I think Les's Cleveland detective is a Slovak not a Slovene.
And I think he had started that series along with the Saxson
before he left LA for Shaker Heights.
By the way, do you all know my old buddy Les is an
accomplished lounge pianist? Very suave.
Dennis
----- Original Message ----- From: "James R. Winter" <
winter_writes@earthlink.net> To: <
DetecToday@yahoogroups.com>; "Rara Avis" <
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Sunday, July 31,
2005 8:50 PM Subject: RARA-AVIS: A CARROT FOR THE DONKEY by
Les Roberts
> The third Saxon novel finds the actor-cum-PI going
to Tijuana to retrieve
the missing daughter of a coked-up Hollywood director with
more money than he knows what to do with. Merissa Evering
runs off to Mexico with a sleazewad immigration lawyer named
Martin Swanner. Swanner leaves a trail of pissed-off people
everywhere he goes, especially in Tijauna, where Saxon finds
him dead. He also finds himself a guest of the local
constabulary, who have decidedly un-American views on Miranda
and police brutality. Never the less, Saxon gets out and
finds himself tangling with a local gang lord and a petulant
young bullfighter. His fruitless search for Merissa leads him
to an affair with the irresistable Carmen and into a web of
illegal immigrant smuggling and the worst Tijuana has to
offer. Between this and Kent Harrington's DIA DE LOS MUERTOS,
I have pretty much crossed TJ off my list of places to
visit.
>
> This has got to be the most cynical Les Roberts
novel I've read to date.
In the opening chapters, he constantly slams and zings the
Hollywood system and culture. With a copyright date of 1989,
it's pretty clear this was during his transition from Los
Angeles to Cleveland, where he became better known for the
Milan Jacovich series. And I'm pretty sure Milan would have
held his own much better in TJ than Saxon. But then Jacovich
is a Vietnam vet, an ex-cop, and a long time PI. Saxon is an
actor using the PI gig to support his acting habit.
Naturally, he's going to be a little less durable - and
Roberts certainly beats the snot out of him in this one - and
a lot more vain than his Slovenian rust belt counterpart. He
frets about his waistline and his looks as he's beaten, shot
at, and starved.
>
> The story offers a solid plot, with the Carmen
subplot sounding a little
off until the very end, when Roberts ties up her role rather
nicely. His picture of Tijuana as hell on Earth is what
drives this story, the sheer stink of desperation of the
place, crushing poverty and squalid conditions. I asked
someone who'd been there this weekend if it was really that
bad. She read Harrington's book and said, "Yes. It's that
bad."
>
> Along with DIA, which was written some 12 years
later (? Someone know
when that was originally released?), CARROT also conjured up
images from THE SUN ALSO RISES. Instead of Spain, though, the
bullfights take place in TJ, and the difference between
clean, rich Madrid and depressed Tijuana are striking.
Sometimes, during the bullfight sections, Roberts even lapses
into Hemingway's style, though not with glaringly obvious
riffs on the minimalist gems like "He went to the river. The
river was there." More like the run-on descriptions that
pepper SUN. If you read SUN, it really conjures up the idea
of someone from that book slumming it in Baja.
>
> The is the best of the three Saxon books I've read
so far, and the darkest
book by Roberts I've read to date. (Mind you, there are some
later Jacovich's I haven't gotten to.)
>
> Jim Winter
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been
removed]
>
>
>
>
> RARA-AVIS home page: http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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