Strategic Moves

October 18, 2010
At the start of Woods's routine 19th novel featuring lawyer and man of action Stone Barrington (after Lucid Intervals), Barrington has a lot to celebrate: he's received a $1 million bonus from Woodman & Weld, the prestigious New York City law firm of which he's "of counsel"; he can expect to make partner in the firm within a year; and he meets a beautiful widow, whom he's soon romancing. A murder close to home and a request from the CIA to help transport a fugitive, Erwin Gelbhardt, from Spain to the U.S., bring him back to earth. Gelbhardt, who becomes Barrington's client, reveals he knows the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, but as the attorney works to get him the best possible deal from the American government, the bin Laden business goes nowhere. Newcomers may find Barrington an emotionally shallow cipher, while certain details, like the British government in the age of the Internet trying to suppress a story by banning sales of the New York Times, may strike others as less than credible.

October 15, 2010

Another installment of nonstop, high-stakes, utterly inconsequential action for Stone Barrington (Lucid Intervals, 2010).

It's tough luck for Jim Hackett, founder and owner of Strategic Services, that he got shot to death while he was in Stone's company, but making his acquaintance has paid big dividends for Stone. In token of Woodman & Weld's appreciation for landing Strategic Services' business, managing partner Bill Eggers presents Stone with a $1 million check and dangles a promise of a full partnership before him. Given Stone's current lifestyle, however, his settling down with the firm where he's long been of counsel sounds about as likely as his settling down with just one woman. When his perennial-nuisance client Herbie Fisher summons Stone to his wedding reception to Christine Gunn, it looks as if Stone may be in for a serious romance with Christine's sister Adele Lansdown, who recently widowed herself by shooting her abusive husband. Alas, after a brief interlude between the sheets, Adele's shot to death herself. Will Stone, so grief-stricken that he doesn't have sex for nearly a week, be able to focus on catching her killer? Not unless he turns down an offer to accompany Mike Freeman, Hackett's successor at Strategic Services, on a clandestine flight to extract non-extraditable arms dealer Erwin Gebhardt, aka Pablo Estancia, for Lance Cabot at the CIA. The mission goes belly-up when Pablo escapes just before the plane lands in the United States, and the sequel promises even better: Pablo takes a train to one of his houses, eats a hearty breakfast and then asks Stone to represent him in his deposition by the CIA. In return for freedom from State Department harassment, Pablo promises some substantial revelations, including the current location of Osama bin Laden. Oh, and Herbie's marriage is springing leaks as well.

Woods, who evidently writes to a precise word length without bothering with beginnings and endings, delivers loads of juicy complications but no payoffs.

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November 1, 2010
In this weak entry in the long-running Stone Barrington series, Stone grapples with both financial and international intrigue. Stones hapless client Herbie Fisher has married the daughter of a financier who might be guilty of embezzlement. Stone gets involved with Herbies wifes aunt, but their relationship is cut short when shes shot execution-style in her apartment. Before Stone can delve into the murder investigation, hes tapped by another client to oversee a joint mission with the CIA to retrieve arms dealer Pablo Estancia, who stages a dramatic escape and then turns up in Stones office requesting his legal counsel. Meandering and slow moving, the story loses all its early steam when it switches gears from the embezzlement-and-murder story line to send Stone on the improbable mission to Iraq, followed by chapter upon chapter of dull negotiations with the CIA. Woods even manages to make the usually appealing Stone unlikable when he advises his client to wait to share crucial information with the intelligence agency. Woods recent novels have been fast paced and exciting; alas, this is a clunker. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Good or bad, each installment in Woods long-running series is published in mass quantities and snapped right up.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)