Black-Friday

Black Friday is the fourth title in the W Publishing Group's Soul Survivor series by Tim LaHaye and Bob DeMoss. LeHaye is best known as co-author of the Left Behind series. DeMoss is a pop culture specialist.

The series belongs on the reading list of every parent, church youth worker, pastor, teacher and teenager.

Jodi and Stan are high school friends in this new teen novel. Jodi has a summer internship with the local paper, and Stan has had a recent, very personal connection to abortion. The plot creates a context in which questions arise for the young heroes as well as for the reader.

Seeking answers, Jodi and Stan go "undercover" to investigate a local clinic, where they discover unsafe, dishonest and sometimes illegal practices. There's probably not a teenager in the U.S. today who doesn't have at least one friend or acquaintance who has had an abortion.

LaHaye and DeMoss hand teenagers the truth in a format they can enjoy; and they offer adults a great tool to use with their teens.

Hunter is a cop's cop. He tells it like it is, but with compassion and humanity. This book made me laugh, it made me think, and it made me see what being a police officer in the real world is really like. I love Hunter's sense of humor and his high ethical and moral standards.

I loved reading this account of the money game in old New York played by the masters Fisk and Gould. The story was gripping and the themes amazingly relevant to today.

This novel was hard to track down, but it was refreshing to read a story that freed up the characters through their dialogue. Unfortunately with the exception of Sheila Bell, mother of the main character Delroy, who is depicted with warm sensitivity, the books teenage female characters are not fully developed, apart from Vivene, who is determined to go to college. Set in contemporary Britain, it vividly tells the story of two black British born youths(of West Indian origin)Delroy Bell and his cousin Peter who are on the verge of leaving school. The books narrative revolves around what will happen to the boys in the outside world. The plot unfolds in a society which also show its racism: hypocrytical teachers attempt to manipulate Delroy into continuing his education, and the cousins are stopped and searched by policemen for no apparent reason. The dialogue is top draw stuff. Norman Smith, the godfather of black-British literature deserves a much wider audience.

Set in the mid to late 1970's and set in my home town of inner-city Birmingham, England, during the rise of the Rastafarian faith amongst the first generation of black British-born youth of West Indian origin; Bad Friday follows the fortunes of Delroy Bell a young black school-leaver and his friends. It tells how each is searching for a future and an identity: to make enough money to live without being bound to the drudgery of the type of work which their parents had to accept in order to survive in Britain. It also tells of the predicament in which Faye, young and pregnant, finds herself - anxious about the possible rejection of her family and the baby's father. I really enjoyed this book from the start to the finish. The book is compelling and exceptionally well written (by the first ever black-British born novelist to be published in Britain, and that's a fact) We will no doubt be hearing more of this writer.

I've always had a fixation on David Goodis, probably the most neglected and greatest crime writer to come out of the 50's. His prose beats Thompson and his characters are gloomier and darker than Chester Himes. Blonde on the Street Corner and The Street of No Return and Black Friday are all awesome character studies of down and out losers beset upon by booze, poverty and the mean streets of Philly. Goodis has no heroes in cheap suits. No Mike Hammer's or Sam Spade's talking sharp and banging their secretaries while they solve the crime minus a few bumps and bruises. It was said that Goodis wrote suicide notes, not crime novels. He was in Holloywood writing scripts for a few years but then went back to Philly and lived out his life pumping out crime novels while living above the garage at his parents house. He was a recluse on the level of JD Salinger and visited whores and walked the grey alleyways and haunted the smoky bars of Philly until he died...a good desolate noir life. Anyways, it is good to pay homage to guys like him -- a forgotten old crime dog who deserves an worthy epitaph in the Canon of American Crime Fiction.

Even if Black Friday isn't Goodis best, it is surely a good introduction to his dark and rich universe. Almost unknown in America before the 60's or 70's, Goodis is one of the best author of what French critics have call "roman noir", and possibly the missing link between Dash Hammett and Ray Chandler, and today's authors like Block and Ellroy. In Black Friday, Goodis write about his own great obsession: bad things happens to good poeple. It's the same story he tells over and over again, in Cassidy's Girl, or in Shoot The Pianist. The heroes is caught in a situation where there is almost no chance to escape. You'll read in two or three hours, praying for the poor guy (even if you'll know from the first page that he will fail). The book is also speaking of euthanasia, in a discreet but sensible way.

