Loitering With Intent [Audiobook] [Audio CD]

After being publicly dumped by his girlfriend at Elaine's in NYC, Stone Barrington, attorney at large for a big firm, is delighted with an assignment that takes him out of the Big Apple. He heads to Key West to obtain the signature of Evan Keating on a document that will enable his father Warren to sell the family business; Evan will receive twenty million. Accompanying Stone to Florida is his friend NYPD Captain Dino Bachetti.

When they arrive at the Conch Republic they have a difficult finding Evan. When Stone finally corners the elusive man, someone hits him on the head knocking out the visiting New Yorker. A beautiful Swedish doctor helps Stone's two heads recover; he is drained and happy when he meets up with Evan again. However Stone learns Evan is getting a tiny percentage of the worth of the business and that his father committed his paternal grandfather to an institution to get him out of the way. A hit on Evan fails, but someone else is killed. Father and son are in danger though dad set events in motion. Stone and Dino protect Evan while hoping to bring the killers out into the open.

Stuart Woods has written another exciting Stone thriller filled with plenty of action on top of more action. Evan is naively innocent so people take advantage of him including the go between the hit men and his father. Putting aside the heady doctor tryst that is an enjoyable and funny sidebar, Stone is at his sardonic best as he keeps LOITERING WITH INTENT focused on Key West.

Harriet Klausner

I'm giving Loitering With Intent 4 stars, but to be quite honest, 3.5 would be more appropriate. I haven't read every Stuart Woods book published, but I've read a few. To be candid, I see slippage in the quality of the stories that he puts together. Don't, get me wrong, technically the books are okay, but the plots are definitely not up to par.

In Loitering With Intent, after being publicly humiliated in NYC, Stone Barrington gets an assignment that takes him to Key West. The only thing required of Stone is to get a signature from Evan Keating allowing his father to sell the family business. You can predict that this chore is going to develop into more than a simple mission. That's what I'm talking about when I mention story development. The story is obvious from the very beginning. There are a number of twists and turns, but no major surprises. Loitering With Intent simply isn't up to the same standard as New York Dead, Dirt, or even L.A. Dead.

Woods has been publishing three novels a year. I realize I don't work in the publishing field, but certainly going from two novels per year to three seems to have hurt the quality of the output.....at least in this readers mind. Perhaps they've killed the goose to get to the gold and spoiled it for all of us.

Wait for the paperback.

Peace always.

Stone Barrington is back and this time he soon will be in Key West. Having just been dumped by his latest romantic interest the fact that Bill Eggers wants him to go track down the son of a client is a great excuse to get out off New York. Warren Keating needs to finds his estranged son, Evan Keating, so that he can sell the family business. A deal worth millions is at stake and Dad and Son are not on speaking terms. Bill Eggers wants Stone to take the legal paperwork down to Key West, find the son, get him to sign off on everything, get the paperwork back to New York. The whole deal has to be done within the week.

It's the dead of winter and Stone's friend and NYPD Detective Dino Bacchetti jumps at the chance to tag along to Key West. Their plan is to find the son quick and get the work done so they can have a few days to just hang out. Getting to Key West is easy enough since Stone has a private plane. Finding the son is easy enough as well. Then, things get weird and difficult.

This is typical Stone Barrington. Plenty of expensive food is consumed, plenty of expensive liquor, Stone gets action with someone of the female persuasion repeatedly in great detail, and there is plenty of mystery and deception to go around. People die, relationships end, and Stone is bummed for a few minutes before something gets him going again. Introspection is a fleeting concern and is thought of much more than birth control or safe sex.

The very limited complexity and subtly in this book reside with the mystery. An apparent twist that Mr. Woods has repeatedly used before and shouldn't ever again use is used in this novel. Readers familiar with his various series won't be surprised when the twist turns out not to be a twist after all. Once that happens, it becomes a completely formulaic read as events play out exactly as expected with no surprise for the reader.

No doubt a NY Times Bestseller at some point, the latest fluff from Stuart Woods is typical super stud Stone Barrington. If anything, this novel is weaker than the last several novels in this series and shows that it is possible to backslide just went things were looking a bit better from a reader standpoint. It does serve as a momentary distraction and a quick way to pass the time between books of substance. Not that there is anything wrong with that, per se, but one does miss the meatier books that came from Woods early in his career. Lately it would appear that Stuart Woods is doing the exact same thing as this title with his career and he has shown that he can be a much better writer than that.

Kevin R. Tipple (copyright) 2009