Customer Reviews

The Fourth Deadly Sin

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

 

 

I read The Fourth Deadly Sin before I knew of Sins 1-3. I won't let 1-3 go unread. Lawrence Sanders' style of crime prose captivated me first with Anderson Tapes' crime reporter-type story telling. The Passion Of Molly T. made me a complete fan. The Fourth Sin is unlike any crime drama that I've ever read. The vivid descriptions and Sanders' use of intelligent language (I admit, I needed a thesaurus several times) allow you to view Delaney, his wife Monica, Abner Boone and other characters as if you were beside them at all times. Not a single character in this book is cardboard. All are shown with flesh and soul. And with all this detail, the plot still moves you like a locomotive. Magestically gaining speed, rolling though the hills and valleys and screaming it's whistle at top speed towards the end. Sanders is good. Really good!

The TOUCH was faded away in this fourth sin. The 1st and the 2nd were the ones that I became so loyal to Sanders until the McNally's BLABBLABBLAB ruined my twenty years focus

I hate to break up the bashing-session for Lawrence Sanders' FOURTH DEADLY SIN, but...well, no, I don't, actually. This prolific and unfortunately half-forgotten author deserves better than to be called a hack, and the book in question is much better than it is being given credit for here. In fact, it was this novel which turned me onto Lawrence Sanders, one of the best pure prose-writers of his or any other generation.

Like any successful writer, especially of easy-read bestsellers, Sanders was under a lot of pressure from his publishers to churn out copy, and was therefore capable of firing up a cigar, doing a shot of Bushmills, and pounding his typewriter until it coughed up the required 250 pages - quality be damned. Throttling your muse in this fashion seldom coughs up anything of lasting value: I remember reading THE TIMOTHY FILES and, with the exception of some of the descriptive writing, thinking it was the literary equivalent of eating popcorn and cotton candy for dinner. It may taste good going down, but where the F is the substance?

My answer to that, however, is "So what?" Sanders (who died in 1998) was writing in a genre with clearly-defined rules, rules which often all but preclude plot originality, character depth, or thoughtful prose, except in the most skillful and economical of novelists. Yet he managed to produce all three on a regular basis, and THE FOURTH DEADLY SIN is actually a pretty good example of all of those traits.

The DEADLY SIN series, four books in length, revolved around a retired (for the last three books) New York Chief of Detectives named Edward X. Delaney. Delaney, whose greatest passion is a well-made sandwich, is precisely the sort of old-school, thick-skinned, cigar-chewing detective you'd hate to share a cab with in real life, but as a reader, you can't get enough of. The crusty cop exterior is misleading, however; he's intelligent, well-read, has surprisingly expensive tastes, and is actually quite sensitive when he isn't reaming out uncooperative witnesses with expletive-ridden tirades. Bored by his early retirement, Delaney isn't unhappy about occasionally being tapped by his old friend and mentor, Deputy Superintendant Thorsen, to tackle the occasional unsolved homicide "under the radar." The fact that he's paid in Scotch is just a bonus.

The plot of T4DS, in a nutshell, is this: A wealthy, well-connected shrink named Ellerbee is murdered with a hammer in his Manhattan office, and the suspect list is as long as his Rolodex. Thorsen's protégé in the NYPD, Deputy Chief Suarez, is up for a big promotion but unable to crack the high-profile case, and that is making the ambitious Thorsen look like a sucker who backed the wrong horse. In hopes of rescuing his golden boy's reputation, and strengthening his own position in the Department, Thorsen puts the now-civilian Delaney on the job. The old Irishman must sift through crazy suspects to find a killer who might be even crazier - or just as sane as he is.

