Rich Leder
Auteur van Workman's Complication (McCall & Company Book 1) (Volume 1)
Werken van Rich Leder
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- Korte biografie
- Rich Leder has been a working writer for more than two decades. His screen credits include 18 produced television films for CBS, Lifetime, and Hallmark and feature films for Paramount Pictures, Tri-Star Pictures, and Left Bank Films.
He has written three funny novels to be released in 2014: McCall & Company: Workman’s Complication and McCall & Company: Swollen Identity and Juggler, Porn Star, Monkey Wrench.
He has been the lead singer in a Detroit rock band, a restaurateur, a Little League coach, a literacy tutor, a magazine editor, a writing coach, a commercial real estate agent, an indie film director, and a visiting artist for the University of North Carolina Wilmington Film Studies Department, among other things, all of which, it turns out, was grist for the mill. He resides on the North Carolina coast with his awesome wife, Lulu, and is sustained by the visits home of their three college kids.
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I was provided a copy of the book by the author in exchange for my fair review.
I have to admit, you can say a lot of things around these words, but when you tell me a book is “Tarantino-meets-Monty-Python,” you’re going to get my attention. I’m not a huge Tarantino fan, but his method of storytelling is well-known enough and I’ve always been intrigued by it. Monty Python, however, is one of my favorite comedy troupes, so I jumped at the chance to review the book.
However, I’ve been burned by book descriptions before. There’s always a bit of hesitation in the back of my mind.
What worried me more was the description of the plot, such as it is on the back on the book. Convoluted doesn’t begin to describe it. “Here are these two brothers! They have problems. Let me list all the things that might be the root of their problems.” I assumed that the writing of the book would clear up the travails of Dan and Mike Miller, the “talent” agent and the accountant respectively, who get themselves into all this mess.
The trouble is that the book doesn’t clear up anything. We’re introduced to so many characters, and given their place in the plot, and then we keep jumping back and forth between them as we try to keep track of the overarching plot. The problem with this is that we’re never really given a clear picture of anyone–and we’re expected to keep track of all of these people before we know them. Changing character by chapter isn’t a new or different tactic; we’ve seen it all over the place. (I’ll use Song of Ice and Fire as my comparison.) In ASoIaF, the plot lines are connected, but distantly. We don’t directly need to know what’s happening in King’s Landing to understand what’s happening on the Wall. They’ll all connect, but it’s not absolutely necessary to keep it all perfectly in your head. By the time you need to know it all, you’ll be familiar with it.
In this one, every character is intricately tied to the others, and they all directly connect to each other. With this many characters, you need more to tie these people to, and we don’t get them. It took me most of the book to finally keep who all the characters were straight. It shouldn’t take me half the book to keep the protagonists apart. Is this just me? Maybe.
There also aren’t really any sympathetic characters. Harvey and Omar are so dislikable they move beyond characters you love to hate. Jenny is completely incomprehensible (and by the end of the book, you know she’s remaining a bit of a mystery). Judd is a lunatic, Greenburg is…something else entirely. It’s not hard to know who to cheer for–the bad guys are VERY obvious about their badness–but actually wanting to cheer for the good guys is the problem.
The writing is passable though very rough at times (if I never see the word “supinated” again, it’ll be too soon), and sentences like “He was X, unless he was not-X.” belong in Writing 101 classes, not published books. Some of this I think is the tone of the humor Leder was trying to convey, and I get that. I see what he’s trying to do, but like the two comedians-of-sorts in the book, I think he ends up trying too hard and it just comes across as overbearingly fake. Python’s humor works, even in its darker skits, because it’s just that–skits. They don’t need to carry it over 377 pages. Harvey and Omar are funny once, maybe twice–after that, they’re annoying and repetitive.
Overall, I think that there’s a good idea trapped in here somewhere, but it became way too cluttered along the way to really be told well. And while I agree that a good story (or joke) often leaves a few unresolved ends, you need to tie up enough of the pertinent ones to give a satisfying ending. If you’re looking for something to kill some time with, maybe on a plane or something, it’s not a bad read. You just may want a scorecard to keep track of what’s happening.
Rating: *** (Worth a Look, bordering on **)… (meer)
I have to admit, you can say a lot of things around these words, but when you tell me a book is “Tarantino-meets-Monty-Python,” you’re going to get my attention. I’m not a huge Tarantino fan, but his method of storytelling is well-known enough and I’ve always been intrigued by it. Monty Python, however, is one of my favorite comedy troupes, so I jumped at the chance to review the book.
