Editor’s Note: I am fortunate to count as one of my friends superstar legal thriller novelist (and stand up comedian) Paul Levine. Paul has won the John D. MacDonald fiction award and has been nominated for Edgar, Macavity, International Thriller, Shamus and James Thurber prizes. He has written 20 episodes of the CBS military drama JAG and co-created the Supreme Court drama First Monday, starring James Garner and Joe Mantegna. To Speak For The Dead, an international bestseller featuring lawyer Jake Lassiter, was his first novel. He is also the author of the Solomon vs. Lord series. His latest novels are Bum Rap, an Amazon Number One Bestseller, Bum Luck and Bum Deal. A graduate of Penn State and the University of Miami School of Law (both of which this USC graduate definitely holds against him), Paul now divides his time between Santa Barbara, California, and Miami, Florida. I recently enjoyed and empathized with Paul’s latest blog and persuaded him to let me share with my followers, along with a few editorial inserts of my own that I couldn’t resist, particularly because I gave Paul no opportunity whatsoever to counter.
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About 20 years ago, I was having lunch with Steve Cannell at Bistro Garden, his favorite place in Studio City, California. Somewhere between the gazpacho and the cheeseburger, I boasted about a glowing book review I had received in The Miami Herald. The legendary television writer and producer replied, “If you believe your best reviews, you gotta believe your worst ones, too.”
I didn’t want to hear it.
Sure, I have lots of newspaper clippings filled with glorious words like “riveting” and “breathlessly exciting,” but with the advent of reader reviews on Amazon, I’m also the target of some double-barreled smack downs from folks who leave no unkind word unsaid.
Here’s the entirety of a 1-star review of Bum Rap.
“I must have been drunk when I downloaded this book.”
In my defense, I was quite sober when writing Bum Rap, which was briefly the number one bestselling book on Amazon Kindle. But wait! That’s being defensive. I want to take Steve’s advice and listen to the criticism and learn from it. Consider this scathing remark from a female reader:
“This is nothing but rubbish written by a horny man. The story seemed decent, but the characters were unable to accomplish anything because of their animal attraction to anything that moves.”
Grrrrrr! That’s my animalistic growl. [Hmm? Me thinks Paul doth protesteth too much. For those of us who know his age and condition, being called a “horny man” might assume facts not in evidence!] The inspiration for Bum Rap was a federal racketeering trial in Miami, known locally as the “Russian Bar Girls Case.” Some of the testimony was as racy as anything in the book. Here’s a brief exchange from the trial transcript between the prosecutor and a Russian bar girl:
Q: Did you zip down men’s pants?
A: Yes, touch them, kiss them, anything you can think.
Q: Giving them hope that they would have sex with you?
A: All my behavior was inclining to this.
“Giving Men Hope” became a chapter title, and men’s idiotic conduct around women moved the story along, as it does in real life.
My favorite review of Bum Rap contained this curt dismissal:
“I didn’t even finish the first chapter.”
Ouch! The first chapter is exactly seven sentences long. I hope YOU finish it.
Many one-star reviews make no literary judgments. Witness this short but not sweet doozy concerning my novel Flesh & Bones:
“I did not order this book.”
Fair enough, but I didn’t send it to you! [Maybe he should have, the review couldn’t have been much worse than it already was–from someone who hadn’t read, and didn’t know anything about the book.]
Then there’s this brief put-down of my The Deep Blue Alibi:
“There are no hummingbirds in Germany.”
Fine. There also are no hummingbirds in The Deep Blue Alibi, which is set in the Florida Keys and was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe award. [Mr. Poe, the ornithologist?]
Some readers take the time for actual literary criticism. This reader gave one star to To Speak For The Dead, my first in the Jake Lassiter series:
“The book is ludicrous and with a completely unlikable so-called hero.”
Whoa, that’s my meal ticket you’re talking about! She goes on:
“I also read three of Levine’s Solomon and Lord books and they got steadily worse. I give up on this guy. He not only writes badly, I’d say he needs a shrink.”
That upset me so much, I had to tell my shrink. [Any chance the reviewer was your shrink’s business agent.]
Another reader of To Speak For The Dead also questioned my mental state in this one-star put-down:
“Maybe 25 pages worth reading. The rest just stupid people and porn. Had me wondering if the author was a sex addict. Disgusting!”
Okay, so there are some bedroom hi-jinks, but “porn” is a little strong. The story is about a surgeon who’s having an affair with his patient’s wife. The patient dies suspiciously following surgery, and the surgeon and widow continue to get it on. The book is loosely based on a famous Florida murder trial that, like the bar girls’ case, had some titillating courtroom testimony.
Am I being too thin-skinned? Should I toughen up? Every author gets slammed. There are more than 200 one-star reviews of To Kill A Mockingbird, including this little ditty:
“Gives little, if any, guidance on the killing of mockingbirds. False advertising.”
Okay, that may be tongue-in-cheek, but here’s an apparently serious, punctuation-free, stream-of-consciousness one-star review of the Harper Lee classic:
“It was terrible I didn’t like it at all i was so bored and stressed reading this awful book ugh.”
It’s sometimes said that there are no wrong opinions [including, of course, Paul’s?], but facts are indisputable. Here’s a reader’s curt analysis of False Dawn:
“One of the longest books ever.”
Hmm, the hardcover was 303 pages, about one-fourth the length of War and Peace.
This reader would have given Tolstoy one star: “He should have stopped with WAR and saved PEACE for the sequel.”
But maybe my book only seemed long, which means it’s my fault. Maybe I should write shorter books. Then again, when I wrote Last Chance Lassiter, a 25,000 word novella, I got a blistering review under the headline:
“More like Lassiter Light.”
My two most recent books are Bum Luck, which has 92% four and five star reviews, and Bum Deal, which has 96% four and five star reviews and garnered a starred review in Publishers Weekly. Now get this: neither has a one-star review. [About those two, Paul, I’ve been meaning to have a little sit down with you. However, as a writer myself, and given your take on the above one star reviewers, . . .]
But wait a second. Those books will be on Amazon long after Jake Lassiter tosses his briefcase into Biscayne Bay and long after I’m gone. So strike my earlier comment. I should have said: neither book has received a one-star review…yet. It’s only a matter of time.
Editor’s note: Nice blog, Paul. And your humor’s definitely better than mine. It is worth noting that perhaps I’ve arrived too. I recently received a one star review which went like this: “I’m giving The Amendment Killer by Ronald S. Barak one star. I ordered an ebook copy of it from Amazon, but the copy Amazon sent me was defective and I didn’t get to read it.” Even more remarkable, Amazon, which claims to vet all reviews it receives in order to reject those that are inappropriate, approved and posted this review.
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