T4DS is a fairly straightforward whodunnit, differing from 1 and 3, which were actually psychological studies of the murderer; and it does recycle characters, and in some cases, entire passages of dialogue, from prior SINS. But since it was actually the first book in the series I ever read, and since the books themselves are meant to be stand-alones, I don't let this bother me too much and neither should you. The real reason to read any Sanders book is for the beautiful and evocative writing - when Sanders describes something, you see it, be it a gorgeous blonde, an ice-cold beer, or a New York street. The atmosphere of 1980s Manhattan is perfectly captured by his pen, and it isn't a cliché to say the city itself is a major character in the novel. If some of the others turn out to be right out of Central Casting, it doesn't detract much from the read.

The animosity towards this novel seems silly to me. Sanders was a formula writer, yes, but the formula was damn good. His sheer skill elevated the material, but even when it didn't, he was still no hack. In 4DS, he may not have produced anything more than a page-turning potboiler, but who gives a damn, when his description of a triple-decker sandwhich can actually make you hungry?

After reading the first 3 deadly sins, and knowing that the 4th was the last one, I was looking forward to reading it. I was disappointed in that it wasn't as suspenseful and action packed as his other Deadly Sins(Actually #1 and #3 were the best, with #2 being a disappointment). I do not want to reveal the ending, and I am glad that Delaney does figure out the case, but I was disappointed in the way the killer is punished. If I had to rank all 4 books, #1 is a 5 star, #3 is a 4 star, and #2&4 are 2 stars. Start with the first- it is a classic detective/killer book.

I wish that Lawrence Sanders would concentrate on the Edward "Iron Balls" Delaney deadly sins series and drop the Archie McNally series which is becoming boring

Sanders writes as if he's following a plot outline where he has to fill in the blank spaces. The mystery of who dun it was capably handled, but his characters are made of cardboard, and are trite and dated. You keep reading, hoping the writing will improve...and because you want to find out who the murderer is.

And the light conversations between husband and wife just fill in empty spaces without adding anything to the story. Sanders is trying to
show a more tender side of Delaney, but the cute and suggestive banter is just a boring filler.

And why does he insist on using everyone's full name so frequently? This irritating technique stops the flow of words.

Read this if you don't have anything else to read.

First things first. Lawrence Sanders was a hack. He wrote fomulaic murder mysteries. This is one of them, but it was really a pretty good book, especially for a hack.

A New York psychologist gets murdered with a ball peen hammer in his own office and a dark and stormy night. A retired detective is pressed back into duty to lead an interesting team of detectives that is sorting through some of his patients, friends, employees and wife to try to figure out who did this dasterdly crime.

The old cop, Delaney, has one interesting vice. Rather than drinking when depressed over the progress their making, he eats cold sandwiches made of leftovers over the kitchen sink, which irritates his wife to no end.

An interesting theme is developed - Delaney asserts that truly beautiful women (in this case the wife - literally everyone comments about her striking looks ) often are (self-)limited in other capacities because they can get by with just their looks. For example, they don't have to develop specialized skills or learn to how to get along with difficult people or situations because everyone caters to them.

Anyway, I'll give this book a "C+" The detectives and their different styles were interesting, but I had pretty much figured out who did it about half way through.

I loved the first three Sins, but this latest entry makes one feel quite relieved that he didn't do any more, but at the same time, one wishes he'd get his act together. Very little suspense, and one of those where you know the murderer the first time they appear. Delaney and friends are wonderful characters, but in this outing they didn't do themselves much credit. Basically it's a 20 page story that is dragged out in tedious detail until you hit a very unsatisfying conclusion. He wimped out and did a Poirot ending. Which I hated, needless to say! I wish he would have not written this book at all, or waited until he could have done a better job. If more sins are committed in the future, I will certainly read them, and hope they are better than this trite, deadly dull outing.

First was too detailed and confusing, second one better, smoother on the third, running out of gas by the fourth. OK but not the best.

Sanders became a bit tiring with this last entry in the Delaney series. In fact, he probably should have stopped writing altogether. It is also too bad he didn't see fit to write about sins 5, 6 and 7. If Sanders had reinvented himself and kept his style fresh, this novel would have really shown. But as it is it is only lackluster. But still, it is worth reading. Just be prepared to be accused of being a cult fan.