Customer Reviews

The King of Lies

5 star:		(81)
4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

A small-town lawyer's midlife crisis is sparked by the discovery of the dead body of his overbearing father. Although told in the first person, the tale gives good background and many interesting stories about other characters. In his search for his father's killer, the narrator uncovers a lot of dirt, human suffering, and neglect in his small town, all while trying to juggle his own affairs and keep himself out of jail as the prime suspect. Our first-person narrator has a good literary style while not sounding too cute about it (unlike some other famous authors' attempts at first-person writing).

It would seem very difficult to write a good first-person thriller, giving the reader all of the necessary clues to solve the case while still making us go "D'oh, I should have known!" at the end. Kudos to the author for pulling it off.

Ezra Pickens, North Carolina backwoods lawyer extraordinaire and hardass of Olympian proportions, has been missing for eighteen months and feared dead. When his skeletal reamins are finally found in an abandoned mall, there is no doubt he was murdered. Lawyer son Jackson Workman Pickens, or "Work", stumbles around in some feeble attempt to protect sister Jean, who he believes the perp, and soon finds himself the prime suspect.

John Hart's debut reads like two different novels. In the first half of the novel, I found "Work" simply annoying. I doubt that Hart wanted to make his protagonist such a wimp, but about 100 pages of Work's whining about his childhood, his mean rich daddy, and his pathetic life in general was just grinding me down. OK, so he's not had the model life, and as a result his drinking, adultery, and general shiftlessness is justified. We got all that - let's move on.

And remarkably, Hart does just that. Once past the bitch wife, the gay sister and her wacko girlfriend, and the cop with a grudge, Hart spins a genuinely suspenseful mystery and legal drama, reminiscent of Scott Turow in his early days. The plot thickens, unfolds, takes a couple of entertainingly ugly diversions, and finishes with a John Grisham flourish. Hart has literary skills, no doubt about it, and he spices up his drama with tales of child abuse and murder definitely not for the feint of heart. While off to a slow start, Hart finishes strong, and is definitely a name to watch.

I enjoyed this book so much. The main character, a man as flawed as the rest of us, had me enthralled from the first page. By the middle of the book, I found myself unable to put it down, reading page after page as fast as I could. I have to admit, I kind of had the whole thing figured out, but that didn't take away the pleasure of reading this book to the end. A little twist here, a liitle twist there, great reading.
I look forward to your next book Mr. Hart.

This book must have been written first as a script for a TV show, because the cliched dialogue was full of the kind of lines that one hears on TV and doesn't really notice, but that in the audiobook leapt out at me. Every character says each of these lines one or more times:

"What do you mean?"
"What are you saying?"
"I don't understand."
"What?!?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"It doesn't matter."

And the narrator's favorite: "I need to talk to <fill in the blank>." He always needs to talk to somebody BEFORE he can take the next logical step, and this really slows down the already molasses-in-January action.

No one seems to hear a thing the first time it is said, which leads to interminable repetitions of the obvious.

But even if the dialogue were repaired, that leaves the draggy plot, the narrator's harping over and over again on how he wants to protect the person he believes is the murderer, the lack of explanation of why the detective is on a personal crusade against the narrator. Others have mentioned the device of the disheveled street person who Knows Things and then who vanishes from the story. The dog disappears from the story, and he was my favorite character. I also figured out who the killer was and I HATE it when I figure that out early in a book. I like to be surprised and astonished. (There was ONE thing in the plot that was unexpected, and if you read this book, you'll know it when you get there.) The only thing that really astonished me was how many people here said they liked the book.

P.S. I will admit that I was listening under the influence of a handicap: I had just finished listening to 22 hours of "All the King's Men," a masterpiece of poetry, philosophy, character development, and intricate cause-and-effect plotting where none of the seams showed. Not too many books could follow that act. If you want to give yourself a real treat, get that audiobook. It is exquisite, and a real "pageturner," too.

Oh dad, poor dad, you've been done in, and no one is sad!!

What we have here is a vivid story of a murder in a small North Carolina town complete with a cadre of characters who are more than just a little crazy. The main character has three last names. He also has a gold digging wife, a mistress, a suicidal dysfunctional sister whose "baggage" includes a bizarre lesbian lover and last, but not least, we have a bitchy, power hungry cop who is out to get our protagonist.

In many ways the story is predictable and the "mystery" adequate but
uninspired. The strength of the book lies in the authors finely crafted
character development. You can empathize with the middle aged hero and the effects his frustration and disappointment coupled with a self destructive streak have had on his life.

Not the masterpiece some reviewers think it is, but definitely worth the time it takes to read it. 3 1/2 stars.

