Customer Reviews

Fury

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

Robert Tanenbaum's new novel, "Fury," is the seventeenth in his Butch Karp/Marlene Ciampi series. Butch Karp is now the interim Manhattan DA in a city filled with racial and political tension. In spite of the pressures of his job, Butch is not complaining. Much to his relief, his wife of twenty-five years is no longer involved in her usual wild and dangerous escapades. In fact, Marlene is trying to keep a low profile, and she seems content to spend more time at home with her family. For a change, everything seems to be going smoothly for the Karps. Little do they know that trouble is brewing on several fronts.

First, a group of black men, who have been nicknamed "the Coney Island Four," are suing the city. They claim that they were railroaded into confessing to the brutal rape and beating of a female jogger named Liz Tyler. Although the men spent time in prison, they are now free and have the support of an opportunistic lawyer named Hugh Louis who loves to play the race card. Michael Denton, the Mayor-elect of New York, and Richard Torrisi, the attorney for the Police Benevolent Association, ask Butch Karp to step in and represent the city as special counsel. Denton and Torrisi want a man of known integrity at the helm, and Butch reluctantly agrees to help.

"Fury" also deals with Middle Eastern terrorists who are planning a major strike against Manhattan on New Year's Eve. There is also the high-profile case of Sarah Ryder, who claims that her Russian professor, Alexis Michalik, raped her after drugging her drink. Michalik, who is happily married and awaiting the birth of his first child, vehemently denies Sarah's charges. As usual, Karp and his family get involved in all of these story lines and Butch once again wages war against corrupt cops, lawyers, and judges.

Tanenbaum throws in a host of both new and familiar characters, including the aforementioned terrorists, Russian gangsters, "mole people" who live under the streets of New York, John Jojola, a spiritual police chief from New Mexico, and a Vietnamese man named Tran, all of whom play key roles in the novel. Ace reporter and snoop, saucy Ariadne Stupenagel, is still nosing into Karp's business, and Butch's old cronies, Ray Guma and V. T. Newbury, are on hand to lend Butch some much needed assistance.

Not only has Tanenbaum attempted to do too much this time around, but he also goes over the same ground that he has covered many times before. Although there is a bit of romance and cutesy humor to lighten things up a bit, "Fury" is dizzying, much too complicated, repetitious, and extremely implausible. The overburdened narrative eventually sinks under its own enormous weight. Butch, Marlene, and their children again play the roles of superheroes, as they have so many times in the past.

There is no question that Tanenbaum knows New York, and he always deals with timely themes in a lively manner. He captures the earthy dialogue of the city's streetwise denizens, and he is intimately acquainted with the ins and outs of the criminal justice system. His courtroom scenes are as entertaining as ever. However, at almost five hundred pages, "Fury" is a bloated tome featuring cartoonish characters involved in far-fetched situations. Let's hope that book number eighteen, which Tanenbaum sets up with a cliffhanger ending, will be more streamlined and believable than this one.

Like Hoax, a dreadful book. The characters are flat, vapid, and unrecognizable to anyone who has read the earlier books. The writing is simply appalling. The organized campaign would seem to be that of Mr. Tannenbaum, not the much-missed Mr. Gruber.

I just finished "Fury" by Robert Tanenbaum, and I would really like to have the 6 hours or so of my life back. The only reason I slogged through this mess is that I have read and enjoyed all the other Karp/Ciampi outings.

The characters in this book are reduced to charicatures The bad guys are Snidely Whiplashes in that they leer, sneer, sweat like pigs and have no redeeming characteristics to humanize them at all. When they get their comeuppances, which one can forsee the instant they are introduced, there is no satisfaction for the reader because the end is so obvious.

Butch is tired, Marlene got boring, Lucy is barely there and what's up with the cowboy and the mystic??? Morlochs and mole people, oy, give me a break!

The plots, there are 3 or 4 or - who can keep count? - are totally without subtlety and verge on the preposterous.

To sum up: too much, too little, too bad. Are we sure Robert Tanenbaum really wrote this book?

I have read nearly all of the Tanenbaum mysteries with great pleasure, often finding them compelling in a literary sense beyond what is usually achieved in the mystery genre. That is why I was particularly disappointed by the sodden mess that is "Fury."

