I just finished it the other day. Very enjoyable book. It has some things in common with his others like "California Fire & Life" in that it has a very deliberate pace, putting lots of balls in motion, until the last 50 pages or so when it accelerates rapidly, and you think 'no way he's gonna make this all tie together' and then he does. This one's different though, in the setting & tone. It's considerably less brutal in its violence, has a breeziness to the narrative voice, and in a lot of ways it's just an excuse for a love-letter to New York in the 50s.
I found it very satisfying and vastly entertaining. I usually don't go for conspiracy-minded books with spy stuff and historical characters. But I'll make an exception here. He changes the characters based on JFK and Kerouac etc. just enough, and humanizes them too, so that they really work as characters in the story.
Now on to Kent Anderson's "Night Dogs" which I just found at my local library. I'm looking forward to it.
Tom Armstrong
--- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Bill Crider <macavityabc@...> wrote:
>
> Don Winslow's ISLE OF JOY was published in the U. S. as A WINTER SPY as by
> MacDonald Lloyd. My review is here: *http://tinyurl.com/d3gxo9
>
> Bill Crider
> *
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
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