Customer Reviews

Man Eater

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

 

 

This is probably, the best excuse for movie addaptions I have ever read. There are about 10-12 characters, each interconnected in some way, yet with their own aggenda. It plays to many races without being stereotypical. And as the book says in a review,"read it before Hollywood makes the movie". I would LOVE to see this as a movie. I recomended it to three people and everyone finnished it that day. Does anyone know who this writter is? WOW

You have to wonder why no one thought of this before (at least that I'm aware of). The premise is very clever here and makes for a great read, along with the slick writing. What if a hotshot movie producer, a total babe, while at a local bar, came to the aid of a sleazy [...] being battered left and right by a big, muscular thug, bashing the guy over the head with a beer bottle? At the same time, what if an ex-con wrote a great screenplay and had dreams of selling it, and the producer, coincidentally enough, had this screenplay in one of a stack of 50 or so to read? And what if the big ugly thug found out where the babe lived and did some unspeakable things to her, then gave her 5 days to pay up or die? If the ex-con was also pretty muscular, maybe he could protect the babe. If, of course, he wanted to sell his screenplay.

Very clever. This is the central premise and while it may sound that the story's given away here, relax. There's a bunch of surprises in store for the reader and the author, Ray Shannon (pseudonym for an actual screenwriter, Gar Anthony Haywood) is really smart and knows plotting like Lipton knows tea. This baby has solid momentum and yes, WOULD make a great thriller on screen.

Shannon/Haywood is smart enough to know exactly how to raise the stakes by introducing other characters who will add to the tension and drive the momentum onward like a non-stop freight train. The thug, the ex-con, and the producer are the three leads, but also here are a couple of low-life brothers, the aforementioned [...], the producer's back-stabbing rival, as well as her neurotic boss, her ex-husband and son, the ex-con's ex-wife and daughter, and a pimply, vicious drug dealer.

Throw these all together with a perfectly plotted story, as well as the slick writing, and you got yourself a winner. A fine piece of work. Stretching credibility? Hey, if it's done right, that's what makes fiction a lot of fun. And in this novel, trust me, it's done right.

I have nothing but praise for this book. Maneater can easily be a bestseller. This novel is exciting and has surprising twist and turns to the plot. A rare thriller that mixes the lives of common criminals and big money making executives. It begins with action and doesn't run out of fuel until the last sentence of the book. This page-turner will have you on the edge of your seat!
Shannon's attitude toward Hollywood and the dog-eat -dog world of the movie business is a humorous treat. A treat that shows a business of greed, hate, revenge and jealousy. The way he describes the setting makes you feel as if you were there. The unexpected ending is a perfect for the story.

Shannon's book is basically a glorified screen play. Several reviews called it funny (I did not laugh much). I enjoyed the characters and the story--even it is all a bit absurd. It plays out like a decent action thriller and some the hits it puts on the movie making business are solid. The characters are not very deep and the end, while satisyfing, is not particularly surprising. Fun, but not much depth--could acutally make a better movie than book...go believe.

See book summary above.

It seems everyone gets their due in this novel. The bad guys and the reader. A highly satisfying read. I'm highly curious who Ray Shannon really is (it's a pseudonym), because I'm willing to bet he/she is a well known author.
This was a fast moving entertaining ride. If there was a little more humor thrown in it would definitely rate a five.

Highly recommended.

Velocity Pictures executive Ronnie "Raw" Deal seems on the fast track to a vice presidency when a sleazy rival hurts her effort to sign Brad Pitts to perform in "Trouble Town". Upset, Ronnie goes to the Tiki Shack Bar to obtain a drink where Hitman Neon Polk beats up Denise "Antsy" Carruth over stolen drug money. Instead of ignoring the thrashing, Ronnie knocks out Neon with a bottle while Antsy flees the premises.

A few days later, Neon learns who his attacker is and cleverly enters her secure abode. Instead of killing her, he decides to extort cash from the wealthy bitch, but first rapes Ronnie and then gives her five days or he will kill her.

Desperate, Ronnie remembers a gritty crime script from an ex-convict, Ellis Langford. She thinks he might be her only answer to Neon because she refuses to pay this pig in a poke. Though he has problems with two thugs who he battered for attacking him while delivering pizza and a former spouse who hates him, he decides to help Ronnie because she is his ticket out of the no future delivery work.

In spite of the lights of Hollywood, MAN EATER is a dark gritty urban noir that contains a strong cast whose personalities are made quite clear from the start. The action is loaded as the story line never pauses for a breath yet enables the audience to understand the underlying motives of the three key characters even when its seems their behavior is crazy. This powerful suspense novel will make Ray Shannon as famous as his award winning not revealed real name.

