Customer Reviews

The Last Goodbye

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I loved this book; just read what everybody else said for a more complete description. I'd like to point three things out, though:
(1) The opening chapter is delightful, for its combination of Mickey-Spillane-Plot with Wodehouse-Genteel-Language. The main character is down on his luck, but spins a beautifully sardonic line of high-flown thoughts about it all.
(2) The author has a fine touch when constructing plot twists. That is, he didn't give the game away with obvious choices, or go for cheap shock value with really unlikely angles. Instead, you think you're figuring things out, but then find out you were only half-right, and the other facts are still lurking somewhere. That is, someone has been murdered--but it wasn't exactly how you thought, though you're on the right track; there's more than one obvious murder method, and more than one reasonable suspect.
It kept me not just guessing but *thinking*--instead of distracting you with plot twists or red herrings, the author gives you a damn good puzzle to put together, and more than one of each piece will fit. I enjoyed trying to outguess the main character by putting things together faster than he did.
(3) The book has a bitter streak, and the ending, while not altogether unhappy, still punches you in the gut. I can't say more without giving it away. It's emotionally powerful but never gets sappy or melodramatic. Good stuff.
Anyway, I loved it and I'd love to see more of the author's work, with this set of characters or others. Five stars.

The authors insights, deprecating, honest and realistic, are delivered casually, almost as if from a swing on the front porch. It is this delivery that distinguishes his prose fromt the usual run-of-the-mill writer. His specialty is desperation and hope - two emotions that seem inextricably bound. This is yet another combination police procedural/mystery/drama with a dose of romance - just my cup of tea.

The hero commits a lawyer's fatal error by sleeping with a client who must then face the consequences of her actions. Years later he is a defender of the down and out whose hopeless squalid lives in the Atlanta inner city are wonderfully and bitterly portrayed. An old friend is found dead, a needle in his arm. Since he was once a drug addict the conclusion is suicide - something our hero refuses to accept. So begins the story.

Through a brilliant set of circumstances we are introduced into the world of opera and one diva in particular. Of course, the two fall for each other in a searing mixture of race (she is black), adultry (she is married) and secrets (she has lots). Along the way we meet one of his clients, Nighhawk, a bitter computer hacker who helps Hammond in discovering the truth of what really happened to his friend. The beauty of the book is the way it ties everything together even if the ending is a tad rushed. Reed Arvin is a splendid writer that I would encourage everyone to read.

Attorney Jack Hammond is a good defender, with a lot of heart, but his list of clients is low, and his bankbook is even lower, since he left a prestigious law firm. The death of long-time, college friend Doug Townsend is viewed by Jack as a murder paralleled to the police report of a 'suicide'. Doug's body is found with a needle in one arm, and the autopsy reports that he died from an O/D of fenatyl. Jack knows different as his friend had been 'sober' for many years, and Doug never followed the fenatyl path. Hammond's investigation leads him to 'hacker' Nightmare (a favorable character to the story), to opera diva Michele Sonnier - her splendor on stage, and her murky past neither of which stops Jack from falling in love with her. Michele is also married to pharmaceutical mogul Charles Ralston, founder of Horizn Pharmaceuticals, conspirator with a trial drug (tested on humans which results in death) for hepatitis C. Yes, The Last Goodbye has a good premise and a few good characters, but Arvin's development of both of the latter is very weak. Narrated by protagonist Jack Hammond, the author delivers very weak dialog, unnecessary flowered prose to cover pages and move the story from A to Z, slooooowly, diverting from the original path of Doug's death, creating a thought process to the reader of 'where is this story going and when will it end?!' A farcical, way-out-there, disappointing ending, and overall too much rhetoric. Recommend instead: DYING GOOD by Allan George Cole, and SHADOWS IN THE DARKNESS by Elaine Cunningham.

I won't recap the plot here, since everyone does that. I bought the book because of the New York Times rave, which was well deserved. The plot is ingenious, the writing is superior, and I loved the detail about Atlanta's class structure. A great high-tech angle about two companies racing to cure hepatitis C, too. I highly recommend this book!

Doug hated needles, so when he died of what the Atlanta cops brush off as just another accidental overdose, his lawyer friend, Jack, gets to thinking: no way Doug would have been injecting drugs, and that's how the fatal dose was delivered. In this gripping book, everyone seems to have a past they'd rather others not know about. Doug's secret married lover, her pharmaceutical-owner husband, Doug's lawyer friend... Skullduggery is uncovered as Jack digs through the dirty little secret layers. The Last Goodbye has love, sex, greed, money, and violence - an excellent combination for this nevertheless subtle noir of a book. Great stuff.

If you're looking for a book that is entertaing, with characters you want to get to know, then "The Last Goodbye" is a book you'll want to spend several hours with (it's a quick read). This book is a page turner, with fleshed out characters, and an engaging plot. A lot of reviews seem to scream that the story is weak. I disagree. I believe a talented writer could tell a story about a beet farmer, and have you turning the pages. Reed Arvin has this talent. Is the story revolutionary? No. But how many stories are? Not many. Most bestselling authors write novels with pedestrian plots, that are told exceedingly well. If you take a novel by Stephen King or John Grisham, for instance, the plot could be reduced down to one page. And just as Arvin, they take you on a fun trip filled with colorful characters.

Many indicate that Arvin is a Grisham copycat (and I'll take a wild guess that Grisham was called a Scott Turow copycat, after his first novel). I disagree. Arvin has a voice of his own, and I believe the comparison is that he communicates simply, effectivley, and his main characters are lawyers.

