Slashback: A Jake Lassiter Novel [Hardcover]

SLASHBACK is the fifth published of the so-far seven Jake Lassiter novels. Although author Paul Levine discredits it as "the worst," saying it needed "major surgery" and "died on the table," SLASHBACK is better than its creator wants to admit.

The earliest written of the Lassiter series of books, SLASHBACK is very different stylistically from the other Lassiter novels. Written in the third person (not the usual first person narrative style favored by Levine/Lassiter), the reader sees Jake Lassiter from the outside: A more dour, short-tempered, and professionally competent man than emerges in the rest of the series.

SLASHBACK has most of the faults and foibles of any first novel. It's clear that Levine was not familiar with Jake Lassiter's character when SLASHBACK was begun. The reader might wish that more of the getting-acquainted process had taken place even before paper met platen, but it's obvious that SLASHBACK evolved in the telling.

The unneeded attempt to fit SLASHBACK chronologically into the series as "Lassiter Number Five" leaves some very obvious surgical scars. A simple author's note might have been redemption for a multitude of minor sins.

Also, like most first works, SLASHBACK is rather overwritten and suffers from the cardinal flaw of new writers (one which Levine parodies throughout the series): never to use one word when three will do.

Levine sometimes ignores the story and goes off on lyrical tangents, even quoting the Hawaiian love poem "Ho'oheno Li'a" ("To Cherish Li'a") in full in the original, a forgivable bit of authorial overzealousness.

The story carries itself well despite the distractions. Sam Kazdoy, a Czarist-era Russian-Jewish immigrant who runs an Eisenstein movie house for his contemporaries in Miami Beach, takes up with Violet Belfry, a sometime waitress and sometime hooker, who soon discovers that Kazdoy keeps millions of dollars in bonds in his office.

Levine's affectionate depiction of Kazdoy is an homage to the 'green' East European-Jewish immigrants of an earlier age, only a very few of whom remain today among the inhabitants of now-trendy South Beach. Levine obviously learned his Yiddish at his grandparents' knees, and his---or Kazdoy's---culinary prejudice for "a bagel mit a schmeer" even manages to affect the supposedly gentile Lassiter.

Seeing nothing but dollar signs where before there was a kindly old man, Violet quickly enlists her sometime boyfriend Harry Marlin to break into Kazdoy's office and steal the bonds. But Harry and Violet together couldn't burgle a paper bag, and after going back twice to get it right, are stuck, cluelessly, with the bonds.

Enter Keaka Kealia, World Champion sailboarder from Hawaii, who has come to Miami for a race, and tells the confused pair that he can cash the bonds at "The Great Bahama Bank." Since they have no other options they entrust the bonds to Keaka, who promptly sails off into the sunset with them.

Harry follows Keaka back to Hawaii, and so does Jake, in an attempt to recover the bonds for Kazdoy. Jake soon meets Lila Summers, Keaka's female counterpart and occasional lover. As it turns out, the bonds, like the Hawaiian Islands themselves, are only the visible part of something that goes much deeper.

Despite its' flaws, SLASHBACK is an entertaining light read well worth the time and effort.

A mystery set around wind sailing. Jack Lassiter, trial lawyer and wind sailor, finds himself deeply involved in a mystery of theft, murder and drug smuggling. The lafemme fatal character has him buffaloed when he tries to solve the murder of a long time friend and puts his own life in jeopardy as a result.
Jack finds himself slightly bored with his present work of representing in court corporate grievances. This is an action filled novel with just the right amount of humor that is always present in life if one looks. Very entertaining.

...although it is quite short on the legal and long on the thriller.

Attornty Jake Lassiter is on the trail of some missing bonds, stolen from an elderly client who has been duped by his young girlfriend. The search for the bonds leads Lassiter on a wild chase from Miami to the Bahamas and ultimately to Hawaii.

I listened to this as an audiobook and found that it was an okay listen, it was not a great one. The reader, Robert Lawrence did an okay job, but neither he nor the book got me terribly enthused. It's not a bad book, but it sure isn't a great one either.

I give this one a grade of C.

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