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Mild-mannered university librarian David Goldberg decides to supplement his meager salary by cataloging the personal library of Augustus Winthrop Scott, an eccentric billionaire. The fact that Scott is an ultraconservative who thinks nothing of buying politicians and even stealing a presidential election does not bother Goldberg. He soon discovers, however, that the little bit of knowledge he gains from organizing Scott's personal papers puts him in great danger: Homeland Security is pursuing him, and the state of Virginia has charged him with bestiality. Following in the tradition of Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard, Edgar-winner Beinhart effectively employs a combination of dark humor and frightening, outrageous plot twists that strike close to home in the era of the Patriot Act. Although the novel falls prey to some traditional stereotypes, especially in the portrayal of Goldberg's female colleagues, it is refreshing to encounter a political thriller with a librarian hero--not coincidentally a librarian, either, but one who uses his information skills to save the day. Barbara Bibel
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Kurzbeschreibung
How on earth did nebbish university librarian David Goldberg end up on Virginia's Ten Most Wanted Criminals list for bestiality? And how did he get ensnared in a vast right-wing conspiracy to steal the presidency? It all begins so innocently when Goldberg starts moonlighting for eccentric, conservative billionaire Alan Carston Stowe as an archivist. But Goldberg's appointment worries a cabal of ruthless right-wingersostensibly allies of Stowe, whose money lubricates their zany scary conspiracieswith very close ties to the White House. They fear that Goldberg will find something in Stowe's records that will compromise the dirty tricks involved in re-electing Augustus Winthrop Scott, the dim scion of a powerful Republican political family, for a second term. As the presidential election heads into its final stretch, the hunt is on to remove Goldberg from his positionby any means necessary. The acclaimed, Edgar-winning mystery writer Larry Beinhart returns with this timely novel. In the tradition of Carl Hiassen, Elmore Leonard, and Joe Klein, The Librarian is a frenetic, scary and hilarious thriller that goes deep into the dark heart of election year politics.
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"WHEN MEN PLOT to rule the world," the old man said, "they do it in plain sight." Lesen Sie die erste Seite
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"WHEN MEN PLOT to rule the world," the old man said, "they do it in plain sight." Lesen Sie die erste Seite
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1 von 1 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Format:Taschenbuch
Make no mistake: Larry Beinhart's THE LIBRARIAN is a great mystery story that once again appears to put Beinhart in line with writers like Elmore Leonard (OUT OF SIGHT) and Carl Hiaasen (SKINNY DIP). His link to the latter is political satire, but while Hiaasen remains just hilarious for most of the time, Beinhart appears to develop a knack for more serious paranoia. Most of his novels deal with the „hunting down" of the hero by those who hold power - be it the Attorney General or even the President of the United States.
What makes this story a good one is the fact that it weaves its yarn around the classic formula of the „Howcatchem". It finds quite a good balance between the focus on David Goldberg, librarian on the run, and presenting the activities of the respective Republican and Democratic campaigns: What the reader needs to know is that Democratic candidate Anne Lynn Murphy is getting more popular by the hour during the last few days preceding election day and therefore starts to pose a surprising yet serious threat to Republican opponent Augustus Winthrop Scott, a current President of the U.S. who is not always in full control of his language. But the Scott campaign has an ultimately evil plan (of course, one is tempted to say) to steal the election. All this is told in concise chapters which just delay the central action with the effect of creating heightened suspense - and never to the point of lengthiness which seemed to be a major weakness of American Hero. Thus, the 400 pages of THE LIBRARIAN read amazingly fast.
As for our erudite hero, one of the book's characters refers to him as being „like, like James Bond or something, only you're Jewish and you're literate. OK, you're not really highbrow, but I mean if I quoted Milton or Keats or Sylvia Plath, you wouldn't say, ‚huh?' ‚wah?' And yet you race down alleys and jump out windows..." Actually, you'll find out that even librarians can go berserk.
Upon deeper analysis, one may ask what becomes of the criticism on righteousness if (inevitably) uttered from a similarly righteous point of view ... But these are minor musings. If this book does nothing to your blood pressure, few others will.
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19 von 20 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
thorougly enjoyable thriller with an unlikely hero
10. August 2005
Format:Taschenbuch|Von Amazon bestätigter Kauf
As a librarian and a liberal conspiracy theorist, I found The Librarian gratifying from page one. I stayed up reading until 5 am and then woke up three hours later to finish it. That hasn't happened to me in years.
David Goldberg is a university librarian working part-time for an elderly conservative billionaire whose co-conspirators are worried that Goldberg will find evidence of their plans to steal the presidential election.
With shifting viewpoints, Beinhart does a great job of capturing the mindset of a librarian, with his literary allusions and idealistic worldview, as well as the many crazies out to get him. There is an Oliver North/Gordon Liddy goon, an amoral Secretary of State reminiscent of Dick Cheney and a Supreme Court justice on the take. On the good guy's side -- quirky librarians out of their element as violent thugs begin to move in. Librarians are, by definition, at least a little idealistic which, in these corrupt times, puts them at a bit of a disadvantage; but they are also bright truth-seeking information technologists, so they're not exactly helpless either, and the confrontations between the two groups are believable in this fictional account.
Beinhart has a disconcerting talent for making sense of present and past political machinations, harkening back to Ronald Reagan, Ken Starr and the 2000 election as well as our current crop of ne'er-do-wells, positing plausible surmises about what their motives and actions are.
I hope this gets made into a movie, as the author's American Hero was. Part of the fun is trying to decide who will play the various parts.
