Customer Reviews

Gin Lane: A Novel of Southampton

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

 

 

The back cover was more interesting than anything between the covers. This was my first James Brady novel...perhaps I was expecting something else. The reader IS warned that you needed to be familiar with the Hamptons..perhaps that was my problem.

Fresh off reading A Hampton's Christmas, I wanted to like Gin Lane. I enjoy James Brady's mixing of the well-known and the fictional and have not found so likeable character as Beecher Stowe IV in a long time. And it is fun to try to place a name on the characters you should know, but their real names aren't being used. This was definitely a step above The House That Ate the Hamptons and its "credits" (including Lady Alix's nipple ring) on the inside printer's page. This book lacked the soul of the Hampoton's christmas book, and was a pleasant diversion, but not as good as I had hoped.

Spending youthful summers in Southampton gave me a reason to purchase the book. After finishing it, I'll stick with my memories! A few interesting characters,who were never developed and an ending that would have been welcomed after chapter 3.

My title says it all. This book was really, really boring.

This book really doesn't have much of a plot--much less than others in Brady's Hamptons series, but it is still interesting. It is designed to be a beach read and required minimal effort to understand it. I read it with this in mind, and found it interesting. It's the story of an offensive radio personality who has come to ultra-snobby Gin Lane and the various attempts to kill him. That's it, plotwise, but the dry humor and interesting, if shallow, characters are enough to carry this lightweight novel, if you view it as such: a lightweight novel.

For years I've thought that the Hamptons were a plasticized version of Cape Cod. This book is as shallow as the phonys that pony up to go the Hamptons. While I'm an Imus fan, this book fails to capture the enigma that is Imus. He is highly intelligent and generous but profane and egotistical. Cowboy in this book is profane, egotistical, stupid and lacking any redeeming quality. I always thought that a novel had to have a plot. Like trying to find Waldo- where is the plot.

This book is as shallow, pretentious, and boring as the characters it portrays. We already know James Brady is friendly with celebrities, but who cares? This is not storytelling -- it's name dropping. I expected much more from a "best-selling" author.