The Way of All Fish: A Novel Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00HQ3K5YA | Format: EPUB
The Way of All Fish: A Novel Description
Martha Grimes "goes entertainingly wonky with this sequel to her best-selling foul matter...delivering insider-publishing stuff with acidulous wit". (Library Journal)
In Grimes's new sendup of a world she knows very well, Candy and Karl, hit men with a difference - they have scruples - once again venture into the murky Manhattan publishing scene. This time they come to the aid of a writer who is being sued by her unscrupulous literary agent, L. Bass Hess, a man determined to get a 15 percent commission for a book he didn't sell.
The contract killers join forces with publishing mogul Bobby Mackenzie and mega-best-selling writer Paul Giverney to rid the mean streets of Hess, not by shooting him, but by driving him crazy. They are helped by other characters from Foul Matter and a crew of new colorful personalities, including an out-of-work Vegas magician, an alligator wrangler, a glamorous Malaysian con lady, and Hess' aunt in Everglades City, who has undergone a wildly successful sex change.
This wickedly funny sequel to Grimes's best-selling novel Foul Matter is another character-driven "satire of the venal, not to say murderous, practices of the New York publishing industry" (The New York Times Book Review).
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 9 hours and 33 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: January 7, 2014
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00HQ3K5YA
Beware the suspense writer with a cause. Multimillionaire bestselling author Paul Giverney, Martha Grimes’s latest antihero introduced in FOUL MATTER, is on the warpath. His recent triumph over the venal agents and murder-for-hire publishers has whetted his appetite for victory as he takes on an infamously greedy literary agent.
Sweet, innocent damsel Cindy Sella, with one moderately successful novel under her belt, is suffering from writer’s block caused by a former agent’s relentless legal pursuit of an unearned commission. She’s nursing her plight in a popular Manhattan bar when a gangland shooting takes out an aquarium filled with tropical fish, and she makes a heroic dive to save a rare clownfish. No humans (or presumably piscine lives) are lost, but she draws the attention of Karl and Candy, Grimes’s hitmen with scruples, when they arrive in time to chase off the gangsters.
Sentimental hitman Candy, an unlikely aficionado of rare fish, and Karl, just as unlikely a reader of Proust (among other esoteric literati), hear of their fish-saving young maiden’s plight and come gallantly to the rescue. They announce that this contract is pro bono (their fee is usually $1 million for a hit), and they will take out the dastardly L. Bass Hess, but only if he can’t be dispensed without bloodshed. That’s where Paul Giverney comes in. Karl and Candy pay him a visit after working with him to successfully stop a hit on an unsuspecting author in FOUL MATTER. Because suspense writers have famously fiendish minds, who else but an evil genius like Giverney could cook up a plot to drive Hess crazy? With Giverney’s vast bank account, he can produce a gaslighting escapade that moves from Central Park to the Everglades to a Malaysian tropical fish-smuggling team.
Let me start off by saying Martha Grimes is my favorite author. The End of the Pier, and the Hotel Paradise series are brilliant. I loved The Train Now Departing so much (both novellas in it, but particularly the one it's named for) I didn't reread it for years! I know that sounds backwards, but I felt it was so stunningly good I just couldn't.
So, that said... Foul Matter wasn't my favorite. And The Way of All Fish is really... well, I hate to say it about my favorite author... not very good. There, I said it. Is it the subject matter? I don't think so. Is it the writing. I am not so sure there. I do know that she can write better, and she can write in different "voices" as it were. I mean, her Richard Jury novels are written in a much different way than the Emma Graham series.
But, I could only read one half before I just couldn't take it any longer. Convoluted plots with too many characters hard to keep straight.
The one thing I couldn't get past in The Way of All Fish didn't even have to do with the book, the story, the writing. It was the fish. After the shooting at the restaurant I kept waiting to get the part where the fish die. They didn't in the restaurant when they were put in water glasses, filled with water from the waiter's stations. They didn't the next day, or days later, when taken home (or bought in baggies of water) and placed in larger bowls, or tanks. Then coral is added and more fish. Ms. Grimes didn't seem to do a bit of research before throwing fish into glasses and tanks. These are saltwater fish! They cannot survive in a glassful of drinking water! Coral? Saltwater. But, coral seems to be just dropped in the bowls, glasses, tanks, etc. Then, they discuss arowana, which is a freshwater fish!
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