However, I’ve been burned by book descriptions before. There’s always a bit of hesitation in the back of my mind.
What worried me more was the description of the plot, such as it is on the back on the book. Convoluted doesn’t begin to describe it. “Here are these two brothers! They have problems. Let me list all the things that might be the root of their problems.” I assumed that the writing of the book would clear up the travails of Dan and Mike Miller, the “talent” agent and the accountant respectively, who get themselves into all this mess.
The trouble is that the book doesn’t clear up anything. We’re introduced to so many characters, and given their place in the plot, and then we keep jumping back and forth between them as we try to keep track of the overarching plot. The problem with this is that we’re never really given a clear picture of anyone–and we’re expected to keep track of all of these people before we know them. Changing character by chapter isn’t a new or different tactic; we’ve seen it all over the place. (I’ll use Song of Ice and Fire as my comparison.) In ASoIaF, the plot lines are connected, but distantly. We don’t directly need to know what’s happening in King’s Landing to understand what’s happening on the Wall. They’ll all connect, but it’s not absolutely necessary to keep it all perfectly in your head. By the time you need to know it all, you’ll be familiar with it.
In this one, every character is intricately tied to the others, and they all directly connect to each other. With this many characters, you need more to tie these people to, and we don’t get them. It took me most of the book to finally keep who all the characters were straight. It shouldn’t take me half the book to keep the protagonists apart. Is this just me? Maybe.
There also aren’t really any sympathetic characters. Harvey and Omar are so dislikable they move beyond characters you love to hate. Jenny is completely incomprehensible (and by the end of the book, you know she’s remaining a bit of a mystery). Judd is a lunatic, Greenburg is…something else entirely. It’s not hard to know who to cheer for–the bad guys are VERY obvious about their badness–but actually wanting to cheer for the good guys is the problem.
The writing is passable though very rough at times (if I never see the word “supinated” again, it’ll be too soon), and sentences like “He was X, unless he was not-X.” belong in Writing 101 classes, not published books. Some of this I think is the tone of the humor Leder was trying to convey, and I get that. I see what he’s trying to do, but like the two comedians-of-sorts in the book, I think he ends up trying too hard and it just comes across as overbearingly fake. Python’s humor works, even in its darker skits, because it’s just that–skits. They don’t need to carry it over 377 pages. Harvey and Omar are funny once, maybe twice–after that, they’re annoying and repetitive.
Overall, I think that there’s a good idea trapped in here somewhere, but it became way too cluttered along the way to really be told well. And while I agree that a good story (or joke) often leaves a few unresolved ends, you need to tie up enough of the pertinent ones to give a satisfying ending. If you’re looking for something to kill some time with, maybe on a plane or something, it’s not a bad read. You just may want a scorecard to keep track of what’s happening.
Rating: *** (Worth a Look, bordering on **)… (meer)
When Kate McCall’s father was murdered, she inherited his Private Detective business.
Understand that Kate is not a private detective; she is a forty-five year old actress employed in a (very) far off Broadway theatrical company. However, now that she can think of herself as a private detective, she makes it her business to find the killer who murdered her father; assisted by a small select group of wildly eccentric and sometimes bat-shit crazy actors and friends.
Kate’s must sandwich her investigations around her commitment to a production of a musical Psychedelic Sunday being performed by her theatre company at a theatre located in an old bra manufacturing facility known as the D-Cup. While the performances usually appeal to patrons as oddball as the actors, they provide Kate with acting practice and costumes useable in her investigations. More importantly, Kate loves acting; if it wasn’t for her father’s murder, she wouldn’t be a private eye at all.
Against that backdrop, Kate is cast into two simultaneous investigations; one, a request to investigate suspected embezzlement at a bar owned by a (to her) drop dead gorgeous former baseball player named Steve Stark, and two, by the promised pending murder of one of the city’s top divorce attorneys. Out of her league? Detective Logan of the NYPD knows she is; especially since the killer contacted Kate by text inviting her to the murder. Logan rants about Kate interfering with police business, but secretly admires her courage and fears for her safety.
Soon, Kate is embroiled in a murder plot involving four high profile attorneys, two couples (she thinks) and a killer. She has no idea who hired the killer or who will be the next victim. At the same time, she must take on one of New York’s most embedded bookies to identify the correct embezzler from among the employees at Steve Stark’s sports bar. Her best investigative skills and cunning never prepare her for the identity of the real embezzler. But, beyond embezzlement, she has developed feelings and invested them in Stark. But does Stark feel the same about Kate?
