Customer Reviews

Loitering With Intent (Stone Barrington)

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

After being publicly dumped by his girlfriend at Elaine's in NYC, Stone Barrington, attorney at large for a big firm, is delighted with an assignment that takes him out of the Big Apple. He heads to Key West to obtain the signature of Evan Keating on a document that will enable his father Warren to sell the family business; Evan will receive twenty million. Accompanying Stone to Florida is his friend NYPD Captain Dino Bachetti.

When they arrive at the Conch Republic they have a difficult finding Evan. When Stone finally corners the elusive man, someone hits him on the head knocking out the visiting New Yorker. A beautiful Swedish doctor helps Stone's two heads recover; he is drained and happy when he meets up with Evan again. However Stone learns Evan is getting a tiny percentage of the worth of the business and that his father committed his paternal grandfather to an institution to get him out of the way. A hit on Evan fails, but someone else is killed. Father and son are in danger though dad set events in motion. Stone and Dino protect Evan while hoping to bring the killers out into the open.

Stuart Woods has written another exciting Stone thriller filled with plenty of action on top of more action. Evan is naively innocent so people take advantage of him including the go between the hit men and his father. Putting aside the heady doctor tryst that is an enjoyable and funny sidebar, Stone is at his sardonic best as he keeps LOITERING WITH INTENT focused on Key West.

Harriet Klausner

I'm giving Loitering With Intent 4 stars, but to be quite honest, 3.5 would be more appropriate. I haven't read every Stuart Woods book published, but I've read a few. To be candid, I see slippage in the quality of the stories that he puts together. Don't, get me wrong, technically the books are okay, but the plots are definitely not up to par.

In Loitering With Intent, after being publicly humiliated in NYC, Stone Barrington gets an assignment that takes him to Key West. The only thing required of Stone is to get a signature from Evan Keating allowing his father to sell the family business. You can predict that this chore is going to develop into more than a simple mission. That's what I'm talking about when I mention story development. The story is obvious from the very beginning. There are a number of twists and turns, but no major surprises. Loitering With Intent simply isn't up to the same standard as New York Dead, Dirt, or even L.A. Dead.

Woods has been publishing three novels a year. I realize I don't work in the publishing field, but certainly going from two novels per year to three seems to have hurt the quality of the output.....at least in this readers mind. Perhaps they've killed the goose to get to the gold and spoiled it for all of us.

Wait for the paperback.

Peace always.

Stone Barrington is back and this time he soon will be in Key West. Having just been dumped by his latest romantic interest the fact that Bill Eggers wants him to go track down the son of a client is a great excuse to get out off New York. Warren Keating needs to finds his estranged son, Evan Keating, so that he can sell the family business. A deal worth millions is at stake and Dad and Son are not on speaking terms. Bill Eggers wants Stone to take the legal paperwork down to Key West, find the son, get him to sign off on everything, get the paperwork back to New York. The whole deal has to be done within the week.

It's the dead of winter and Stone's friend and NYPD Detective Dino Bacchetti jumps at the chance to tag along to Key West. Their plan is to find the son quick and get the work done so they can have a few days to just hang out. Getting to Key West is easy enough since Stone has a private plane. Finding the son is easy enough as well. Then, things get weird and difficult.

This is typical Stone Barrington. Plenty of expensive food is consumed, plenty of expensive liquor, Stone gets action with someone of the female persuasion repeatedly in great detail, and there is plenty of mystery and deception to go around. People die, relationships end, and Stone is bummed for a few minutes before something gets him going again. Introspection is a fleeting concern and is thought of much more than birth control or safe sex.

The very limited complexity and subtly in this book reside with the mystery. An apparent twist that Mr. Woods has repeatedly used before and shouldn't ever again use is used in this novel. Readers familiar with his various series won't be surprised when the twist turns out not to be a twist after all. Once that happens, it becomes a completely formulaic read as events play out exactly as expected with no surprise for the reader.

