Slashback: A Jake Lassiter Novel [Hardcover]

Paul Levine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1995

Jake Lassiter's seemingly unrelated cases--the theft of a million-plus dollars from an elderly Russian immigrant and the murder of lawyer-turned-drug smuggler Berto Zaldivar--become linked by Keaka Kealia, a ruthless windsurfing pro. 50,000 first printing. $20,000 ad/promo. Tour.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Miami lawyer Jake Lassiter (Mortal Sin), former football pro, is bothered that his job is generally "to excuse, to deny, and to obfuscate." When an octogenarian millionaire pal is robbed of nearly two million dollars' worth of bearer-bond coupons, though, the ensuing danger and excitement are more than enough to get Jake's mind off his troubles. Before Jake can do much probing into the theft, he's caught up in a surf-sailing race to the Bahamas. An old acquaintance from Hawaii, Keaka Kealia, is the odds-on favorite. He's also, unknown to Jake, up to his massive shoulders in drug-running. Distracted by Keaka's stunningly beautiful lover, Lila, Jake ignores Keaka's growing weirdness; but after a night with Lila, he realizes that Keaka is in possession of the stolen coupons. Some grisly murders lead to a couple of spectacular gory climaxes, after which Jake enters into a temporary truce with the remaining villain. Jake's misreading of other people's character is tough to swallow, and the Hawaiian settings prove disappointingly pallid, but Levine handles his noir elements-especially his serpentine villains-with panache (though at times with too much of an Elmore Leonard-like spin). Though not Jake's finest, overall this outing should satisfy his fans.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Series lawyer Jake Lassiter, a former linebacker for the Miami Dolphins, tackles a nasty case involving drugs and professional windsurfers. The publication date coincides with the premiere of Lassiter, NBC's made-for-TV movie based on the series.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 350 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow & Co; 1st edition (January 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688127185
• ISBN-13: 978-0688127183
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,349,404 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

PAUL LEVINE worked as a newspaper reporter, a law professor and a trial lawyer before becoming a full-time novelist. Obviously, he cannot hold a job. Paul claims that writing fiction comes naturally: he told whoppers for many years in his legal briefs. His books have been translated into 23 languages, none of which he can read.

He has won the John D. MacDonald fiction award and has been nominated for an Edgar, a Macavity, the International Thriller Writers Award, and the James Thurber Humor Prize.

What's new? Now on Amazon Kindle at $2.99: The 20th Anniversary edition of "To Speak for the Dead," the first of the bestselling Jake Lassiter novels. All author proceeds of the novel are pledged to the Four Diamonds Fund, which supports cancer treatment and research at Penn State Hershey Children's Hospital.

Writing in USA TODAY, Larry King called the Lassiter series, "Mystery writing at its very, very best."

To Speak for the Dead
Night Vision
False Dawn
Mortal Sin
Riptide
Fool Me Twice
Flesh & Bones

A Miami Dolphins linebacker turned hard-nosed lawyer, Lassiter has been described by Booklist as "one of the most entertaining series characters in contemporary crime fiction" and by The Miami Herald as having "a lot more charisma than Perry Mason ever did."

Also now available on Kindle, "Impact," a legal thriller set at the Supreme Court; "Ballistic," in which a homegrown terrorist group takes over a missile silo in Wyoming; and "The Road to Hell," four original short stories.

Paul's other work includes the "Solomon and Lord" series, featuring mismatched Miami lawyers Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord:

Solomon vs. Lord
The Deep Blue Alibi
Kill All the Lawyers
Trial & Error

"Fans of Carl Hiaasen and Dave Barry will enjoy this humorous Florida crime romp," Publishers Weekly wrote of "Solomon vs. Lord."

Paul also wrote "Illegal," a thriller set in the world of human trafficking on the Mexican border. His next novel will be "Lassiter," due in hardcover from Bantam in September 2011.

Paul wrote 20 episodes of the TV series JAG, which gave him an opportunity to steer a nuclear submarine and land on the deck of an aircraft carrier, all without endangering national security. He is a graduate of Penn State University where he majored in journalism and the University of Miami Law School where he majored in the swimming pool. He passed the Florida Bar exam in his first try in what he suspects was a computer glitch.

He was a trial lawyer with the mammoth international law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, where he did not even pretend to know all his partners' names. He specialized in "complex litigation," cases so abstruse that even lawyers charging 500 bucks an hour didn't fully understand them. He tried hundreds of cases and handled appeals at every level, including the Supreme Court. Along the way, he filed expense accounts nearly as creative as his legal briefs.

Paul says he enjoys writing more than lawyering because he no longer keeps time sheets and gets to work in his underwear. He lives in the hills of Southern California, which he claims are populated by rattlesnakes and coyotes, and those are just the Hollywood agents.

