Customer Reviews

The Evil That Men Do: A Jackson Donne Novel

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Jackson Donne is not a happy man. He has suffered through losing his job at the police department, drug abuse and rehab. His fiancée was killed. He has lost his PI License and is working as a night security guard. Jackson is trying to rebuild his life and attend Rutgers University.

Now his sister Susan is begging him to visit his mother in the nursing home. She wants Jackson to find out more about their grandfather. Jackson and Susan's mother is suffering from Alzheimer's and keeps reliving times when she was little. She talks about her father killing a man. Jackson hasn't seen his sister in years and only wants to try to rebuild his own life and isn't interested in the past. Finally after a visit from his brother-in-law Franklin Carter, Jackson agrees to at least look into the matter.

Soon Jackson is forced to solve a mystery that occurred before he was even born in order to save what is left of his family. Susan and her husband, Franklin Carter, are both in grave danger and only answers from the past can help save them. Car bombs, blackmail and more all enter the picture.

Dave White's novels are exciting and keep you on edge all the way. I enjoyed the first Jackson Donne novel When One Man Dies, and this one tops the first.

Armchair Interviews says: Always great to find a story that is so well done.

This book doesn't require a suspension of disbelief, it requires that your disbelief be lobotomized.

The author tries to link a series of events that occurred in 1938 to a present day kidnapping, multiple murder, and bombing. An interesting notion that might have been plausible in more capable hands but here it just doesn't work.

Without giving away a key plot device, I'd note that the typical background check, even for a Top Secret security clearance, wouldn't delve into your genealogy and it is unlikely that your employer will tell you about your own past of which you are ignorant when 1) you're adopted, 2) from another country, and 3) when your last name is utterly mundane.

The hero of this story is angst ridden over the loss of his wife. We don't quite know why or how she died, I guess this is a teaser to get us to read the previous novels in this series, or why this matters.

The dialog is clunky and contrived. The characters are cardboard cutouts except when they act out of character -- in this book you will meet the only ex-drug dealer hit man in New Jersey who registers his firearm under his real name and address.

The unbelievable storyline and uninteresting characters are compounded by the author's unfamiliarity with his material. For instance, the recoil from a 9mm handgun will not knock down a 13 year old kid, when an airbag deploys upon impact it immediately deflates, ammonium nitrate doesn't explode - it is an ingredient in making a type of explosive, and on and on.

On the whole, Mr. White could have used a much stronger editor. If you feel compelled to read the book, check it out from your library.

First Sentence: Joe Tenant tied the barge to the dock.

Ex-cop Jackson Donne has now been stripped of his PI license and has estranged himself from his family, including his mother with Alzheimer's.

His sister, Susan, shows up asking him to visit their mother as she has been rambling about incidents that happened to their family in 1938. Events escalate when her husband is kidnapped for ransom.

I had a hard time getting through this. At the beginning, it is very heavy on product placement--Molson beer, Coach bag, Ryder truck, Verison--which I found distracting.

As it went on, I realized there was no real character development or growth to the characters, so I had no real empathy for any of them. I tried to remind myself that the protagonist was fairly young, but he made an incredibly dumb decision at one point that nearly stopped me.

The plot is over the top. At one point, the protagonist exclaimed he found the villain's motive insane. So did I and, again, it made me want to stop reading.

The best thing about the book, for me, was the twist at the end--and that I was at the end.

There really wasn't much here for me. I am a huge detective novel fan and its possible that my idea of a P.I. novel is set at quite a higher standard after reading most of the best. White's newest novel carries somewhat of a dry storyline that has some very interesting and unbelievable twists in it. The relationship Donne shares with an unlikely character in this book, despite the family histories, is just to much of a stretch. I also felt like the characters here were very one dimensional. There was little to no character progression for any of the characters. Kudo's to White on the title though. Very smart. I think give this young man a couple of years to get his form exactly right and we can expecting good things form him. As for now this book for White is the equivelant of learning to walk.

When Joe Tenant happens upon a random murder in 1938 New Jersey, it is his misfortune to be spotted by the killer. Threatening his life if he reports the incident to the police is one thing, but when the murderer makes a move against Joe's family, particularly his little daughter, Isabelle, Tenant is pushed beyond his limits. A working class man, Joe doesn't court trouble, but his instinctive response is to go after this man who crossed a line in going after Tenant's family. Forced to leave wife and daughter for their own protection, Tenant is on a mission. Years later, Isabelle is hospitalized, suffering the last stages of Alzheimer's disease, her daughter, Susan, by her side. Agitated, Isabelle calls out Joe's name, increasingly anxious as frightening memories surface. Susan contacts her brother, Jackson Donne, long estranged from the family, seeking answers to his problems in a bottle; she demands he make peace with their mother and determine the reason for Isabelle's ranting. Reluctantly, Donne agrees, but brother and sister have much to resolve between them besides their mother's fears.

Meanwhile, Susan's husband, Franklin Carter, learns that one of his restaurants has been torched. Whatever Franklin knows about who did this, he is unable to tell the truth to the cops. Before Donne can wrap his head around what his mother reveals in her fragmented lucid moments, events take on a life of their own, from the destruction of the restaurant to the random shooting of elderly victims and the cold-blooded murder of a young gang-banger. Donne understands that his mother's story holds the key to the current violence. His PI license revoked, as well as the loss of his job with the police department for bucking the system, Jackson is in a race against time, more than one life on the line. Wanting desperately to return to the solace of the bottle, Donne reaches deep to keep his promise to Susan and help her through this nightmare.

Laced with the sharp dialog and random violence that builds to a jarring climax, White sharpens his noir teeth on the non-stop action and chilling reversals of fortune in this novel, one scene tumbling into the next with deadly accuracy. Not a criticism, just an observation: much is made of White's skill in writing noir fiction ("makes classic noir new again"). He does have the rhythm and attitude down, manipulating his characters as they wise-crack their way through a hail of bullets, blood, gore and tussles with ill-intentioned, gun-totting opponents; but there is one aspect of noir that that eludes this young author, the utterly world-weary demeanor of a PI (or ex-PI) that has seen and done too much and the wry cynicism that stems from the pervasive degeneracy of the criminal world. White talks the talk, but only time and experience will tell is he will fit into those very large shoes. Luan Gaines/ 2008.