the protagonist and how he needs to contribute to the cause. The mystery revolves around the leader who is manipulating events to further his personal agenda and how the hero finally figures it out and tries to stop him. Robert L. Simon is a talented writer who can always be counted to deliver a chilling thriller.

Harriet Klausner

"Director's Cut" is the latest mystery novel starring the wise-cracking LA-detective Moses Wine, a private hack who cut his cultural teeth during the 1960s ... if you know what I mean ... but this book contains more than a few surprises, and I don't mean the "mystery novel" kind.

It starts off with a bang in Chapter One, speaking favorably of John Ashcroft, and unfavorably of Louis Freeh. Uh oh. The countercultural cred is being blown already. At one point mid-novel, in an excellent little scene, it boldly compares the Holocaust to the Rwandan massacres. Gee, what kind of disrespectful guy is this Moses character anyway? Actually, the whole book is a gutsy cultural statement for a mainstream mystery novel, especially for one with this character's past, and this author's history. The book is written with a sense of personal freedom and confidence, which clearly shows through.

And oh yeah ... during all this cultural commentary, there's apparently a mystery novel going on. (Smile.) Seriously, I loved the feeling of being on a movie set. It's such a mysterious industry to begin with, it was so interesting to read about it from an insider's point of view, seeing it treated like any other real job. Moses even shows his hand at directing at one point, which was a lot of fun to read.

I also loved the wonderful descriptions of Prague, which made me jealous of the author's experiences there; as well as all the contemporary references to the Internet sprinkled throughout the book, which were really fun to see in a novel. It certainly had its share of the "mystery novel" kind of surprises too, with enough twists and turns to keep the plot going from Los Angeles, to Prague, to New Mexico, to the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

The only question is, if the novel begins with a bang, does it end with a bang? I'll never tell. But I will say this book can be recommended as the nation's first post-9/11 mystery novel.

Saw the Glenn Reynolds' review on MSNBC.com and snapped the book up. This is a true insiders look at the madness of indie filmmaking with good scene in PRague as well. I read one of Simon's earlier books set in Japana and liked that too.

This was the first Moses Wine book I've read and now I plan on going through the whole series. What a treat! This is not only wildly entertaining, it's timely as well. I do know a little about independent filmmaking and this book captures the craziness and humor of that world better than anything I've seen or read. Not to mention the fact that it's a darn good mystery. Wry, exciting, intellectually stimulating. You can't ask for more.

I have read a couple of Simon's books, but I don't remember them being this clever. A private detective becomes a movie director. Quite witty. Wild Turkey (was that the name?) was also humorous.

(Some strange reviews on here with seemingly hostile motive perhaps? I don't understand what that is, but shouldn't Amazon have a way of dealing with this?)

This book would be laugh at loud funny if it wasn't so scary at the same time. I'll never look at indie films the same way again.W I'm not a real mystery fan (read a few) but this book is fascinating on every level. Totally unpredictable

I've read all of the Moses Wine books, and I enjoyed the movie "The Big Fix" a great deal; I think it's one of my favorite detective novels. Wine's an amusing character, a Berkeley radical who's by now bemoaning the fact that he agrees with John Ashcroft on certain things with regards to dealing with terrorists. Simon appears to be one of the liberals who was (as I read on another one of these people's blogs) "mugged by reality on 9/11". There were little hints of a more intelligent, less idealogical person peeking through even in the earlier books. Wine has always been more of a cynic than most idealists, and more pragmatic, too. You only have to read "The Big Fix" and get Simon's take on self-help gurus to know that he's not quite as trendy as most in Hollywood.

In the current outing, it turns out Moses is buddies with a group of Hollywood types who meet at the Farmer's Market at 3rd and Fairfax. Anyone who's been there can imagine this sort of thing happening--I myself have seen actors in restaurants there, and I'm notorious for not seeing celebrities--and it lends an air of authenticity to the story. One of his Hollywood buddies is a TV guy who's going to make a love story about the aftermath of the Holocaust, only he's been having trouble while he's filming on location in Prague. He contacts Moses, in a panic, and insists that our hero get on a plane and fly there to see if he can stop the threats and pranks that threaten the movie.

Simon has a dry wit that's just about as biting as it can be, at times. From an FBI who questions a *Jewish* private eye about his contacts with the 9/11 hijackers to an Arab terrorist who wants his hostage to tie *him* up to a film festival that's 90% pretence and marketing, this is Simon's send-up of the post 9/11 world, and of Hollywood at the same time. Moses even takes a turn at directing the movie, and of course that turns out pretty funny, especially when it turns out he's not as bad at it as you might think.

I heartily enjoyed this book, and highly recommend it.

I'd give this zero stars if that were an option. It is poorly written, poorly edited (there are a tremendous number of grammatical and spelling errors for a published book), and, most importantly for a thriller, it is just plain boring.

Don't waste your time on this garbage.

Like anyone who enjoys a good mystery, I was looking forward to this read especially having been recommended by Hugh Hewitt, a radio talk show host who had previously suggested works from Joseph Epstein and Daniel Silva. Both were great reads.

I should have been somewhat suspicious seeing only 240 pages, surely not enough to develop the characters, background and rich plot that often adds to pleasure of a good novel. I found the plot sophomoric, even laughing out loud not a the humor but the utter ridiculous situations. For example, why would private investigator Wine consider staying on with the production of a "B" rated movie that ends up on some obscure cable channels? Not only does he stay but becomes the director of this crazy movie. Perhaps some of Mr. Simon's humor was lost on me but too many times I found the plot farfetched.

If Mr. Simon were to remove a few choice swear words, this book might be appropriate for junior high school. They might appreciate characters like "Anna Rockova", yes Mr. Simon has seen several episodes of the Flintstones. My advise would be to "Cut" this one off at the pass and move on to more seriously researched terrorist mystery. It's no wonder that Mr. Simon must use a blog to help promote his work. Not worth the $16.95.