More info at http:www.paul-levine.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Ho'oheno Li'a, July 26, 2005

By 

J. H. Minde "Everything I need is right here" (Boca Raton, Florida and Brooklyn, New York) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Slashback: A Lassiter Novel (Paperback)

SLASHBACK is the fifth published of the so-far seven Jake Lassiter novels. Although author Paul Levine discredits it as "the worst," saying it needed "major surgery" and "died on the table," SLASHBACK is better than its creator wants to admit.

The earliest written of the Lassiter series of books, SLASHBACK is very different stylistically from the other Lassiter novels. Written in the third person (not the usual first person narrative style favored by Levine/Lassiter), the reader sees Jake Lassiter from the outside: A more dour, short-tempered, and professionally competent man than emerges in the rest of the series.

SLASHBACK has most of the faults and foibles of any first novel. It's clear that Levine was not familiar with Jake Lassiter's character when SLASHBACK was begun. The reader might wish that more of the getting-acquainted process had taken place even before paper met platen, but it's obvious that SLASHBACK evolved in the telling.

The unneeded attempt to fit SLASHBACK chronologically into the series as "Lassiter Number Five" leaves some very obvious surgical scars. A simple author's note might have been redemption for a multitude of minor sins.

Also, like most first works, SLASHBACK is rather overwritten and suffers from the cardinal flaw of new writers (one which Levine parodies throughout the series): never to use one word when three will do.

Levine sometimes ignores the story and goes off on lyrical tangents, even quoting the Hawaiian love poem "Ho'oheno Li'a" ("To Cherish Li'a") in full in the original, a forgivable bit of authorial overzealousness.

The story carries itself well despite the distractions. Sam Kazdoy, a Czarist-era Russian-Jewish immigrant who runs an Eisenstein movie house for his contemporaries in Miami Beach, takes up with Violet Belfry, a sometime waitress and sometime hooker, who soon discovers that Kazdoy keeps millions of dollars in bonds in his office.

Levine's affectionate depiction of Kazdoy is an homage to the 'green' East European-Jewish immigrants of an earlier age, only a very few of whom remain today among the inhabitants of now-trendy South Beach. Levine obviously learned his Yiddish at his grandparents' knees, and his---or Kazdoy's---culinary prejudice for "a bagel mit a schmeer" even manages to affect the supposedly gentile Lassiter.

Seeing nothing but dollar signs where before there was a kindly old man, Violet quickly enlists her sometime boyfriend Harry Marlin to break into Kazdoy's office and steal the bonds. But Harry and Violet together couldn't burgle a paper bag, and after going back twice to get it right, are stuck, cluelessly, with the bonds.

Enter Keaka Kealia, World Champion sailboarder from Hawaii, who has come to Miami for a race, and tells the confused pair that he can cash the bonds at "The Great Bahama Bank." Since they have no other options they entrust the bonds to Keaka, who promptly sails off into the sunset with them.

Harry follows Keaka back to Hawaii, and so does Jake, in an attempt to recover the bonds for Kazdoy. Jake soon meets Lila Summers, Keaka's female counterpart and occasional lover. As it turns out, the bonds, like the Hawaiian Islands themselves, are only the visible part of something that goes much deeper.

Despite its' flaws, SLASHBACK is an entertaining light read well worth the time and effort.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars entertaining, October 13, 2010

By 

Claudette Cleveland "author "Beneath and ... (AZ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Slashback: A Lassiter Novel (Paperback)

A mystery set around wind sailing. Jack Lassiter, trial lawyer and wind sailor, finds himself deeply involved in a mystery of theft, murder and drug smuggling. The lafemme fatal character has him buffaloed when he tries to solve the murder of a long time friend and puts his own life in jeopardy as a result.
Jack finds himself slightly bored with his present work of representing in court corporate grievances. This is an action filled novel with just the right amount of humor that is always present in life if one looks. Very entertaining.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An average legal thriller..., November 30, 2006

By 

DWD "DWD's Reviews" (Indianapolis, IN) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Slashback (Bookcassette(r) Edition) (Audio Cassette)

...although it is quite short on the legal and long on the thriller.

Attornty Jake Lassiter is on the trail of some missing bonds, stolen from an elderly client who has been duped by his young girlfriend. The search for the bonds leads Lassiter on a wild chase from Miami to the Bahamas and ultimately to Hawaii.

I listened to this as an audiobook and found that it was an okay listen, it was not a great one. The reader, Robert Lawrence did an okay job, but neither he nor the book got me terribly enthused. It's not a bad book, but it sure isn't a great one either.

I give this one a grade of C.