Emboozlement is a full blown crime/action detective novel written by one of the masters of satire and dry straight-faced humor. The author has created a cast of theatrical misfits whose eccentricities fit neatly into the story. Each character is developed sufficiently to play his or her role in a jig-saw puzzle of humorous and sometimes heartbreaking twists. While I would not call Emboozlement rip-roaringly humorous, it is written in a manner that kept a smile on my face even when reading at 1:00 AM.
This is a book that should be loved by any readers with a love of crime/action detective stories, or anyone else who appreciates tongue-in-cheek humor.… (meer)
Understand that Kate is not a private detective; she is a forty-five year old actress employed in a (very) far off Broadway theatrical company. However, now that she can think of herself as a private detective, she makes it her business to find the killer who murdered her father; assisted by a small select group of wildly eccentric and sometimes bat-shit crazy actors and friends.
Kate’s must sandwich her investigations around her commitment to a production of a musical Psychedelic Sunday being performed by her theatre company at a theatre located in an old bra manufacturing facility known as the D-Cup. While the performances usually appeal to patrons as oddball as the actors, they provide Kate with acting practice and costumes useable in her investigations. More importantly, Kate loves acting; if it wasn’t for her father’s murder, she wouldn’t be a private eye at all.
Against that backdrop, Kate is cast into two simultaneous investigations; one, a request to investigate suspected embezzlement at a bar owned by a (to her) drop dead gorgeous former baseball player named Steve Stark, and two, by the promised pending murder of one of the city’s top divorce attorneys. Out of her league? Detective Logan of the NYPD knows she is; especially since the killer contacted Kate by text inviting her to the murder. Logan rants about Kate interfering with police business, but secretly admires her courage and fears for her safety.
Soon, Kate is embroiled in a murder plot involving four high profile attorneys, two couples (she thinks) and a killer. She has no idea who hired the killer or who will be the next victim. At the same time, she must take on one of New York’s most embedded bookies to identify the correct embezzler from among the employees at Steve Stark’s sports bar. Her best investigative skills and cunning never prepare her for the identity of the real embezzler. But, beyond embezzlement, she has developed feelings and invested them in Stark. But does Stark feel the same about Kate?
Emboozlement is a full blown crime/action detective novel written by one of the masters of satire and dry straight-faced humor. The author has created a cast of theatrical misfits whose eccentricities fit neatly into the story. Each character is developed sufficiently to play his or her role in a jig-saw puzzle of humorous and sometimes heartbreaking twists. While I would not call Emboozlement rip-roaringly humorous, it is written in a manner that kept a smile on my face even when reading at 1:00 AM.
This is a book that should be loved by any readers with a love of crime/action detective stories, or anyone else who appreciates tongue-in-cheek humor.… (meer)
Dare I say that Kate McCall is an actress; not a ‘real’ private investigator at all?
McCall, who held a PI license only because she helped her father, Jimmy, at times with his PI business, found herself in possession of that business after her father’s bizarre murder. Feeling the need to avenge Jimmy and angry at his assassin, she is using her acting abilities and her PI business to find Jimmy’s killer. Her decidedly odd group of friends and neighbors from her building and her theater company help her in their escape from a humdrum existence, make a few bucks , and occasionally, out of true concern for Kate’s well-being.
Now, she is facing her second case as a private investigator; one that will totally tax her skills of observation, manipulation and her ability to think logically…how can she tell two perfectly identical twins apart when both are free spirits and have unlimited resources at their disposal? What happens when one twin wants the other dead, McCall has no idea which twin hired her, and the twins both play reversible rolls to the hilt. The twin’s father is ninety-two, ill and subject to die leaving a 10 billion dollar estate divided between the twins and both of them are determined the other will have none of it.
Into this mix, throw a business executive murdered in same manner as Jimmy leading McCall in a second direction chasing the killer. Complicate the murder with a pugnacious business partner everyone loves to hate as the prime murder conspiracy suspect, a second business partner whom no one suspects but who has a foreign agenda of his own, a pissed off Manhattan Assistant District Attorney who happens to be McCall’s son, a pissed off NYPD detective who wants to solve cases and keep McCall alive at the same time, and a crooked Weehawken, NJ, homicide detective and all hell breaks loose in the Bronx.
