41 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
but better, June 21, 2008
Ok, this isn't wonderful, but it's certainly better than the last four (2004 Hoax, 2005 Fury, 2006 Counterplay, 2007 Malice.) The first 15 Karp/Ciampi novels - ghost-written by Michael Gruber - are among my favorite reads. If you haven't had the pleasure, run right out and start at the beginning. It was gruesome to see the series change when Tanenbaum got a new ghost. The errors alone were staggering - Butch forgot where his children were born; the dog changed breeds; Lucy became stupid.
This, as I said, is better. The plotting is much better (it had reached a subterranean nadir in Malice) and the settings are more carefully drawn. Here we get a lot of preaching, but the number of coincidences is down to a manageable level and Lucy is of average intellect. Sadly, everyone sounds the same, sort of mid-Atlantic bland. Gruber had a gift for languages that the new ghost has noted, but can't emulate. Butch says "Guck!" something Gruber's Butch would never have said; VT sounds the same as Guma except for vocab; and Father Jim is now being called by his last name. But there is some interesting play with Arabic and Swahili, and the stuff on Muslim saints is good. The minor characters once again have charm - Moishe and Goldie, especially, also Miriam.
But for all the book's bloated length, we don't get to dwell in people's lives; we just hear about them. We hear that Marlene cooks, but we don't see it. We hear that Lucy is spiritual, but it's like being told she's left-handed. I miss the immediacy and the detail of the early books, but at least these characters are on the same page.
So if you share my fantasy that Marlene and Butch and the kids are really out there somewhere, cut off from us by new narrators, this is a much less painful way to keep up with the dear folks. It's a good beach read.
Here's hoping for more next time.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointed in Maryland, May 8, 2008
After reading all of Robert Tanenbaums books I was waiting for Escape in anticipation of another great story , however am very disappointed. Although the attempt was to write a book with up to date real world situations there was way too much time and importance wasted on the Islamic world and culture so the reader was lost in the suicidal "jihadi" followers. Not much of Butch and Marlene and family. The book was way too long and the story line hard to follow.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Escapist, June 5, 2008
Tanenbaum has created the perfect summer thriller. A shadowy WASPish group, together with an even more shadowy Islamic terrorist cell conspire to change the world as we know it. Aided by former Harlem gangsters and a Chechen amazon warrior the plan cannot fail.
Of course on the othe rside we have the courageous District Attorney Butch Karp, and his private eye wife Marlene and their twins, his daughter Lucy, an undercover translator, his memory-impaired father-in-law and a baker who survived the Nazi death camps to produce the "finest cherry cheese coffee cake in the five boroughs." If that weren't enough they are aided by a couple of saints-one Christian and the other Muslim.
In spite of the fact it sounds a bit like
Mom and Dad Save the World, and the outcome is never in doubt, it is cleverly plotted and thoroughly entertaining.
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