Page 11 - The Shores of Jupiter - November '19

The Shores, Page 11
Book Review

A Better Place he started as a one-man operation and built into a multimillion The one high school
dollar international seafood giant. classmate who hated Jonas
By Nils A. Shapiro But as much as I enjoyed those earlier three books, nothing was Duke Hannigan, whose
After three earlier prepared me for A Better Place. With this new work – an epic cattle ranching family was
published books of that spans the years from 1918 to 1972 and three wars, and covers the wealthiest in North Platte.
successful, highly praised four generations of two families – Steven Forman has created Jealous of the attention given
crime fiction, Broken an emotionally involving world of sharply drawn, memorable to Jonas, he vowed to be
Sound Club member Steven characters who will stay with you long after you have turned the an enemy for as long as he
Forman’s brilliant new last page, and likely left tear stains on a few of them. lived.
epic saga elevates him to a The book opens on July 15, 1918, in the German trenches of A Better Place is the story
place among America’s best World War One, where an American soldier – 22 years old, tall of Jonas and Duke and their
novelists. (6 feet, 6 inches), powerfully built – especially trained for his descendants: a saga that
In recent years I have had missions, “had already killed twice, and the night was young ranges from the trenches of
the pleasure of reading, and ... He had killed over a hundred men in less than a year on the World War One to the early
reviewing in this column, three books that I was confident Western Front – a 400-mile stretch of trenches zigzagging shadowy days of the CIA in
the readers would find especially interesting and rewarding: through France, Belgium, and the Swiss border. His country the Middle East – a story of heroism and fear, love and betrayal,
Boca Knights, Boca Mournings and Boca Daze are all crime had given him a Silver Star for killing, but he took no pride in family closeness and rejection, patriotism and treason, honesty
novels involving the adventures of a unique character – Eddie it. In a war of attrition, he killed only to end the killing.” and criminality, innocence and lust, the meaning of commitment,
Perlmutter, an ex-Boston detective who retires to Boca Raton The Germans called him “the Ghost, le fantome, das sacrifice, the honor of keeping one’s word, and the importance
and, as a “private eye” here, finds as many cases to solve in our Gespenst.” And everyone in their trenches feared seeing of making the world a better place.
fair city as he faced up north! What makes these stories even his face. Apart from the fact that the story is fascinating enough to
more fun is that the action takes place on the specific streets and His real name was Jonas Hensen, a farm boy from North have had me virtually stuck to my chair for 100 pages at a time,
locales so familiar to all of us. Platte, Neb. Back home they called him “the Golden Boy” not wanting to stop before finding out what was going to happen
The author, Steven M. Forman, is a member of Broken because of his size and strength that made him the high next, two things in particular impress me about this book. First,
Sound Club, a man of many talents, who is a graduate of the school’s star athlete, with good looks, intelligence and overall it is clear that Steve Forman did substantial research about the
University of Massachusetts and the founder of a company that pleasantness. specific historical dates around which some of the story’s events
occur. But most importantly – as is true of only the best writers
– the carefully planned, complex way in which so many of the
characters are introduced into this story is like the choreography
of a fine ballet. There is no apparent connection between one
character to another, who may be literally worlds apart ... until
there is ... and each relationship becomes a life-changing one!
There are more imaginative twists and turns in this novel
than you could possibly wish for. But while, as a reviewer, I feel
some responsibility to provide a fuller description of the story
line, each one of them is so unexpected, and so interesting, that
any attempt at a hint here would be a “spoiler.” What I can say
is that there is too much here to ever fit within a motion picture
... but it would make a magnificent television mini-series.
Of course, in most cases the book is better than the on-screen
version, so I suggest you start with the original ... now.
A Better Place is not yet available in bookstores. It can be
ordered from Amazon.com in paperback or as an e-book.

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