I'm usually a fan of this particular genre of books, and Black Friday looked interesting so I bought it. Just not a good effort. The characters lacked any depth and were quite one-dimensional, with drab personalities to boot. The plot didn't capture my imagination. A group of renegade Vietnam Vets whom were distraught by the war (talk about cliched) orchestrate a number of terrorist attacks on Wall Street, resulting in a financial crisis. FBI agent Arch Carroll and an SEC bureaucrat try to solve the mystery, and become romatically linked (another cliche). The book lost all credibility when an FBI higher-up and Arch's mentor turns out to be a well-known terrorist who Arch has been after for years. Totally unbelievable sequence. As if it doesn't get more unbelievable, the US Government tries to hunt down Arch as he finds out more damning information on the terrorist attacks (yes, the US gov't, specifically a "committee of 12" was responsible). That last part by the author was hard to swallow, as such a thing sounds more appropriate in the old Soviet Union. Bottom line, the author tried his best Tom Clancy impersonation and failed miserably.

I'm a huge fan of James Patterson, in fact I can consume one of his books in a weekend -- they keep me that entertained. But I had problems with this book.

The plot, the story itself, is great -- clever as per usual to our Mr. Patterson -- but there were several glaring errors in the book. See if you can spot them:

* Grammatical problems where inanimate objects are personified.

* Plot problems (and this is my chief complaint):

~* The main character is running into Bed-Sty at the end of the book to capture the Green Band leader. The building is in flames, and there are two men on the roof arguing when he shows up. The main character knows the Green Band guy is there, but he doesn't know, at least according to how the story is written, who the second man is. The reader knows who the second man is, because it's written in the previous chapter, but the protagonist does not. However, when the protagonist gets to the roof, he suddenly knows who both men are -- both bad guys he's been after (and the second is supposed to be this great unknown -- no one has ever seen his face sort of deal). Is the protagonist suddenly clairvoyant?

~* Second: The protagonist, in this same scene, is badly beaten up -- he mentions that something's seriously wrong with his body, he can feel it deteriorating, his skull is cracking, etc ... -- and the next thing you know this issue is dropped and he's driving back home to his family to flee with them. Miracle healing?

~* Third: Before the rooftop scene, he goes down in a helicopter crash (upside down no less!), and walks away alive from it -- what next? Will he walk on water? I think to make this scene more credible, there needed to be more details, rather than action to more action.

A book is supposed to be a luxurious distraction -- don't rush to the end to finish it Mr. Patterson, take your time.

There are other plot problems, as well -- generally towards the end of the book -- perhaps Mr. Patterson should reconsider who's editing his books to catch these gaffs, because it detracts from the enjoyment of the story.

However, if you can ignore these problematic plot issues, then the book is, yet again, another Patterson goodie.

If you haven't read any Patterson, and you are considering buying one of his books, try one of his earlier publications with Detective Alex Delaware -- all of those are great reads, it's a shame he let this character drop.

I saw that there was a "new" James Patterson paperback on the best seller list, so I rushed to the book store and purchased it. That night, I put aside the novel by another writer and anxiously opened Black Friday. "Whoa! This sounds familiar", I thought. "Ah, maybe this will be a book related to Black Market, an older book by Patterson. A new story that develops some of the characters we last saw in Black Market." But, alas, it is the same book with a new name and almost new cover. Boy, do I feel dumb and taken in.

Actually, it was a very good book with lots of great action when it was called Black Market. Why did the publishers think they needed to issue a slightly reworked issue under a new name? Now, I see from the write-ups at Amazon that his next "newest" is a rewrite of another old book. I'm sorry if James Patterson has writers block or something, or perhaps he died and I didn't hear about it. But don't fool us with new names for the same old good stuff we've read before.

If you haven't read Black Market, then get Black Friday. It's certainly worth the cover price.