Customer Reviews

False Dawn

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

 

 

This is a must read in the Jake Lassiter series. For those coming in late, start the series chronologically with the excellent and award winning TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD (The Jake Lassiter Series). While Levine's second offering in this series, NIGHT VISION (The Jake Lassiter Series), was over wrought, FALSE DAWN returns to the tight writing and clever turns of plot that characterized TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD.

Less that 1/3 of the way in, what seemed clear will be turned on its head, causing most readers to stay up half the night to sort it all out. Character development is excellent, leaving at least this reader wishing he could lift a brew with some of the protagonists (and even with some of the fully fleshed out antagonists).

I would have give this Kindle Version 5 starts, but the download is full of typos and odd sentence breaks that are irritating. (Similar sloppiness can be found in the download of NIGHT VISION.

It is wonderful to have back list novels now available for the Kindle, but typos and other odd formatting need to be cleaned up prior to offering a back list book as a Kindle download.

"False dawn" is an atmospheric anomaly which causes the observer to believe that sunrise is about to peek over the horizon---at 3 AM. As a metaphor for illusion, Paul Levine could have picked no better title for this, his third Jake Lassiter novel, in which nothing is as it appears.

Jake, Levine's comic hero ex-linebacker, ex-Public Defender, ex-a-lot-of-things, is initially hired to defend small-time hood Francisco Crespo on a murder charge. As Jake investigates the circumstances, he realizes that Crespo is not only Not Guilty of killing fellow longshoreman Vladimir Smorodinsky---he is clearly innocent, having been unconscious at the time of the killing. Yet, Crespo seems willing to take the rap. Jake asks him why---and Crespo is shortly thereafter found dead.

Jake's hunt for the truth, which takes up the entire second half of the book, quickly begins to resemble a bucket full of freshly-dug earthworms.

It seems that Crespo's employer, Japanese industrialist and art collector Matsuo Yagamata has business contacts in Moscow, and that Crespo's killer is a man named Kharchenko aka former KGB man Stankevich, and that the CIA's man on the scene, Foley, is an art thief or just maybe it's all been bought and paid for and is in safekeeping, and that Jake's new girl, the stunning blonde sailboarder Jillian from Minnesota is really a Finnish agent, Eva Lisa from Helsinki, and that the Cuban patriot-Exilado Severo Soto and his daughter Lourdes are really working for the CIA, or possibly it's the KGB, or it might be Fidel Castro, or maybe not, and that the Faberge egg at the center of it all is a forgery, or maybe only a rock, shades of THE MALTESE FALCON.

In short, the plot has more twists and turns than the Monte Carlo Grand Prix. A simple double-cross doesn't exist anywhere in the world of FALSE DAWN, but there are too many sextuple and septuple-crosses going on to count.

Poor Jake, who incessantly seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, complains more than once that he can't tell the good guys from the bad guys and the players without a scorecard. He isn't the only one struggling with this overwrought story, which sags dangerously low under the weight of its plot.

Levine's audacious attempt to write a good old-fashioned Cold War espionage tale doesn't quite make the grade. The reader becomes lost in this rococo tale of patriotism and betrayal; I imagined Levine writing with a flow chart at his side, and wished I'd had one to follow along (never a good wish in light fiction). Levine totally loses control of the story about two-thirds of the way through and it avalanches toward a denoument that leaves the reader with an unsatisfying sense of ends left loose.

Rather than drawing his characters in simple black and white, Levine chooses to paint in various shades of gray. Without clear right and wrong archetypes, in the end FALSE DAWN leaves the reader feeling just as dazed as Lassiter himself.

Still, Jake Lassiter remains a sympathetic and likeable character. Levine's barbed observations about life in the social hodgepodge that is South Florida always ring true, from the Exilados to the Marielitos to the Russians, the Blacks and the Jews; not to overlook the Finns in Lake Worth. As bizarre as it all seems, we locals know these people exist as Levine presents them.

FALSE DAWN, though by far not Levine's best work, remains more than the sum of its parts.

Paul Levine kicks butt. He's just plain a great author, and his characters and places stick in your mind.

This particular story isn't one of his best, but it's certainly a dang good read nonetheless. I strongly urge any fan of detective/lawyer/murder stories to run out and buy a couple of Levine's books, because not only will you enjoy the stories, and the hero, but you'll also find yourself laughing out loud from time to time.

