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The Big Seven (Faux Mystery)
by Jim Harrison
Published: 2016-03-08
Paperback : 352 pages
Paperback : 352 pages
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?Harrison’s writing is always exhilarating. An added strength is his penchant for delightfully flawed but deeply human characters. Sunderson doesn’t disappoint.”?Seattle Times
?The pleasures of The Big Seven are found most often in Sunderson’s troubled, heavily marinated ...
?The pleasures of The Big Seven are found most often in Sunderson’s troubled, heavily marinated ...
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?Harrison’s writing is always exhilarating. An added strength is his penchant for delightfully flawed but deeply human characters. Sunderson doesn’t disappoint.”?Seattle Times
?The pleasures of The Big Seven are found most often in Sunderson’s troubled, heavily marinated meditations . . . Such is Harrison’s gift for conveying human consciousness and all its vexing diversions and understatements and circular thoughts.”?New York Times Book Review
A national bestseller from one of our most renowned and popular authors, The Big Seven finds Detective Sunderson settling into a hunting cabin in a remote area of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where he soon realizes that his neighbors may be as dangerous as any maniac he faced in his cop days. A family of outlaws, armed to the teeth, the Ameses have local law enforcement too intimidated to take them on. Then Sunderson’s cleaning lady, a comely young Ames woman, is murdered, and black sheep brother Lemuel Ames seeks Sunderson’s advice on a crime novel he’s writing which may not be fiction. Sunderson must struggle with the evil within himself and the greater, more expansive evil of his neighbor.
?Harrison is an old master, here on top of his game . . . Harrison is maybe a little bit like . . . Elmore Leonard (to whom Sunderson pays tribute), in that both write prose, easy on the eye, that seems so natural as to be effortless. That kind of writing is, of course, anything but effortless?it takes genius, but mostly experience, intuition and discipline. And a somewhat raffish charm, like Harrison’s, doesn’t hurt.”?The Cleveland Plain Dealer
?Whimsical and bawdy fun . . . Harrison writes beautifully about fishing and the outdoors.”?Washington Post
?The pleasures of The Big Seven are found most often in Sunderson’s troubled, heavily marinated meditations . . . Such is Harrison’s gift for conveying human consciousness and all its vexing diversions and understatements and circular thoughts.”?New York Times Book Review
A national bestseller from one of our most renowned and popular authors, The Big Seven finds Detective Sunderson settling into a hunting cabin in a remote area of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where he soon realizes that his neighbors may be as dangerous as any maniac he faced in his cop days. A family of outlaws, armed to the teeth, the Ameses have local law enforcement too intimidated to take them on. Then Sunderson’s cleaning lady, a comely young Ames woman, is murdered, and black sheep brother Lemuel Ames seeks Sunderson’s advice on a crime novel he’s writing which may not be fiction. Sunderson must struggle with the evil within himself and the greater, more expansive evil of his neighbor.
?Harrison is an old master, here on top of his game . . . Harrison is maybe a little bit like . . . Elmore Leonard (to whom Sunderson pays tribute), in that both write prose, easy on the eye, that seems so natural as to be effortless. That kind of writing is, of course, anything but effortless?it takes genius, but mostly experience, intuition and discipline. And a somewhat raffish charm, like Harrison’s, doesn’t hurt.”?The Cleveland Plain Dealer
?Whimsical and bawdy fun . . . Harrison writes beautifully about fishing and the outdoors.”?Washington Post
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Some books are going to be liked by all and some by followers of the author. This is one of those.
by thewanderingjew (see profile) 06/09/16The Big Seven: A Faux Mystery, Jim Harrison, author; Jim Meskimen, narrator
I actually adored the book “Brown Dog” by this author and really looked forward to listening to this novel. However, there are 8 parts to this audio, and well into the third part, after several hours, I simply gave it up. It has become a habit with me, lately, to discontinue reading books that do not satisfy my interests. There are so many books and so little time!
Briefly, a retired, amoral police detective named Sunderson, who seems to believe he is above the law, sets off looking for the daughter Mona that he and his ex-wife Diane had previously adopted. Mona wants to run away with her musician boyfriend and has quit Michigan University and escaped with him to New York. Although Sunderson was a former law enforcement officer, he breaks the law by blackmailing someone and is beaten to a pulp shortly afterward. He needs months of rehab to recover. In the meantime, Mona runs off to Paris. When he recovers, he goes to Europe to retrieve Mona, once more. She has now used drubs, been abused and abandoned, and needs help. He manages to have the musician arrested on other charges involving minor girls and takes Mona home, but not before he has sex with her; never mind that she is his daughter and has Hepatitis!
He then goes on a fishing trip to a remote pastoral area and sleeps with the young girl who cleans and cooks for him, Lily. He also sleeps with her sister, Monica. He is past 65 and they are youngsters, especially when compared to him. Although some seduce him, he is supposed to be the adult in the room, ruled by his large brain, not his little one. Both girls are related to the evil Ames family, a violent family of hoodlums and thugs, rapists and abusers. Soon, murders are occurring with abandon while Sunderson continues to be preoccupied with sex and alcohol!
I couldn’t find any redeeming features in the book to encourage me to continue to read. The predatory sexual encounters and the violence might appeal to some, though, because the writing is good if you can tolerate the subject matter and unpleasant nature of most of the characters.
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