The Death And Life Of Bobby Z (2006) - Plot & Excerpts
The Death and Life of Bobby Z is the book that started Don Winslow on his “drugs in Laguna” series, which isn’t actually a series as much as an attitude and state of mind that led eventually to Savages and its prequel.Tim Kearney is a three-time loser who gets fished out of a certain-death trip back to prison by a DEA agent who gives him an offer he can’t refuse: impersonate legendary Laguna Beach dope dealer Bobby Z and let himself get traded to a Mexican drug cartel in exchange for a kidnapped DEA agent. I probably don’t have to mention that things go horribly wrong, and eventually much of both sides of the law in Southern California want Tim dead.Bobby Z seems to be the first appearance of what has now become the “Don Winslow voice” – crazy, slangy, attitudinal, and profane. His previous efforts (the Neal Carey mysteries) appear to be much more conventional and comparatively sedate. The characters change names but have become standards in this “series” – the loser hero, the cool-girl goddess, the psychotic killers, the megawealthy dope dealers, the massively bent cops. Here they’re in their prototype form, a little rough around the edges but still entertaining. Serial screwup though he may be, Tim works out as a pretty okay guy to hang with. The dialog (external and internal) is on the mark, the settings filled in enough to picture in the film version. The prose goes down easy and fast.As you’d expect for the start of a new adventure, not everything goes together as well as it will down the road. Here the problem is mostly one of plotting, in that too much of it hinges on coincidence or dumb luck. Tim tends to catch all the breaks and the bad guys hardly any, which can get annoying after a while. Also, Winslow hadn’t yet started imbuing his supporting characters with the same level of humanity as his lead; probably the most vivid secondary player is a six-year-old boy.Winslow had six novels under his belt when he wrote Bobby Z, but with it he radically changes not only his style but milieu (both in fiction and in fact; he moved from New York to California before he wrote it). That’s a hard trick to pull off in any context, and it seems almost churlish to fault him for bobbling it. I’d give this three and a half if we had half-stars, but we don’t, so I’m rounding down to three in fairness to the later works. If you haven’t read Winslow before, start with Savages or Dawn Patrol and backtrack; if you have, then go for it and see where those other books came from.
I listened to the audio version of The Death and the Life of Bobby Z mainly just to get a feel for the author before I tackle the considerably heftier The Power of the Dog. This book was of course turned into the film of the same name staring the late Paul Walker, so it’s always interesting to compare the two. Currently serving a life sentence without parole, decorated Gulf War veteran Tim Kearney gets a poisoned chalice of an offer from the DEA to impersonate the notorious and now dead drug smuggler Bobby Zacharias and to be honest, it’s not the deal of a lifetime. Freedom is freedom though and having just slashed the throat of a Hell’s Angel wrecking ball, whatever’s in store for him on the outside is going to be a damn site more preferential to the waves of revenge heading his way. The deal, he’s about to be exchanged for the captured DEA agent Arthur Moreno and given to Don Huertero, a Mexican druglord and yeah, it doesn’t sound like an monumentally rejoiceful moment for our hero and token loser. And it doesn’t take long for him to get right in the middle of a seriously fucked up situation, snatched at gunpoint, held prisoner in the desert, waiting for the Don. Luckily though he’s a US Marine, the greatest soldiers on the planet and we then step into the realms of predictability with an escape, tracked by Indians, loads of killing etc. Our hero then actually comes into the role of Bobby Z with a bit of a flourish but unfortunately there’s a shit load of baggage that comes with it and a lot of people wanting to end his life. The only thing to set this apart from other stories of similar persuasion was the rescue of a kid, the real Bobby Z’s son, which sort of stopped the story going dark and dirty. There’s some snippets of humour in there amidst the betrayals and gunfire. All told the narration was good, the story and plot were good, characters were ok if not a bit cliché and that summed it up for me, just sort of OK.Also posted at http://paulnelson.booklikes.com/post/...
What do You think about The Death And Life Of Bobby Z (2006)?
Don Winslow è autore di uno dei libri che negli ultimi anni più mi hanno divertito e emozionato, quel Poeter del Cane che dipinge un affresco maestoso nella storia della guerra al narcotraffico che gli Stati Uniti (o alcune cellule impazzite dei loro servizi) hanno intrapreso contro il cartello dei messicani. Un opera eccezionale che, necessariamente, è pietra diparagone di ogni altro suo libro. Se L'inverno di Frankie Machine e la Pattuglia dell'alba sono mlto carini, non allo stesso livello sono gli altri libri (tutti precedenti al potere del cane) pubblicati da Einaudi. Questo Morte e vita di Bobby Z riporta in auge ambientazioni e tematiche già sviscerate (o sarebbe meglio dire che Winslow avrebbe poi più approfonditamente sviscerato) ne Il potere del Cane, ma premendo il pedale anziché sulla profondità dei personaggi su quello dell'azione sfrenata. Un romanzo d'azione, dunque, che compie molto bene il suo compito, far divertire il lettore ed essere letto tutto d'un fiato.
—Stefano
A fun, fizzy thriller that starts off at a gallop and rarely lets up the pace. Tim Kearney, a decorated Marine with a serious impulse control problem, is serving some serious prison time when he kills a biker who'd threatened him. Now he's facing certain death inside prison from the biker's pals. So a DEA agent offers him a deal: Impersonate a legendary drug dealer whom he resembles, enabling the DEA to trade him to a Mexican drug lord in exchange for a captured DEA agent. After that he's free to go. But the exchange goes horribly awry and Kearney, in the guise of uber-cool California surfing/pot-dealing legend Bobby Z, winds up on the run through the Mexican desert with Bobby Z's six-year-old son in tow.The writing is sharp and funny as ever with Winslow's work, and the relationship between Kearney and little Kit is nicely rendered. There are some interesting twists to the plot as more and more bad guys join the hunt for Kearney/Z, sometimes tripping over (and killing) each other. The biggest weakness in the book is the lead female character, a woman named Elizabeth who prefers to be called a "courtesan" rather than what she really is. As in his deeper, longer drug-dealer novel "The Power of the Dog," she serves little purpose except for a dash of exposition and a lot of slobbery sex writing. She doesn't even serve as a fulcrum for the plot, as in the sleeker, more violent thriller "Savages." Now that I've read a lot of Winslow's thrillers, I have to say that his strongest female character is the female deputy in "California Fire & Life," and I surely wish he'd try writing a book where the main female character at least shares the heavy lifting with the macho man lead. But maybe I'm thinking too hard about a book that doesn't really require you to do more than just grab hold and hang on tight until the last loop-de-loop.
—Craig Pittman
Tim Kearney is a three time loser looking at the prospect of life in the California prison system or a shank in the back when a bright spark at the DEA realizes that he looks an awful lot like the recently deceased enigmatic drug kingpin called Bobby Z. The feds make a deal, they will release Kearney and then trade him in the guise of Bobby Z. to Mexican drug lords who don't know the truth about the real Z. If all this sounds a little too preposterous to make a good story, it gets even wilder when Tim breaks out of the drug lords lair with a young child in tow and sets up the most unlikely buddy story in a long time. Blasting through the southwest with guns blazing to keep himself and the kid alive, Tim realizes that the only way he can survive is to become Bobby Z. for real, which is when things turn really nasty. Reading Winslow is a blast, he writes with a wry, adrenaline fueled sensibility that keeps the story moving briskly. Filled with dry humor, along with fascinating characters, this is perfect beach reading for crime fans.
—Tim Niland