And that's what books are supposed to do (in my opinion, anyway)- entertain you!

After sampling a freebie Jake Lassiter book, I started reading the series. This is the fourth one I read & must admit I was somewhat disappointed. Similar formula to his other books, so much so that many of the characters were predictable. Others have described the plot, so I won't go further into it. I will say that by the end of the book, I was just ready for the thing to be over with. Maybe the next in the series will be better, but if you are considering buying this one, I'd say skip it and go with another of the series.

Who's stealing the great art of Russia, and why are all those paintings and Faberge eggs ending up in Miami?

At first, it looks like a run-of-the-mill murder case for Jake Lassiter, the ex-Miami Dolphins linebacker and night school lawyer who passed the Bar on his fourth try. But then when his client Francisco Crespo confesses, Jake doesn't believe him. Adding to the puzzle is a cast of international characters: a Japanese art collector, an exiled anti-Castro Cuban leader, a Russian killer, and a shady CIA agent. The path leads to Havana, so that's where Lassiter goes, but will he make it home?

It's a step into the wild world of international art conspiracies for the hard-boiled lawyer. "They don't call us sharks for our ability to swim."

As always, there's a plentiful helping of humor and wry observations about wacky Miami, the outlandish legal system, and his own life: "I wish I'd been faster then, smarter now. I wish I could paint a picture or build a bridge. I wish there was a woman -- just one -- who had lasted. A best friend and only lover, a soulmate, not a cellmate." There's a scene in a sauna with a naked Finnish woman, and it's no spoiler to say she won't be the one.

In the tradition of Travis McGee, Lassiter muses about the sorry state of modern society. Taking issue with the Florida state flag which features sunshine, flowers and palm trees, Lassiter notes: "A more appropriate symbol would be a fat county commissioner taking cash from a condo developer with the skeleton of a rickety high-rise in the background."

I've been hooked on Jake Lassiter for a long time. This one is different than TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD (The Jake Lassiter Series) and NIGHT VISION (The Jake Lassiter Series) in that Lassiter leaves the comfort of Coconut Grove for the dangers of Cuba. At home or abroad, he's a good read!

Who's stealing the great art of Russia, and why are all those paintings and Faberge eggs ending up in Miami?

At first, it looks like a run-of-the-mill murder case for Jake Lassiter, the ex-Miami Dolphins linebacker and night school lawyer who passed the Bar on his fourth try. But then when his client Francisco Crespo confesses, Jake doesn't believe him. Adding to the puzzle is a cast of international characters: a Japanese art collector, an exiled anti-Castro Cuban leader, a Russian killer, and a shady CIA agent. The path leads to Havana, so that's where Lassiter goes, but will he make it home?

It's a step into the wild world of international art conspiracies for the hard-boiled lawyer. "They don't call us sharks for our ability to swim."

As always, there's a plentiful helping of humor and wry observations about wacky Miami, the outlandish legal system, and his own life: "I wish I'd been faster then, smarter now. I wish I could paint a picture or build a bridge. I wish there was a woman -- just one -- who had lasted. A best friend and only lover, a soulmate, not a cellmate." There's a scene in a sauna with a naked Finnish woman, and it's no spoiler to say she won't be the one.

In the tradition of Travis McGee, Lassiter muses about the sorry state of modern society. Taking issue with the Florida state flag which features sunshine, flowers and palm trees, Lassiter notes: "A more appropriate symbol would be a fat county commissioner taking cash from a condo developer with the skeleton of a rickety high-rise in the background."

I've been hooked on Jake Lassiter for a long time. This one is different than TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD (The Jake Lassiter Series) and NIGHT VISION (The Jake Lassiter Series) in that Lassiter leaves the comfort of Coconut Grove for the dangers of Cuba. At home or abroad, he's a good read!

This isn't a very good book. I had received it as a gift a few years ago and left it on the bookshelf for a while. I grabbed it on my way to the beach one day....should've left it gathering dust.

There are many better choices for legal thrillers (if that's what this is supposed to be) and if you are looking for a mystery set in Florida with a comic/satirical edge, pick up a Carl Hiaasen novel (Stormy Weather or Skinny Dip are my favorites).