No doubt a NY Times Bestseller at some point, the latest fluff from Stuart Woods is typical super stud Stone Barrington. If anything, this novel is weaker than the last several novels in this series and shows that it is possible to backslide just went things were looking a bit better from a reader standpoint. It does serve as a momentary distraction and a quick way to pass the time between books of substance. Not that there is anything wrong with that, per se, but one does miss the meatier books that came from Woods early in his career. Lately it would appear that Stuart Woods is doing the exact same thing as this title with his career and he has shown that he can be a much better writer than that.



Kevin R. Tipple (copyright) 2009

Several reviewers have described this latest Stuart Woods book as a "page turner". I agree wholeheartedly, but I don't mean that in a good way. Readers will be flipping over whole paragraphs of stilted dialogue, improbable situations, and predictable plot turns, just in order to get it over with. Stone Barrington, the central character, is an attorney: a fantasy figure who, along with his NYPD detective pal, skips around the country in his airplane, casually boffing women, playing tennis, and occasionally raking in fees for what amounts to work as a private investigator. I believe that if you want to write about attorneys or police officers, you should either have practiced one of these professions, or you should conduct sufficient research so that your characters appear authentic. Woods fails at this. In this book, Woods' contrived plot requires quick and easy solutions to thorny legal problems and complete disregard for even minimal police procedures. Many of the scenes remind me of a kid playing cops and robbers, who after being "shot", falls down momentarily, but quickly recovers, saying, "A good guy came along and fixed me up". Otherwise, the game could not continue. A few examples: a boat owned by Stone's client, unoccupied, is found anchored off the westernmost uninhabited island in the Keys. Stone and his cop buddy break into it and find a stash of powder cocaine with a street value of millions. The Coast Guard shows up, and after questioning them, they release Stone and his pal, the boat is towed back to a marina, where, after a couple of days, it is released to the owner. In real life, both Stone and his cop pal would have been arrested and spent some time in jail arranging bail. The NYPD cop would have been the subject of an internal affairs investigation back home, the boat would have been seized by the government and either sold at auction, kept by the Feds or a local law enforcement agency for their use, or at the very least, the owner would have to go through a lengthy process to get it back. Another example: Stone negotiates immunity for his client in a meeting with an "assistant county attorney". Residents of Florida, which Woods is, according to his Web site, know that we have State Attorneys here, not county attorneys. And, in my experience, no assistant prosecutor could approve a grant of immunity on his own without talking to his boss, and certainly could not and would not grant immunity during an initial interview in a homicide investigation. Elsewhere, there are other errors showing a lack of interest or attention to research. Characters refer to the Florida State Police, which do not exist here. We have the Florida Highway Patrol or Florida Department of Law Enforcement, but no State Police. At one point, a Key West detective, who has been working with Barrington and the NYPD detective tells them that overnight he has set up an arrangement with a telephone company in Connecticut so that when a call is placed from Florida, the caller ID on the Connecticut phone will show that the call was placed in Conn. A neat trick, but it would realistically require brass from several different agencies to collaborate and authorize, and a court order, and would take about two weeks to accomplish.
I won't try to capture all the stilted dialogue that sounds like it was written by G.K. Chesterton, but trust me, you just don't hear people saying, "I could posit you an answer", or carrying on conversations for days without using a contraction. Where is Ed McBain when we need him?
Finally, before buying this book, you might read the author's note on the last few pages, in which, after telling us that he is happy to hear from readers, he proceeds to tell readers why he doesn't read their letters, won't answer questions, or entertain story ideas, but if anybody wants to pay him for movie or TV rights, they can contact his agent. Considering the quality of this writing, the author's note seems a bit arrogant.
I'm sure that those who are ardent readers of Stuart Woods will not be swayed by this review, but this is not his best, or even close to it. I believe several reviewers on this site have nailed it. Woods is working too hard and needs to give himself and these tired characters a rest.

