Customer Reviews

Shoot the Moon (Shoot Moon)

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

 

 

This book was fun. Great story that grabs you early on. Sympathetic main character that is an "everyman" one can easily identify with. Well-written. Author seems to have a knowledge of police procedures without needlessly "showing-off" that knowledge - information is only described as necessary for the story. Police are probably depicted as dumber than they are, but hey, what do I know? Maybe this *is* close to mark -- if so, we should be worried. Nice depiction of a father-daughter relationship that you dont always see in novels of this kind.

Following on the heels of his well-received first novel, Felony Murder (1995), Klempner has scored another success. Michael Goodman is an out-of-work accountant, trying to single-handedly support a seriously ill daughter after the death of his wife. On a journey from New York to Fort Lauderdale for a disastrous job interview, he discovers millions of dollars worth of drugs in the trunk of his rental car. Being a basically honest guy, he tries to turn them over to the police, but they keep rebuffing him. With mounting medical bills in mind, he succumbs to temptation and takes the drugs home. He is not any better selling the drugs than he was in his interview, and he rapidly falls under the scrutiny of multiple law-enforcement and criminal organizations. All of them see him as their chance for a big score. Klempner's style is both engaging and humorous, and he maintains a skillful level of suspense throughout the story. Big fun. Eric Robbins Copyright© 1997, American Library Association. All rights reserved

From Kirkus Reviews , June 15, 1997 Think it would be fun to be sitting on top of something worth a cool $5 million? Not when the something is primo heroin....Readers who root for the good guys will enjoy the special challenge posed by Goodman, too nice to do time for dealing (so he can't be caught) but too principled to make a killing from selling heroin (so he can't get away).-- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Synopsis

From Kirkus Reviews , 06/15/97 Think it would be fun to be sitting on top of something worth a cool $5 million? Not when the something is primo heroin. The heroin came with the pink Camry Michael Goodman rented in Fort Lauderdale--not the Camry designated for him, of course, but one that had been reserved for (ahem) somebody else. And he'd be perfectly willing to turn it in to the cops--he takes considerable trouble to do so--if only they wouldn't make it so hard, and he weren't running out of money (he's an unemployed bookkeeper), and his six-year-old daughter Kelly hadn't come down with a worrisome series of headaches that have sent her into the hospital for ever more dire tests. So when Goodman heads back to New York, it's with two duffel bags full of dynamite H and an enemies list that includes (1) the Florida hoods he inadvertently ripped off; (2) the NYPD; and (3) the DEA. Luckily, he's protected by Kelly, a stray cat, and Carmen Pacelli, a street- savvy prostitut! e who turns up on his doorstep. In other words, Goodman, as his name suggests, is armored with nothing but shining innocence. In particular, he's cast as a blissfully ignorant Road Runner to the canny authorities, whose armory of high-tech entrapment gear (phone taps, room bugs, a formidably equipped mobile unit) and eagerness to break every rule in the book to bust him keep getting torpedoed by their escalating incompetence, as if all that technology had been provided by the same Acme Co. that's been supplying Wile E. Coyote all these years. Readers who root for the good guys will enjoy the special challenge posed by Goodman, too nice to do time for dealing (so he can't be caught) but too principled to make a killing from selling heroin (so he can't get away). Anybody who can overlook the just-for-my-sick-girl plea will enjoy watching Klempner (Felony Murder, 1995) rescue his hero as charmingly as Donald E. Westlake. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reser! ved.

I liked this book because it has a different twist on the thriller idea. The main character acts so believably that I really felt for his predicament. Read it!

Shoot the Moon is perhaps the worst novel I have ever read. It concerns a hapless Everyman who gets in over his head when he discovers a load of pure smack in the spare of his rental car. What follows is even less original. The central premise is this: will this Everyman ("Goodman"...!), who is driven to drug-dealing to pay for his daughter's medical bills (at least it's not a sick-mother-in-need-of-surgery), successfully unload his product on the mean streets of New York? Despite the author's alleged background as a narcotics agent, there isn't a single character or line of dialogue that rings true here. But most annoying is the design of our "hero", a pathetic milquetoast who spends more time with the stray cat he shelters than with his so-called "Angel", his sickly 6-year old daughter who's been dumped with an uncaring Grandma just a few short blocks away. The transliterated "street-jive" of the token hustlers and junkies is ridiculous, not to mention bigoted and insulting. Then there's the myriad of other stock-types who pop-up, then disappear just as quickly. Worst of all, the book is filled with typos and other errors -- a testament to the disinterest which St. Martin's editors and printers have shown toward their own product.

Nice airplane or beach reading, this book is that sort of "witty" crime story featuring "characters" in both the underworld and law enforcement who all stumble their way through a big drug deal, providing lots of slang and "insider" info as they do. Like Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiassen, it's good fun, could make a good movie, but nothing that's going to stick with you. Actually Klempner does a pretty good job juggling the hero and his sidekicks with the NYCPD trying to take him down, the Bronx gangsters who are trying to rip him off, the Cuban gangsters trying to get even, and the mafia he's trying to deal with... In its zest to make everything work out and have all the lose ends tied up, the plot relies a little too much on police bumbling, and a crucial ally who betrays her past, but other than that it's fine.