First Sentence: I've heard it said that jail stinks of despair.

Jackson Workman "Work" Pickens is a defense attorney, married to a beautiful woman, living in a big house. His father, Ezra, had built a powerful legal practice and a financial fortune and disappeared. Now Ezra's body has turned up showing he dies of two gunshots on the day he disappeared. The police suspect Work because of the money he'll inherit and family secrets make it hard for Work to defend himself.

After all the hype this book received, I was so disappointed in it. The plot reminded me of a bad soap opera with everything dependant on assumptions, misunderstandings and greed. Although Hart's first acknowledgement was to his wife, it doesn't appear he likes other women very well as every female character was a bad stereotype; the tough-trying-to-prove-herself cop, the narcissistic-bitchy-greedy wife, the I've-always-loved-you doormat girlfriend, the I-was-so-misunderstood-depressive sister, the I-was-so-abused-I-hate-all-men-gay girlfriend. "Work" is basically two different characters; the I'll-live-my-life-as-daddy-wants wimp and, after talking to the philosophic bum on the street, the I'm-going-to-take-control-of-my-life man. The plot was broadcast so loudly it nearly screamed and the villain was apparent from the moment they stepped into the story. I did read all of it, mainly to see whether it really was going where I thought it was--it did. I know some people have thought it was wonderful. I'm just not one of them.

I loved this book. I can say without hesitation that The King of Lies is simply the best novel I have ever read. I almost hope the author will stop with a work that is at worst a whisker shy of perfection.

Yes it has the suspense of a good mystery novel but without resorting to anything that doesn't feel completely honest. Unfortunately, I know from growing up in a small southern town similar to the one that is the setting for this book that the nastiness the characters of "Lies" must face is very real. You don't need to read John Hart's bio to realize that he is writing from experience. Reading this novel was like listening to a piece by Mozart. What at first seems like a few simple "notes" evolves into a masterpiece. Even though every review I have read of this great book has so far been positive, none has yet come close to doing it justice.

I really expected to like this book. The dust jacket is covered with praise of the highest order, in many cases from fine practioneers of the writing craft.

So what went wrong?

As my title explains, this book uses too much foreboding and foreshadowing. Not since Thomas Cook have I seen someone who starts with such melodrama, then layers on globs of vague foreboding, and then lards over his product with thick gobs of foreshadowing.

It makes the first half of the book very hard to get through. Despite on of the endorsements claiming that this book will be read at 1-2 sittings, I had to stop half way through and read books by Richard Stark and Max Collins to get a head of steam back up for finishing The King of Lies.

The second thing that went wrong is that I realized a third of the way through the book who did it. The basic plot is well thought out, and most authors could keep the reader in suspense until the book was almost done. But the heavy handedness of the foreshadowing betrays Hart's villian chapters too early, and the strongest asset of the book, its plot, is rendered moot by the premature set of clues that give the guilty party away.

Several other reviewers have commented that the two halves of the book are almost like two different books. I agree emphatically.

The protagonist, who seems to be in mammoth self-destruct mode for the first half of the book suddenly develops a spine in the second half and eventually solves the mystery of his father's death. The first half is a 1 star, the second a 3 to 4.

Hart shows some real promise in this debut. The plot is quite well constructed. A few of the side characters are drawn with unusual depth. The legal aspects of the book ring very true.

However, many of the actions of several characters come across as an affirmative argument for the doctrine of predestination, which is scarely the grist for the thriller genre. Adding the extreme overuse of foreshadowing, and the book descends into an exercise where I found myself asking time and again why the characters didn't snap out of their rigidly proscribed behaviors.

Predestination worked for the Greek tragedies, but mystery thrillers are not Greek tragedies. And even the Greeks knew not to overmix foreshadowing with characters doomed to their fates.

What lawyer, or any educated person, would make these decisions? This plot is so far fetched and so painful that I sent straight into the recycling bin rather then pass it on. You hate the main character not only b/c he is dull but he is so, so dumb that it becomes impossible to respect anything about the book, plot or characters. The narration, his complete lack of common sense, inability to draw elementary conclusions, vocalize anything and the way-to-drawn out sister/did it/saving theory was utterly ridiculous. While the last few chapters were equally painful and predictable, I was just happy to see that Works' character, albeit at gunpoint, was finally allowed/able to make an actual connection.

"The King of Lies" is an exceptionally well-written crime mystery. Hart keeps the pages turning (out of the early Grisham mold) while writing with a thoughtful literary style. Certainly beats the socks off of all these cardboard cutout ghost-written novels on the shelves these days.

Can't wait to read his next effort... as I'm sure this is just the beginning of a great new career.