Harriet Klausner

Ray Shannon (a pseudonym for "an award-winning author who lives in California") sets the stage for his often funny, always entertaining take on what's tawdry in Tinseltown with an attention-getting prologue introducing Neon Polk. Now, Neon ‘s not a guy you want to mess with. Better yet, you hope he'll never come within a mile of you.

Neon would do anything for money. "A dark skinned thickly muscled black man of twenty-four, Neon had a potential for creative violence that simply jarred the imagination."

Once we've met this chilling character and witnessed what he can do to Big Freddy Albin "who scared the living hell out of everyone else," the story quickly segues to the Tiki Shack Bar where protagonist Ronnie "Raw" Deal has retired to salve her ego and vent her spleen. Ronnie is, of course, a knock-out with brains and chutzpah to spare. She's a studio executive on her way up at Velocity Pictures.

That rise to the top was going to be undergirded by a film she'd been working on - "Trouble Town" with Brad Pitt. Then, quite suddenly, it's in the cellar. She's almost positive that she's been scuttled by her rival at Velocity, Andy Gleason. Ronnie needs a beer or two to plot her next move, and the Tiki Shack is way off the beaten path.

Another young woman, Antsy Carruth, is at the same bar "trying to make one strong and super-sweet Mai Tai last for the better part of an hour." She's waiting for someone who can supply her with a false passport, so she can get out of the States, far away from the ex-boyfriend from whom she stole thousands of dollars.

But, instead of a guy with a passport in walks Neon - trouble on foot looking for a "little white girl." He's been hired to get the boyfriend's stolen money back. But, when he starts going after Antsy, Ronnie clobbers him unconscious with a beer bottle - not the thing to do to Neon at all. He wants revenge - in spades or blood, if you will.

Her life in danger, Ronnie sends an SOS to Ellis Langford, an ex-convict and wannabe screenwriter. If helping Ronnie will get him a step up on Hollywood's stairway to mega bucks, Ellis is willing to do whatever. But, he, too, has vicious enemies.

Author Shannon has fashioned a can't-put-down read with terse dialogue and quick plot twists. "Man Eater" will be especially relished by those with a fondness for La La Land
machinations and intrigue.

You already know the basics, so I don't need to tell you about the plot. Just read the book and enjoy a style of writing that surpasses Leonard. Articulate writing mixed with dark humor, down home grit and a back door view of Hollywood that only an insider could write. MAN EATER needs to be a movie...it crys out for the screen. Quentin Tarrantino needs to make this a film, and Ray Shannon is a formidible writer who deserves a huge readership.

Ronnie Raw Deal, a drop-dead gorgeous up-and-coming hot-shot movie producer, finds herself in a seedy bar after a really bad day at the office, nursing her fury at a sabotaging co-worker, when a huge black man walks in and starts whaling on a waifish slip of a girl at the bar. The reader already knows the back story on these two: Neon Polk is a sadistic, single-minded, psychopathic enforcer and Antsy Carruthers is the prostitute hes been hired to kill. Ronnie, seeing in this tableau the story of her life, loses it, and minutes later the big guy is stretched out on the floor, bloody and barely conscious.

Ronnie now has bigger troubles than the conniving, knife-in-the-back producer at work. Neon has reduced himself to a single goal  revenge. He makes this known in graphic Neon style and Ronnie quickly determines she has only one way out: kill Polk before he kills her. But how? She needs an assist from someone who knows about such things. Like Ellis Langford, a hungry ex-con with a screenplay  a good one, with all the elements she needs.

The reader has also met Ellis previously, a fundamentally decent man who, like Ronnie, is a product of his mistakes, particularly one big mistake  manslaughter. Hes trying to make it in pizza delivery when a couple of punks rip him off for fun and Ellis is virtually compelled into the inevitable escalation of events. He turns down Ronnie, of course, sniffing something rotten in the huge money she wants to pay his unknown self for his unknown screenplay and shes forced to enlist his aid through honesty instead.

Sounds outlandish? Absolutely. Cartoonishly, rivettingly, raucously, hilariously outlandish. The breakneck pace, punctuated generously with bloody mayhem, accelerates as the twisting, cinematic plot races to a satisfying finish. The Tinseltown setting is wickedly devised, the humor is sardonically witty, and the writing is slick and clever. Shannon (a pseudonym for an award-winning author who lives in California) will appeal wholeheartedly to Elmore Leonard fans.