Customer Reviews

Shafted

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I suppose I should have known better than to pick this up. There were three dead giveaways; first it was unread and cheap, secondly there was the author's twee Christian name, and thirdly there was the echo in the title of the awful Robert Kilroy-Silk. Had I not disregarded those portents, I would not have started reading an asinine plot, with feeble dialogue, and unconvincing characters.

Somebody out there may have a gripping story to tell about the low-life side of television gameshows, but this ain't it. As the opening line has it: "Aaaand cut!" And I have, at page 65, to be precise.

Shafted is not a bad story. Set in Manchester England, we follow the life of up himself TV game show star Larry Logan who is apparently one the most handsome and desirable guys in the world and he knows it. The problem shafted has is that the first third of the books paints such as detrimental figure in Logan that you thoroughly dislike the guy so you feel no elation for his lucky break or empathy later on which the story really needs to work for him as a victim in the second two thirds. For the reader to get that empathy, Heller with Shafted probably needed to tone down Logan's strong ego character traits at the beginning or not included some or all of the extreme alcoholic abuse, indifference and lack of remorse to his work colleagues career plights due to his self centred actions or his ethics of not checking someone he takes home is of legal age and the like. Reading the final two thirds you know you are supposed to feel sorry for and be gunning for Larry but you just can't.

Shafted is the tale of a TV game show host who evades his minder to consume a bottle in the toilets before returning to the floor to wrap up an episode. His reprehensible druken actions leave the network with no choice but to spin what happened as a medication bungle. However the next day's newspaper which followed him out to a club that night tells the world Larry Logan is paedophile and hard drug user meaning even the most naive fan will not believe the show's propaganda. Larry is shown the door and as his career seems to be over. As the months go on his choice of alcohol to comfort him results in a meeting with some heavies who have orders to repossess and sell everything he owes to pay his debts. It looks like his apartment is next to go and he'll be living on the streets when his agent tells him a client is offering him a chance to host another game show to be watched by an American audience, only catch is the contestants are all wanted criminals!