Customer Reviews

Drink the Tea: A Mystery

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I met the author at a bookstore signing and, being in the need of reading material of a new author, thought it would be a good book to enjoy. Boy was I wrong. It was a great book. The characters are flawed but believable and the plot has unexpected twists and turns that keep you interested without being taken on a Ludlum-type excursion. I wanted to read it in one sitting but instead I savored it like a nice Stan Getz solo. Buy it. Read it. You will enjoy it as well.

Drink the Tea, the new P.I. novel by Thomas Kaufman is simply terrific. Kaufman's characters are complex and intriguing. His protagonist, Willis Gidrey ( whose story of how he got is name is emblematic of his life) is wounded, yet with a sense of honor, an intrepid wise guy, whose sharp humor gets him in and out of trouble. The characters draw you into the story, which keeps you reading. The scene is Washington, D.C., down some of the same mean streets that are featured in George Pelecanos' wonderful novels of the city.

I don't care to talk about the story-line--could give away too much. Read this book.

I don't know much about the P.I. genre, having read only Chandler, some Hammett and Poe's C. Auguste Dupin stories. But I found DRINK THE TEA a real delight, and saw Chandler's fingerprints all over it--and that can only be a good thing. The bruised but principled man going down those mean streets, the jocular takes on what he sees, the finely calibrated appraisals of the people he meets--it's all there. Kaufman maps present-day Washington as Chandler mapped the L.A. of his time: as a state of mind. What's new to the game is Kaufman's grasp of the politics of race in D.C. and not just the politics of politics. And there's a nice turn in protagonist Willis Gidney, a former foster child who sees a fair share of himself in D.C.'s down-and-outers. In that sense he's a bit like MAD MEN's Don Draper, the eternal outsider. Outsiders make great narrators, great points-of-view. Let's hear more from Gidney and Kaufman. No reason this shouldn't be a franchise.

The book is entertaining, it moves, and it builds. Well done.

I'll read pretty much any crime novel about my hometown of Washington, D.C. -- heck I'll read just about any contemporary fiction about D.C. So, it was a no-brainer for me to pick up this debut, featuring a struggling D.C. private eye in his mid-30s. Willis Gidney grew up rough, in and out of foster homes and city-run orphanages, and he still bears the scars of those years. Now, he ekes out a living serving papers and spying on cheating husbands and wives. However, one evening, he sits down for a drink with his friend Steps Jackson, a famous jazz musician (Speaking of which, can we please have a moratorium on detectives and cops who are jazz aficionados? It seems like every third crime novel features a protagonist with a one in a million appreciation for rare jazz.), and is asked to do something a little more unusual -- track down his long-lost daughter.

The missing persons case embroils Gidney in all kinds of dangerous situations, from confronting strapped street hoodlums to the far more dangerous denizens of Congress, not to mention a murky Blackwateresqe private security firm. And of course, a love interest in introduced, who is able to help him with all things computer-related. I quite liked Gidney as a character, and I found his backstory pretty interesting, and the details about DC are right on the nail (parking features prominently). However, the story veers way off into a Grisham-like conspiracy involving powerful multinational corporations, crooked Congresspeople, explosions, and things of that ilk (which requires a large coincidence to help resolve). I prefer my crime stories to be at a smaller, more mundane scale (think Elmore Leonard, think George Pelecanos, etc), more on the streets and less in the corridors of power, and so the story didn't fully engage me. Still, it's a decent debut, and Gidney is a promising character I'll definitely revisit if he has more cases forthcoming.

Note: Normally, I don't comment on the other posted reviews, but I just want to note that half the reviews here are first-time reviewers, which points toward a concerted "friends and family" review-posting campaign. It's not a big deal, pretty standard tactic for first-time authors, but worth knowing about when considering the aggregate star rating. And in the interests of full-disclosure, I believe the author lives in my neighborhood.

"Down these mean streets a man must go," and I guess there are no meaner streets than Washington DC and the halls of Congress, where this book takes us.

I really enjoyed this action-packed story. It's a riff on the classic detective novel, and I mean riff, since it's got a jazz underscore. It's also highly satiric, takes a swipe at a few things which need taking a swipe at, but without being heavy-handed. I love the mix of sharp dialogue and plot. It's cute but not too cute. The juxtaposition of the main character's back story with his current circumstances is accomplished elegantly, a tough thing to do well. The result is a PI who isn't just a vehicle for the story, but a fully realized human being we'd like to see succeed. I'm hoping there are going to be more of these. Keep writing, Thomas Kaufman.

I've found that English majors, authors, and earnest public library patrons tend not to read so-called genre fiction, unless they take a weird personal delight in the genre. Fiction's various 'B' categories tend to get repetitive to the point of boredom pretty quickly, enlivened only with zany peripheral characters, grisly sub-plots or an overall nihilism so spectacular it might draw a chuckle from Iggy Pop.