Great story line. Interesting read. Finished in two two hour sessions. Therein lies the rub. 3 books a year makes Stuey a little lazy. Too short. I wait for all of his books. I buy them the day they hit the racks. I thouroughly enjoy them but I'm frustrated with the shrinking length of all of his new books. Keep it up, Stu, and I find a new favorite author...capice?

I always look forward to the latest book in the Stone Barrington series by Stuart Woods, but I do agree with the other reviewers that he is cranking them out too fast. This book lacks the substance and style of the others. I still will recommend it, but if you are thinking about reading this as your first Stuart Wood book, go back and pick another.

Stuart Woods is a better author than this book shows. The content is weak and the plot worse. The first Stone Barrington book I was tempted to not finish.

Unfortunately, I must drop Woods from my "buy all" list. He has, like a number of others writing in the mystery, thriller genre, have lost their appeal/impact.

Predictable, tedious, the author has apparently done his best work with much earlier books.

References to Elaine's and to Dino are meaningless fillers ... increasingly silly. The tendency to more pages of prattle does NOT imprvoe the quality of any book.

Withall, there is depressingly less and less as Woods continues his determination to beat other prolific authors who themselves have also become tedious and unexciting.

I think I'll take up reading 'romance' novels; they couldn't be worse, could they??

Enjoyed the book very much. My first time with this author. Will read additional editions.

I'm not quite sure if it's the book that's sub par or maybe I'm just tiring of Stone Barrington novels. I've been a fan of Woods for quite a while now, especially his Barrington and Barker novels, but they seem to be a little thin these days.

At the heart of a book is a good enough mystery. Stone's tasked with getting a signature for a client of Bill Eggers. The signature he's to obtain is that of the client's son which he needs in order to sell the family business, which is worth many many millions of dollars. Problem is, the father who wishes to sell the company and the son who's signature is required are somewhat estranged from each other. The son's last known whereabouts are somewhere in the Key West area, so Stone (who takes Dino along) is on a working vacation down in Florida.

What happens after that is interesting enough. Murder, drugs, the clients' family drama which includes betrayal, and possible murder.

Sounds good enough, right?

Well there's a few things I don't seem to like about this book, and the way the series has been heading for quite some time now. Stone seems to be rather a cardboard character these days. Fine dining, practicing law and having oodles of sexual encounters with near perfect strangers. All of whom seem to be model quality beautiful, wealthy to varying degrees and have libidos that would make your average adult film star jealous. Not that I'm opposed to Stone 'getting some action' or anything, but the meaningless trysts that always seem to consist of marathon bedroom gymnastics seem to permeate the later novels a bit too much. Generally the women Stone shacks up with are so poorly developed that if something happens to them or if the tryst leads to a relationship or not, I just find myself not caring because the character consists of several paragraphs throughout the book; someone I just can't get attached to because they seem to be disposable these days. Thankfully there's not entire chapters devoted to these romps for us to read, but they seem to be one of Stone's few reasons for existing these days.

I found the client whom Stone is tasked with getting the signature from to also be overly stuffy and not very interesting to read. Being that he's primarily the whole reason for stone getting into the predicaments he gets into, I was disappointed that I really didn't find myself caring about what happened to him for the most part either.

There are several twists that were pretty good and kept my interest in the book and some of the other supporting characters, not in the least of which is Dino, have some good dialogue and interaction with Stone.

It's a pretty quick read, as is the norm for a Barrington Novel so it can be digested pretty quickly. That and it's not the most involved book I've ever read.

I see that there's a new Holly Barker novel out as well. Since I enjoyed that series I'll be reading that soon as well, but I've found that Holly Barker (in the few appearances she's made in the Stone Barrington series since she hasn't had a solo book in a while) is suffering the same sort of 'watered down' nature that Stone has been subjected to in his own novels recently. In fact, she's had very little impact in these books other than to be in the sexual 'on deck circle' for stone when she does make a cameo. I hope her latest book doesn't resort to multiple marathon sexcapades like Stone's have been doing, because I think she's a better character than that. We shall see what happens!