Home »
A great read that pushes the reader
Book Review
By Derryll White
Ferrigno, Robert (2013). Scavenger Hunt.
This is typical Robert Ferrigno writing – strong, direct, invective-laden and Hollywood-wise. The reader thinks studio exec’s office half the time and casting couch the rest. The proofreader fell down on the job but Ferrigno’s biting dialogue gobbles up the many small miscues.
I really enjoy the relationship Ferrigno builds between his main character, reporter Jimmy Gage, and Detective Jane Holt. There is mutually-satisfying sex; but there is also respect, trust and intellectual satisfaction. Coming from widely different backgrounds they make a complete whole.
This is a dark novel, sad and tragic. It is also a salute to love and the best we have to offer when any of us pays attention to our integrity and inner compass. Jimmy Gage demonstrates what stubborn adherence to the idea of ‘truth’ can produce. Starting off with a scavenger hunt the novel becomes a quest – in the best sense.
Robert Ferrigno does not disappoint. ‘Scavenger Hunt’ blasts away the tinsel of Hollywood and looks hard at what California produces, in both people and products. The book is a great read that pushes the reader to examine the surrounding world. All is not what it seems.
****
LOS ANGELES – The air pollution cut off the stars, and it was the myriad glittering lights below that looked like the Milky Way, the rakish, cocked neon halo atop the A in the ANGELS STADIUM sign shining brighter than Polaris. It was as though the world had flipped over, and they were not moving higher but lower, into the darkness.
THE LAW – “That’s not the way the law works.”
“The law is written by judges, and judges are just lawyers who kissed the right ass. I don’t need laws to tell me what I should do.”
WORK – Jimmy enjoyed the knowing movement of Brimley’s hands, the blade an extension of him as he scaled the fish. A guy changing a tire or laying brick, Jane Holt going over a crime report, her eyes alert – watching someone who knew what they were doing, really knew – it was better than going to a museum and checking out the dead art.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