Swollen Identity is a rousing romp and entertaining read for mystery action readers of any age. McCall is a complex character and in Swollen Identity she is shown to be much more complicated than originally suspected…or at least even more confused. Fu, her friend and ex-Chinese mob assassin, acquires a new parrot, Jerusalem Joe; Jerusalem Joe is McCall’s payment to him for saving her life five times. Fu, however, still speaks in three to five word sentences. The reader is introduced to Warren’s ten-year old Toyota Corollas each of which Warren has lovingly named, and to Al as the ruthless manager of his illegal car rental company. They are just one more cog in the gear of oddball personalities that make up McCall’s associates and ensure that she survives her PI business.
In all, a fun and challenging (for McCall) plot neatly tied up in dry humor and presented through unlikely scenarios guaranteed to make it a fun read.… (meer)
McCall, who held a PI license only because she helped her father, Jimmy, at times with his PI business, found herself in possession of that business after her father’s bizarre murder. Feeling the need to avenge Jimmy and angry at his assassin, she is using her acting abilities and her PI business to find Jimmy’s killer. Her decidedly odd group of friends and neighbors from her building and her theater company help her in their escape from a humdrum existence, make a few bucks , and occasionally, out of true concern for Kate’s well-being.
Now, she is facing her second case as a private investigator; one that will totally tax her skills of observation, manipulation and her ability to think logically…how can she tell two perfectly identical twins apart when both are free spirits and have unlimited resources at their disposal? What happens when one twin wants the other dead, McCall has no idea which twin hired her, and the twins both play reversible rolls to the hilt. The twin’s father is ninety-two, ill and subject to die leaving a 10 billion dollar estate divided between the twins and both of them are determined the other will have none of it.
Into this mix, throw a business executive murdered in same manner as Jimmy leading McCall in a second direction chasing the killer. Complicate the murder with a pugnacious business partner everyone loves to hate as the prime murder conspiracy suspect, a second business partner whom no one suspects but who has a foreign agenda of his own, a pissed off Manhattan Assistant District Attorney who happens to be McCall’s son, a pissed off NYPD detective who wants to solve cases and keep McCall alive at the same time, and a crooked Weehawken, NJ, homicide detective and all hell breaks loose in the Bronx.
Swollen Identity is a rousing romp and entertaining read for mystery action readers of any age. McCall is a complex character and in Swollen Identity she is shown to be much more complicated than originally suspected…or at least even more confused. Fu, her friend and ex-Chinese mob assassin, acquires a new parrot, Jerusalem Joe; Jerusalem Joe is McCall’s payment to him for saving her life five times. Fu, however, still speaks in three to five word sentences. The reader is introduced to Warren’s ten-year old Toyota Corollas each of which Warren has lovingly named, and to Al as the ruthless manager of his illegal car rental company. They are just one more cog in the gear of oddball personalities that make up McCall’s associates and ensure that she survives her PI business.
In all, a fun and challenging (for McCall) plot neatly tied up in dry humor and presented through unlikely scenarios guaranteed to make it a fun read.… (meer)
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- 6
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- 15
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- #708,120
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- 4.6
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- 8
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As expected, Rich Leder has delivered a fascinatingly readable dark humor novel full of bizarre characters, just believable enough to make readers think they could be real. Certainly, truth is stranger than fiction. Having said that, the plot is implausible; or is it? Stranger things have happened. The Fountain of Youth doesn’t exist, pharmaceutically or otherwise, but the desire is part of human nature. Certainly, cannibalism exists just as surely as desperate situations exist, as surely as crooked parole officers exist and investors are played against each other. The residents of Copa can be forgiven for their desire for youth. Johnny can be forgiven for his desire to barbeque Ben Boston on a spit, and Carrie can be forgiven for her desire to reclaim her aging mother’s life. Sikorski, Tino (the Cleaner), Wolf (the Fixer), and Ben Boston are unforgivable.
Without a doubt, Cooking for Cannibals, delivers a bizarre, far-fetched, darkly humorous motorcycle ride into Los Angeles madness. It is a tongue-in-cheek reading pleasure for any lover of dark comedy, so grab a copy, climb onto Johnny Fairfax’s Harley-Davidson and read off into the sunset! 5- Stars.
An advanced copy of this book was provided free by the author in hopes of receiving an honest review. The above review represents my honest opinion of the book.… (meer)