Director's Cut: A Moses Wine Novel

From Publishers Weekly
Simon's eighth mystery/thriller to feature his wisecracking and reckless PI, Moses Wine, unintentionally illustrates the challenges of setting a comic story in a post-9/11 world. Hired to provide security for a movie being filmed in Prague whose cast and crew have been plagued by threats, Wine stumbles across the corpse of the Grand Rabbi of Prague, who proves to be yet another aspiring screenwriter, clutching a screenplay based on a vicious anti-Semitic tract. The lurking presence of mysterious Arabs, abductions and bombings suggest that an Al Qaeda cell is targeting the film project, though some clues indicate that a personal, rather than ideological, motive, is behind the harassment campaign. Having explicitly set his character in the midst of the war on terror, Simon fails to make Wine's actions plausible. Wine, for instance, allows his pregnant wife to accompany him to possible encounters with ruthless killers. From the opening reference to John Ashcroft, Simon places the reader in the near-present day of a nation traumatized by the terrorist attacks, but the realistic trappings of increased personal anxiety, heightened security and a questioning of long-held antiestablishment beliefs come across as little more than superficial window dressing. Given the rawness of the nation's recent wounds, not to mention ongoing terror alerts and the war in Iraq, not even a Christopher Buckley could pull off a humorous suspense tale so closely tied to militant Islam, and Simon has not succeeded in doing so here.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
What could make lifelong liberal Moses Wine cozy up to Attorney General John Ashcroft? Only the September 11 attacks, which prompt the PI to offer the FBI a hand in battling terrorism. Wine soon gets his chance, as his eighth adventure takes him from L.A. to the Czech Republic, where he must protect a Holocaust film shoot from Islamic fundamentalists and a mysterious antagonist who plants snakes in the rooms of cast and crew members. The situation grows so dire that Wine himself must take the helm of the movie while keeping an eye out for mad bombers. Even so, he manages to land several lefty licks as he details a CIA operative who puts the film crew at risk to break up a terror cell and an FBI computer system so out of whack it flags the Jewish detective as a possible acquaintance of Mohammed Atta. Wine manages to save the day--if not his director's credit--and Simon's savvy Hollywood satire raises troubling questions about our B-grade domestic preparedness efforts. Frank Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Glenn Reynolds - MSNBC.com
"...realistic and amusing. I read the whole thing in two sittings, and enjoyed it very much."


Martin Cruz Smith
"As irresistible as movie popcorn. Moses Wine is the slyest, most entertaining gumshoe anywhere."


Tony Hillerman
"Roger Simon is better than ever."


Tom Robbins
"...as might be expected from Roger Simon, the tawdry Tinseltown toxins pour like vintage Wine."


Review
Tony Hillerman author of The Wailing Wind Moses Wine is back with all his wit and wisdom exposing crime and the movie industry to the respect it deserves and proving that Roger Simon is better than ever.


Book Description
From Roger L. Simon, author of The Big Fix, comes his best Moses Wine novel yet -- a hilarious, dark thriller set in the movie world. DIRECTOR'S CUT A quarter of a century after he first appeared in the now-classic The Big Fix, Moses Wine remains a private investigator par excellence. Still a Berkeley radical at heart, Moses is now thoroughly chastened by the events that have led to the war on terrorism -- so much so that he's started to find himself agreeing with John Ashcroft, which for Moses is like saying that the Grateful Dead were overrated. Then the call comes -- a film crew in Prague keeps finding hate messages on the set and in their hotel rooms, and it's Moses's job to find out who's trying to shut the movie down. In a twist of fate that might only happen to a man like Wine, the director of the film gets knocked off a bridge by a runaway truck, and Moses agrees to take over -- Moses Wine is an auteur! But there are obstacles: The costars, the sexy Donna Gold and the brooding Goran, can't decide whether to kill each other or have an affair; Moses's wife has a surprise for him; Moses keeps finding himself in places he really shouldn't be; the CIA seems interested in the film, and that's a first; and a guy who resembles the Michelin Man keeps turning up with threats of violent destruction. Clearly something more is at stake than an art-house film, and things turn deadly serious when the threat of terrorism appears at the screening of the film -- Moses has to race to save not only the movie, but the whole of the Sundance festival, too. Roger L. Simon has been delighting fans of smart thrillers for a quarter century. This time it's the movie world's turn to get the Roger L. Simon treatment, and Director's Cut shows him at the height of his powers -- skewering our mores and making us laugh out loud.


About the Author
Roger L. Simon's prize-winning Moses Wine detective novels have been published in many editions in over a dozen languages. Simon is also an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and a director. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, screenwriter Sheryl Longin; their daughter, Madeleine; and their greyhound Dorian.


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For some reason, agents interrogate Hollywood private investigator Moses Wine (The Straight Man) about his possible links to terrorists. Shortly thereafter, Moses signs on (undercover) with a movie crew filming in Prague to investigate the disturbing appearance of symbolic plastic snakes on set and elsewhere. Lo and behold, terrorists kidnap him and the film's lead actress. The incident ends badly for the terrorists but results in Moses directing the film, supposedly about overcoming sins of the Holocaust. A particularly relevant plot, then, filled with action and suspense and set against arresting Czech backdrops. Recommended. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.


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