Eddy Lovell thinks there are only winners or losers. Eddy has been a loser. Only now he's learned how to work the streets of the Texas underworld and he seems to have put his losses behind him. Vicki Siegel, too, believes there are two kinds of people: winners and wannabes. For most of her life, Vicki has been a wannabe. A small-town girl with great looks and huge ambitions in the tough world of Hollywood. Now she's ready to become the actress she's worked hard to be. Vicki thinks she's a winner. Through a masterfully orchestrated series of feints and double-crosses, Eddy and Vicki learn that winning requires more then a role. Real players compete for much higher stakes than money or fame; they stake their lives. Cloaked identities and masked motives conspire in this gritty, fast-paced suspense thriller to thrust Eddy and Vicki into a violent world of murder, kidnapping, hightech theft and huge amounts of money - a world where it's sometimes impossible to tell who's a player and who is not. Clay Reynolds spins a fast-paced story of multiple deception and underworld intrigue. Humour and irony blend with vengeance and greed on the contemporary American landscape where there are truly no winners, no losers. There are only players.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
What a great 1950s B movie this thriller by Clay Reynolds would have made! Robert Mitchum, Burt Lancaster, or Sterling Hayden could have played Eddy Lovell to perfection: a smarter-than-average muscleman who drifts into crime almost by accident. As Eddy's employer, a minor league Dallas mobster named Moria Mendle who sells sex and mobile homes, Sam Jaffe would be a top choice. And Elizabeth Scott was born to be Vicki Sigel, a gutsy actress who gets to play the role of her life when kidnappers mistake her for Eddy's daughter. But Reynolds's edgy, stripped-down prose works just fine today; it keeps a complicated story about stolen government CD-ROMs and Eddy's extremely nasty siblings moving like a burning 16-wheeler on a Texas highway. Other books by Reynolds available in paperback include Franklin's Crossing and Rage.
From Library Journal
This drive-in movie of a book is worthy of a review by Joe Bob Briggs: "Dozens of dead bodies, twelve breasts, kung-fu co-eds: Joe Bob says check it out." Reynolds (Franklin's Crossing, Dutton, 1993) has constructed a nonstop narrative orgy of violence and senseless crime that may appeal to someone, but the question is whom. Eddy Lovell, a failed football player, gets involved with the Texas underworld, and the far-fetched plot that ensues involves loan-sharks, pimps, sophisticated computer programs that can find out any information about anyone in the world, Hollywood hopefuls, kidnapping, and all that gratuitous, graphic violence. Promotional hype comparing Reynolds to Elmore Leonard is ludicrous: where Leonard is deft and spare, Reynolds is obvious and belabored. Not recommended.?David Dodd, Univ. of Colorado at Colorado Springs
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant, fast, vivid and bloody.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Players (Hardcover)
Where the heck did Clay Reynolds come from? This is one wild high-octane rush of Texas black comedy, betrayal and bloodshed. Tarrantino meets McMurtry. They'll never cram all this headlong action into a feature-length movie, and if they did it would fry you brainless. Read the book.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Call him Clay "Colon" Reynolds,
By kevinob@mindspring.com (Marietta, GA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Players (Hardcover)
A fine plot,interesting,true to life characters and well paced make Players a super crime read.It is not yet up to the better Lawrence Block's or Elmore Leonard's,but I would rate it an 8 if not for the highly distracting use of colons in the punctuation.There are hundreds and hundreds of them.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Tightly written, informed story of crime in Texas,
By A Customer
This review is from: Players (Hardcover)
With PLAYERS, Reynolds once again demonstrates his technical competence and his overall mastery at narrating a complex tale. PLAYERS is a real page-turner. With an almost Dickensian ability to include many, many characters in a plot which though complex never results in a plot-ridden novel, Reynolds blends dark humor with chilling realism in an account of losers in the underworld of crime. Although the principal setting is Texas, there are abundant allusions and references to other parts of the country. PLAYERS please readers of a) tough mystery fiction, and b) all readers who find vastly complex plots fascinating. With PLAYERS Reynolds augments his reputation as a skilled narrator whose vision illluminates much of the human condition
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