The main character in this novel, Jack Hammond, is a criminal defense lawyer in Atlanta. I happen to be a criminal defense lawyer in Atlanta. Reed Arvin is a lay person, non-lawyer, writing about lawyers. And he does a darn good job of it. Altough, if this were a courtroom drama, he'd have a lot of research to do, and with his talent, I'm sure he'd tell a convincing story.

THE LAST GOODBYE by Reed Arvin
October 30, 2004

In this legal thriller by Reed Arvin, attorney Jack Hammond battles demons as he tries to eke out a living in THE LAST GOODBYE. He was once a lawyer working for a successful law firm Carthy, Williams, and Douglas, but due to a mistake he made by getting involved with a client causes his dismissal. The mistake had eventually led to the murder of this client, and now Hammond lives with the guilt of her death on his conscience.

Fast-forward several years and he involves himself in the death of a college friend. It appears to be suicide, but clues tell Hammond that it looks like murder. He takes it upon himself to find out who killed Doug Townsend, and this in turn leads him to a beautiful opera diva who is battling a past of her own.

I have to admit, although this book did interest me and I wanted to know how it ended, a lot of the plot seemed implausible. I didn't mind that many of the lesser characters were no more than caricatures, but the opera singer, Michele Sonnier, turned out to be very unbelievable. A lot of her past did not mesh with what she came to be in the present, and I just did not buy it.

I feel that Arvin has talent, but he needs to learn to develop his characters with more realism and logic. Without believable characters populating a novel, it's hard to believe in the plot. This book is marginally recommended.

"Let me tell you" says Jack Hammond at the very beginning of one of the most intriguing novels I have read in some time. And tell us he does. He says he is doing it because confession is supposed to be good for the soul.

Jack's first confession involves his downfall from a prestigioius Atlanta law firm. He is approached by a beautiful woman who begs him to accept a pro bono representation of her boyfriend who is charged with a drug crime. At first he declines but the vision of the woman remains with him and he finally asks for permission from his firm to take on the case. Once permission was granted one thing leads to another and the grateful girlfriend winds up in Jack's bed for a night of lovemaking. The boyfriend is successfully defended and thanks his girlfriend for her efforts on his behalf by beating her to death. This time he gets a bargain basement lawyer who thinks the jury might have some sympathy for his client if the fact of the amorous relationship is brought out, so Jack is subpoenaed to a deposition and the story comes out. End of job in tony Atlanta law firm.

Two years later...he is trolling the depths of the criminal justice system as the sole practitioner in Jack Hammond and Associates when he is notified that one of his former clients has died of a drug overdose. As Jack explores the cirsumstances of the death, things do not add up and he is inexorably drawn into a mystery which has many roads, but no easy endings.

Another beautiful woman surfaces as he tries to unravel the facts behind the death. Powerful forces are at work to prevent both of them from finding the answers they seek and the story weaves together like a fine rug to a powerful ending.

Reed Arvin is an outstanding writer with a keen ear for diologue and the ability to tell a story in such a way that you are sorry to see the pages getting fewer. The Last Goodbye was my first exposure to this writer. It will not be the last.

Isn't the pleasure a reader derives from a novel supposed to increase as the plot unfolds? THE LAST GOODBYE is unusual in that my interest steadily waned as I turned the pages. By the end, I was pretty much indifferent to the hero and the outcome.

Jack Hammond is a disgraced Atlanta lawyer reduced to acting as public defender for the urban scum hauled into court on drug and petty theft charges. (Hammond, who's a closet romantic with a weakness for damsels in distress, was summarily dropped from the roster of a high-powered law firm two years before after sleeping with a client's girlfriend.) When Jack learns that Doug, a down-and-almost-out friend with a substance abuse problem, apparently overdosed on an injectable drug, he realizes that something is wrong with the picture. Doug had a paranoid fear of needles. Was it foul play? Hammond subsequently discovers that his old pal was a computer hacker extraordinaire, and that he had an obsession with the gorgeous Michele Sonnier, a troubled young woman from the Atlanta ghetto turned brilliant and wildly successful opera singer married to Charles Ralston, the philanthropic and much revered head of Horizn Pharmaceuticals. Once Horizn debuts in the plot, and considering activist hand-wringing over the greed of the evil drug companies, the reader suspects where the storyline is going - and so it does.

It's not that THE LAST GOODBYE is awful. Why, even as recently as yesterday, it provided welcome distraction during the boring bits of a professional seminar I had to attend. But, for me, the characters never became real or garnered much sympathy. Hammond is supposed to be a lawyer, but he acts throughout like a private-eye wannabe; he never becomes sufficiently convincing as either. Minor characters that should have added zest to the story - Jack's Dumb Blonde secretary Blu and the antisocial computer outlaw Nightmare - don't really. Hammond's own preoccupation with the vulnerable Michele is torpid, and the affair slows the action down. Indeed, the final reckoning for the Bad Guys has all the knuckle-biting tension of a computer-enabled stock purchase. Worst of all for my overall opinion of the book, there are no twists clever and/or unsuspected enough to make me pause in admiration.

THE LAST GOODBYE is one of a multitude of similarly average potboilers that'll crowd the shelves of the brick-and-mortar booksellers, and which will ultimately end up on the discount tables of the clearance stores found in the outlet malls. Wait for its appearance at the latter and you'll only need to spend a couple bucks.

This book caught me from the first paragraph and it was one heck of a read after that. Great plot, lots of twists and action. Jack Hammond is so likeable a character with his honesty that he would appeal to anyone's humanity. Loved it and think Arvin is a very talented writer.