Customer Reviews

Players

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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

Clay Reynolds' first foray into suspense fiction is a success by any standards, but particularly when judged by (gasp!) literary ones. A thinking man's or woman's thriller, PLAYERS features this year's most complex plot and perhaps its most endearing character in the person of Eddy Lovell. Frankly, Eddy is a loser, not a player. Neither his personal nor his criminal life are likely to make him a canidate for anybody's list of Most Successful American Males. His wife runs off, his sister and brother trick him out of both his inheritance and his daughter, and his partner sets him up for a prison sentence. No, Eddy is definitely a failure. Or is he? Looking beyond the obvious (always a prequisite to understanding any Clay Reynolds novel) Eddy is a success at what matters--love, honor, and his own version of honesty. Another failure by contemporary standards is Vicki Sigel, a wannabe actress who succeeds only at roles starring her photogenic feet. When she is kidnapped in place of Eddy's daughter, Vicki reveals a strength of character which makes her a player and a winner at something more important than Hollywood's film game. If Reynolds had only created these two wonderful characters, PLAYERS would be a standout. But he didn't. He created a multitude of believable, politically incorrect, sleasy, bumbling, hopeless, hopeful, funny, violent, pathological, and very REAL characters. PLAYERS is the read of the year in suspense fiction. Doris R. Meredith, Book Editor ROUNDUP MAGAZIN

Reynolds has managed to scrape the Texas underworld and come up with an odd assortment of believable dirtbags who's only redeaming value is that they manage to do one another harm almost as often as innocent bystanders. This book is not for people who are uncomfortable knowing there are very bad people in the world who need no reason to wreck havoc on the lives of others. What makes it worse is that the plot and characters don't require much of a leap of faith to be believable. And don't pick the darn thing up if you need sleep, the plot intensity, twists and turns, and even the characters themselves forbid you to put the damn thing down. You will leave this book with your adrenalin still puming and very unsettled but rewarded with one heck of a good read. I shudder to think how this would play out on the big screen

It's great when you read great reviews by other amazon.com readers. Then read the book; and agree that fellow readers have it right. I much prefer looking through the reviews than going to a bookstore, and trying to judge a book by its cover and blurbs. Players is a plain old great read

If you're looking for sentiment then forget this book--it's peopled with the strangest assortment of people since Charles Dickens' London eccentrics. No one can be trusted; few are as they seem. "Pulp Fiction" springs to mind as a comparison--it reads like a good film--vivid scenes--cars pumped full of bullets and left in stock tanks, heads mailed FedEx, two of the strongest, spunkiest women in recent fiction, a character who looks like a shrub--I don't usually read mystery or crime fiction, but I couldn't put this one down--too much happens and waaayy too fast. Great read--great escape and, as a native Texan, I can vouch for the authenticity of the settings (if I could vouch for the authenticity of the characters I would probably not be around to read--no one lasts long in a "Players" world)

Players is much more than a simple crime novel. The plot provides plenty of tantalizing twists, no doubt, the action is definitely thrilling, and the events suspenseful. But, it was the undercurrents of the characters' passions and ambitions that really pulled me in.

There are no stereotypically cardboard people in Players. Instead, each is 3-D, true to his or her own personality, with so many surprising quirks and qualities that I had absolutely no choice but to read on.

This intriguing book simmers with criss-crossed communications, as the characters tell fibs, half-truths and semi-lies, even to themselves. I love how the humor in the book arises from the endlessly intriguing topic of the vulnerability of human nature.

I really hated to see the book end; and yet, in one way it doesn't. I still find myself speculating on what might happen to each of the survivors, something I certainly don't do often.

And, trust me . . . a character who survives the traumatic events in Players is truly a survivor

Reynolds has published in other genres and his command of the art of writing fiction makes his first crime novel competitive with the best works of the best crime novelists. The dialogue, descriptive passages, realistic violence and comic breaks give the book the sort of rhythym you want to dance to, if you could only put the book down, which you'll find you can't. Reynolds' well-established reputation as a literary novelist will not suffer in the least from this delightful jump into genre. He brings his keen-eyed, unsentimental compassion to each of his characters in Players. Even minor characters will stay in your mind for weeks after reading the book. Especially if you pride yourself on being up on crime fiction, you need to read this book now so you can brag about "discovering" it later. And if you've never read crime fiction, but feel like a dash into neon, this is exactly the place to start--a book that sacrifices none of the grit, scorns the glitter, yet offers a deep humanity as well. Of course, you don't ever have to read Players; but then again, you don't have to watch your favorite sport or drink your favorite beer ever again either. It's just that life is too short to deny yourself such wonderful pleasures

Once I started reading this book, I couldn't put
put it down. The action was fast, the characters
were well-defined, but their motivations and instinctive
actions changed with the violence around
them. Hard to tell until the end who were the
players, or who had to play along just to survive.