Customer Reviews

Rush

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

 

 

Like Kim Wozencraft, I too am an ex-cop and an ex-con, . There are two things I can comment on. One is how authentic it is, how well it portrays the life of a cop with a drug habit. The second is how well it's written. For authenticity, all I can tell you is that I was also a cop with a drug habit and it doesn't get any more real than Ms. Wozencraft's book. If you want to vicariously experience something that no sane person would want to go through in real life, read this book. Read this book. As far as how well it's written, no big complaints there. It was a bestseller, as well as being made into a pretty popular movie. That should tell you what the general public thinks. As far as the critics, they seem to have liked the book as well. If there were any new-writer mistakes in the book that would have normally drawn the scorn of the critics, they were lost in the grit, which the critics admired. They liked the book because it was real. I don't much like the book anymore for the same reason. I lived that life too. I recently tried to re-read the book and it gave me night sweats. It was too nerve-wracking for me. That's how authentic it is. If what you want is--as the critics love to say--gritty reality, this is your book. Get the book. It'll be money well-spent.

What a disturbing little read this was! Wozencraft exposes us to a world most of us never knew or even imagined--the blurry lines between the good guys and the bad guys in the war on drugs.

What makes this novel so disturbing is its ring of authenticity; its truthtelling grows until they final pages, when the moral of the story is exposed: 1) situational ethics applies in settings where it is morally wrong yet sanctioned by the law; 2) life is often not fair, and the evil often prosper.

Her writing skills are excellent, and her ability to write expertly about these complex situations in the first person makes the novel intense and almost too painful to continue. She has real ability, although I'm not sure I want to read about such a depressing and sordid world about which she writes so capably.

So if you had a job in a liquor store and you spend all evening drinking the liquor how long do you think your job would last?

Now, you have a job as an undercover narcotics officer. Your job is to buy dope so as to set up the dealers for take downs. No dealer will sell to you unless you fix right there the first time. It's inevitable you or your partner/colleague are going to get hooked.

This is a good, well written novel. The main character is a young girl who joins the police force and ends up as an undercover "narc". Her partner, Jim, soon becomes her lover and the two of them move in together and do as much dope, cocaine, meth, qualuudes, crank, pcp etc etc as they buy. Their collective reasoning is that it goes with the job.

Problem is, undercover narcs, even though it's common knowledge they do, are NOT supposed to sample the contraband. When her partner gets sick (spun) Kristen approaches her chief. He now knows illegality is taking place but, on his quest for promotion, he's torn tween getting the "busts" and bringing in the sick guy.

From then on it's about departmental politics, and you have to ask yourself, where does the line get drawn between doing wrong to do what's right? Ultimately the many departments of law enforcement are tasked with stopping society implode on itself. But, that task in itself demands that the lines be blurred once you put the good guys in amongst the bad.

Great book which I recommend. Well done to Kim Wozencraft.

This is a powerful novel about under cover narcotics operations and of the often
invisible, non-existent delineation between narc and pusher. "I played both
roles, I was both sided. I comprehended their longing, I shared their needs.
And I despised us all. The difference between them and me was that I under-
stood there was no difference." (p. 175).

The relationship between Kristen and Jim, the two police officers and lovers is
so horrifyingly destructive that it is difficult to read about.

It is a first novel so it tended to be spotty in places but it was the most evocative
true to life depiction of addiction, need and desperation that I've ever read.
Speed, cocaine and need are put into words as I've never read them before.

Entwined into the depiction of undercover narcotics operations is the depiction
of police corruption and the stupidity of the war on drugs. Also, we are horri-
fied to realize that bureaucratic and societal corruption extends to every level.

I had wanted to read this book for a long time after seeing the movie. Unfortunately I had just as long been put off by the reveiws I read. In some ways true to the book and in others completely different. Thought provoking read for entertainment.

What mean reviews for such a precise, measured and insightful coverage of such a tawdry and even brutal subject. I think that earlier reviewers are distracted by the fact that(1) Rush was made into a film, with which they make an implicit comparison and (2) that while it is a "novel" it is very much fact-based. Take it as just a story. It is superbly written with a clarity of style that is almost that of Scott Fitzgerald in his last short stories about his personal crash. It stands out for the narrator's lack of self-pity and simple laying out of a life in collapse. The last unravelling of the inevitabilities of the story line do lose pace and coherence, but this is all in all a mini-jewel, a book that is moving and memorable -- which is waht novels should be, afterall

Who knew anyway! I didn't even know it was based on her own experiences until I read the TVguide online review of the FILM version. Anyway, I'll say it's dynamic, it's insightful about a corrupt town on hard drugs in the disco era...and that's what matters. An innocent girl that's never probably even took a caffeine pill in her life narrates a story about another cop and herself getting high, getting low, and getting shot, getting to lie, and getting convicted. It isn't a fabulously detailed read (where is why the "truth" may be hard to come by) but if you are interested in the semi-real life of some undercover narcs, this is the story for you.

Rush, written by Kim Wozencraft, a narcotics officer has a constant struggle between her job and her addiction to narcotics. Kristen Cates (main character) partnered up with the top narcotics agent Jim Raynor with the Pasadena police department who got her started on narcotics. She finds many techniques on how to survive on the streets and keep her job. Jim dies from over use of narcotics and Kristen like all bad guys gets caught.
Rush, is written in a style of its own. Love, suspense and intrigue. Rush, is written in the point view of a former narcotics agent (Kim Wozencraft) which really brings the book alive. Thoughts from her own experiences bring you to the scene no details left out. The audience keeps looking for more excitement

The novel Rush, which was written by a convicted felon, was an enjoyable work of part fiction, part non-fiction. Ms. Wozencraft (or Ramsey as she used to be called), not only was a perjuror but was also an abuser of the drugs she was supposed to have been taking off the streets. (See, she used to be an uncover narcotics officer in Texas, before she began to use drugs, skimming of the narcotics that she bought from drug dealers, before turning it into her supervisors. She also later lied on the stand on so many occassions, that over 120 felony cases, including the attempted murder of a police officer, had to be thrown out of court.

Though I enjoyed reading the book (and later viewing the screen adaptation), I also was disapointed that the true "hero" of the story happened to be Ms. Wozencraft's "heroine" (what a pun on words) in the book (which I say was "based" on Ms. Wozencraft's own personal experiences in law enforcement). The truly sad part is that the true story of what happened in a little Texas town, was a better story that should have been written. Ms. Wozencraft (who gave many tv interviews about her "own" experiences) could have written a truthful version of those events, about her participation in the use/abuse & distribution of drugs and her decision to commit perjury on the stand.

Again, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed reading the book. I was able to read it and recall some portions of what she includes in her book and the people that she was "trying not to write about."

Kim Ramsey-Wozencraft should have done a better job in deciding whether her book was "fiction" or "non-fiction." To those people who are familiar with the "true story," it just seems to us that she "plagerized" her book from actual events...she just changed the names and the "truth" of the matter.