Too long, boring, badly written, not exciting, etc...

John Katzenbach is an accomplished author and I had previously read and enjoyed another of his novels (The Analyst), so I was surprised at how bad The Shadow Man was. The premise of the plot is that four very old Jewish people, survivors of the Holecaust, believe they have seen the "Shadow Man". The Shadow Man was a Jew who joined forces with the Nazis to find Jews that were hiding to avoid certain doom in concentration camps. These four old people feared the Shadow Man more than anything. When one of them is killed, a retired police detective named Simon Winter looks into who the Shadow Man is. Meanwhile, the Miami police are also investigating the death of the elderly Jewish woman and have young gangster as a suspect.

Eventually, Winter and the police and the District Attourney join to hunt the Shadow Man, a man of pure evil. As the book villian, it was hard to fear a villian who was a killer 50 years ago but was now in his 70s. Also, this book barely touches on WWII, yet purports at times to be a novel about WWII. I've read a lot of great WWII novels, and this book would have been great if it had been set in the 60s. But setting it present day with senior citizens and the main characters wasn't too exciting. It wasn't exciting primarily because I wondered where had the Shadow Man been all these years? Why was he starting to kill now? The Shadow Man had no motivation to kill.

Finally, I realized I didn't like this book when I was skipping paragraphs at a time during the last 20 pages. The entire book was like this with each character prone to long rambling inner thoughts that really added nothing to the story. If you take away the WWII angle, this novel is bad. The WWII angle adds some excitement, but there are probably thousands of books out there that relate the horror of WWII better than this one does.

The review from Publishers Weekly printed above summarizes my thoughts and deserves to be repeated..."Katzenbach (Just Cause) has some good Holocaust and WWII vignettes and pretty good cop-talk here, but the book is burdened by flat characterization, a slow pace, an odd, unsatisfying ending and a serious need for editing."

Rating:


Excellent

This is the first book I have read by Katzenbach and I was very impressed. His characters literally jumped off the page and their voices were distinct. This is the first book I have ever read that made me want to turn back to page one and read it all over again as soon I was finished with it. I can't wait to read more of his work.

Rating:


THE SHADOW KNOWS

This complex thriller offers one of the most heavily fleshed out characterizations in recent years; that may be the book's biggest drawback, however. The interesting premise of a Nazi "catcher" still on the prowl is fascinating, but at the same time, Katzenbach makes us plod through a lot of superfluous narrative, that overstates many of the characters' inner thoughts and slows the pace down a little too much.
Overall, though, characters like Simon Winter; Walter Robinson, and Espy Martinez, are glowing in their richness and intricacies. Even Leroy "F" Jackson, an ignoble druggie, turns makes an astounding turnaround in dealing with the horrifying murderer.
There are some riveting scenes, as well; early in the book, there's a scene where Sophie gets ready for bed, and it is laid out so slowly that it creates a tremendous aura of suspense, as you know the old lady is going to bite the bullet. Unfortunately, other lengthy scenes, don't quite have this edge.
The ending is quite well done, and it has one of those "ah no" endings.
All in all, despite is plodding pace, it's a very well written story.
RECOMMENDED.

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