But then, gratefully, a newcomer arrives at the publisher's office with a finished stack of foolscap, and somehow finagles an audience. He's has never written a book before, but interviews well. If the publisher should deign to set down his whiskey sour at some point afterwards and actually read a page or two, they discover a pleasing grasp of story mechanics, not to mention modern-day shocks like syntax, grammar and other casualties of our Instant Era. With a bit of luck our tyro even has style, the likelihood of this increasing only if they are over fifty years of age.

Thomas Kaufman is just such a tyro. Already an accomplished cinema Director of Photography, a profession more reliant on numbers than words, he might be fulfilling a long held desire to say something besides, "I'd give it an f-5.6 with more backlight." And through his main character, the accidentally christened scam artist Willis Gidney, he gets a chance to say a great deal, and not badly either, about contemporary culture, politics, business, feral youth, and even print journalism. When asked if he reads the newspapers, Gidney replies, "Just the weather report and 'Zippy'..."

Aspiring lowbrow P.I. Willis Gidney is not exactly from the stock pages of the Damaged Detective: he isn't obese (Nero Wolfe), paraplegic (Robert Ironside), a drug addict (Sherlock Holmes) or a cuddly Obsessive-Compulsive nutbag (Adrian Monk). But he is a nearly-lost product of the system who has survived only by being functional, unlike the system itself. His picaresque journey through Washington DC's contemporary landscapes, physical, cultural and moral, takes him from richly paneled private estate libraries, to dumpsters, and he mingles with the folk who live in either location. It makes makes a for a vivid account and an entertaining yarn. Mr. Kaufman keeps the mystery breathing, with only passing reliance on the typical Recap Scene, the nutty professor's Info-dump Scene, or relentless Too-snappy Dialogue rarely heard outside the pulp pages.

That Minotaur Books saw fit to release "Drink The Tea" in clothbound instead of sending it straight to paperback speaks a great deal of the book's quality, and the author's. Public television's loss is our gain.

I rarely read detective novels, and it's because the protagonist often seems to me to be too good to be true. The detective does everything well, but you wonder why, if he's good at everything, he's a struggling detective. The whole thing just doesn't add up.

Willis Gidney, the star of "Drink the Tea," is different. Yes, he's got the requisite skills -- brazening his way past all sorts of people, surviving murder attempts, recovering in horus from beatings, and so on -- but you can see why he hasn't been able to pull himself together. He spills it out as flashbacks and asides as he works the streets of Washington, DC, to find a missing person and unravel a growing series of murders.

The book's pace is fast; it's a classic page-turner. The gist of the story is that Gidney, a bad-boy who's trying to do mostly right, is asked by a good friend to find the friend's daughter. Gidney stumbles into a conspiracy that involves corrupt politicians (the story is set in Washington, DC), rapacious businesses, family secrets, and amoral killers. When he hits a block, Gidney improvises, often with memorable wisecracks that make the book funnier than it has any right to be, given the amount of violence that takes place. Along the way, Gidney exorcises personal demons that have accumulated since his childhood abandonment and life in orphanages and foster homes.

It's quite a mashup: detective work, political intrigue, humor, espionage, social critique, and lots of humor. Pick up "Drink the Tea" for your next trip, and you'll be hooked.

This is a truly fantastic PI novel, especially considering its Kaufman's first effort. Gidney is a fascinating character, with an interesting past that comes out in bits and pieces throughout the novel. The story is a mix of crime and politics (is there a difference?). As the story unfolded, I found myself with more questions than answers (a good thing, considering the predictability of so many crime novels). The action-filled ending didn't disappoint, as the questions were answered through a series of plot twists and turns, but never in a forced, contrived way.

The book was definitely a page-turner, and at the end I found myself impatient for the next installment. Highly recommended!!

"Drink The Tea" has a great story line, fantastic plot twists, and a fascinating array of characters who, by the end of the novel, you feel you know well. Tom Kaufman is a writer who not only knows how to tell a great story, but paints the scene for us with the skill of the filmmaker that he is. It is an astounding first novel, and stands up well alongside other stories of the genre. I've already bought two copies--one for me and one as a gift--and am thinking of "gifting" more of these. I hope the publisher pushes this novel and that we see more of the main character, Willis.

Tom Kaufman has been around for years as director and cameraman but never had the time to write a really good book. I feel that this story has been floating around in his head for years. One day this new person came out on paper and Willis Gidney was created. If this is so, then Tom must have had trouble sleeping because Willis is a creative con man who is also a private detective. The story is very interesting, you even laugh about some of the con's that Willis will do, basically to get his way. I hope that you will take the time to read this book because it will be well worth your time. Tom Kaufman is one of life's new writers that you will be talking to your friends about, especially Willis....Marlee in Wisconsin