First of all, the book is littered with spelling and usage errors which make one suspect the professionalism of the writer. Secondly, every time a character is re-introduced, we are presented with an extensive retelling of his or her entire story. Thirdly, we are imprisoned by long, disturbing rants about the New York Times, date rape, and criminal suspects that seem utterly out of character for the morally subtle Karp we have come to know from previous books. Fourthly, and most disturbingly, sensationalistic and supernatural elements are handled without the economy and grace which have characterized previous books.

Jump cuts in time, place, and point of view make the story more difficult to follow than necessary. Bloodbaths are used to solve plot problems at the end. It appears to be easier to kill off characters than to make them speak and act convincingly. The last paragraph contains a cheap phone call cliff-hanger which destroys any resolution which might have been achieved. But the most fatal error is the unbelievability of the transformation of Karp's character from the stern moralist of earlier books to an equivocating master of politics as the art of the possible.

The Murrow/Stupnagel characters make a welcome appearance in some of the best writing in the book. But the plot is too complex and the number of characters too dizzying to be handled gracefully.

I read this book without knowing about the ghost writer dispute. My advice to Mr. Tanenbaum is bring him back or kill the series.

Have been an avid fan of Butch and Maureen but I'm sick of reading filler and old history. The last two books have been real bad about draggin'. Two thirds of the story could have been written by a 70's word processer. He has great potential in this swashbuckling family yet it goes unrealized meted out in two good chapters per book the rest drones on. I'm gonna have to wait for the paperbacks to get the covers ripped off in stead of buying first editiions. I just feel ripped off reading all that cut and paste...

I won't bother with a synposis of the "plot" in this pale version of the fabulous Butch and Marlene series. As a long time fan of Robert Tanenbaum, the man who was taking credit for these wonderful books, I was flabbergasted to discover he was using a ghostwriter (Michael Gruber). Since they ended their agreement, the last two books have been totally disappointing. I read Fury just to see if the old spark might have returned. . .but no. The writing style is juvenile. . .the prose is flat. . .and the wry humor is gone. The only reason to read this book is to marvel at how truly abominable it is. Rest in peace, Butch and Marlene.

For the first time, I put down one of Tanenbaum's book without finishing it. I found his characters stereotyped (I wouldn't be surprised if Rev. Sharpton sued) and plot lines absurd. I had a similar but not as strong reaction to Hoax. After reading some of the reviews here, I discovered that he had a co-writer who may have been the heart of his previous books. Too bad Mr. Gruber isn't around anymore.

It is truly a bad sign when you're on page 296 and are still hoping that the book will, at some point, start getting good. When an author believes that those fans who have read every book in this series need to be told about every character in every previous novel, that is also a bad sign. When characters suddenly act completely out of character (Lucy's decision, for example), that is another bad sign. The only good sign is the sticker on the front of the book that says "Sacramento Public Library," which means I didn't waste any money on this book, only several hours of my life. I am going back to reading Ken Goddard.

I've always enjoyed Tannenbaum's books, but this one is an exception. Simply put, it seems to be a rather amateurish rewrite of his earlier book ''Resolved''. The plots are very nearly identical, which is bad enough, but the writing is not up to Tannenbaum at all...the similes are contrived and unnecessary, the plot drags badly in spots and the antagonists are like the antagonists in a bad Clint Eastwood movie -- no redeeming features at all.

There is a terrorist plot to blow up half of NYC with ammonium nitrate and gasoline (Resolved) - a crooked DA (Resolved -- altho' this one is in Brooklyn, and in this case, a judge is also involved), a crooked attorney on his own staff (Resolved), Karp shoots down the crooked lawyer and a lying witness or two with skillful courtroom badinage and procedural manipulation (Resolved) -- there's a fight in the sewers of Manhattan and Lucy's homeless friends are involved (Resolved) .

One gets the feeling reading this book that Tannenbaum's publisher was pounding on his door demanding a new book NOW so the book was rushed....either that, or there's a new developmental editor at work here. In either case, ''Fury'' is not worth the paper it's written on (my opinion), and if you're expecting a typical Tannenbaum novel, you won't get it in this book.

only tonight did i learn of co-writers. i guess this may explain the unfortunate change in tone and plot of the last few books. characters i came to know karp/marianne, lucy, tran have become cardboard cutouts. the plot is totally obvious; no twists or surprises here. totally hack writing. too bad.