One character I found particularly interesting was Hagopian, the Democratic candidate's political and media guru. I'm not sure who the real-life counterpart would be, but would love to know.
The verbal description of the president is absolutely hysterical and point after point deliciously skewers hypocritical chicken hawks and government employees who bash the government at every turn, including a "pugnacious pest exterminator"! It is wonderfully funny, though the fact that it is largely true also makes it infuriating.
The dedication to librarian Larry Berk, "whom God has mistaken for Job", was intriguing, particularly when Berk appears briefly in the book.
I thought the ending was a bit unsatisfactory (it wrapped up too quickly and we didn't hear from candidate Murphy or guru Hagopian in the last third of the book) and it could have used a better proofreading, but this book brought me hours of pleasure. I had to make a real effort not to read too many passages aloud to my husband so he can enjoy it on his own.
Highly recommended.
David Goldberg is a university librarian working part-time for an elderly conservative billionaire whose co-conspirators are worried that Goldberg will find evidence of their plans to steal the presidential election.
With shifting viewpoints, Beinhart does a great job of capturing the mindset of a librarian, with his literary allusions and idealistic worldview, as well as the many crazies out to get him. There is an Oliver North/Gordon Liddy goon, an amoral Secretary of State reminiscent of Dick Cheney and a Supreme Court justice on the take. On the good guy's side -- quirky librarians out of their element as violent thugs begin to move in. Librarians are, by definition, at least a little idealistic which, in these corrupt times, puts them at a bit of a disadvantage; but they are also bright truth-seeking information technologists, so they're not exactly helpless either, and the confrontations between the two groups are believable in this fictional account.
Beinhart has a disconcerting talent for making sense of present and past political machinations, harkening back to Ronald Reagan, Ken Starr and the 2000 election as well as our current crop of ne'er-do-wells, positing plausible surmises about what their motives and actions are.
I hope this gets made into a movie, as the author's American Hero was. Part of the fun is trying to decide who will play the various parts.
One character I found particularly interesting was Hagopian, the Democratic candidate's political and media guru. I'm not sure who the real-life counterpart would be, but would love to know.
The verbal description of the president is absolutely hysterical and point after point deliciously skewers hypocritical chicken hawks and government employees who bash the government at every turn, including a "pugnacious pest exterminator"! It is wonderfully funny, though the fact that it is largely true also makes it infuriating.
The dedication to librarian Larry Berk, "whom God has mistaken for Job", was intriguing, particularly when Berk appears briefly in the book.
I thought the ending was a bit unsatisfactory (it wrapped up too quickly and we didn't hear from candidate Murphy or guru Hagopian in the last third of the book) and it could have used a better proofreading, but this book brought me hours of pleasure. I had to make a real effort not to read too many passages aloud to my husband so he can enjoy it on his own.
Highly recommended.
50 von 61 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
predictions already come true!
21. September 2004
Format:Taschenbuch
I read the galleys of "The Librarian" in August 2004 and it absorbed me completely: ten minutes before 5 am, having started the previous evening I finally finished it (needless to say, not my best day at work followed 2 hours later). What struck me in a similar way than Beinhart's previous book, "American Hero", was his interweaving of facts any alert newspaper reader could have seen with a high paced fictional plot. The readers' problem of course is to sort the tales from the facts, and I so wished for footnotes (as used in American Hero). But how lucid, plausible and prescient Beinhart's novel really is became apparent when on September 7 Vice President Cheney did exactly what Beinhart's has his fictitional Republican administration do: proclaiming that if a Democrat is elected the US would face the threat of another terrorist attack. I'll wager that Beinhart didn't just get lucky: here's a writer with a very keen observation using the lower threshold of proof afforded to fiction writers to illuminate what the Bush administration (or any highly ideological ruling elite) is capable of. Beinhart's "Librarian" takes the gloves off. Personally, I found some of the violence described somewhat off-putting at first - until I remembered how Black Panthers were assassinated by police, how civil rights leaders were targeted then and are still now under new Patriot Act legislation. Under the democratic veneer power politics takes rather unpleasant forms.
On the more civil side readers will take away at least one excellent reminder, and a term to help remembering it for future reference: Early on Larry Beinhart introduces the memorable concept of the Fog Fact: open secrets that ought to be public knowledge and for which conclusive evidence has long since been presented but which still remain unsaid. Such as the fact that joining the National Guard was one of the methods for avoiding being sent into combat in Vietnam: not "patriotic service" but effective draft dodging.
Anyway, during those last weeks in the current presidential race I'll be curious to see whether the Democrats take some of the strategies employed by Beinhart's fictional Dems - that we'll see more of the more or less criminal moves by Goebbels' eager student Karl Rove is pretty much a given. Read the book and place your own bets on how or whether this election (again) will be stolen.
Martin Voelker
On the more civil side readers will take away at least one excellent reminder, and a term to help remembering it for future reference: Early on Larry Beinhart introduces the memorable concept of the Fog Fact: open secrets that ought to be public knowledge and for which conclusive evidence has long since been presented but which still remain unsaid. Such as the fact that joining the National Guard was one of the methods for avoiding being sent into combat in Vietnam: not "patriotic service" but effective draft dodging.
Anyway, during those last weeks in the current presidential race I'll be curious to see whether the Democrats take some of the strategies employed by Beinhart's fictional Dems - that we'll see more of the more or less criminal moves by Goebbels' eager student Karl Rove is pretty much a given. Read the book and place your own bets on how or whether this election (again) will be stolen.
Martin Voelker
12 von 13 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
The unethical librarian
20. Juli 2005
Format:Taschenbuch
I'm a librarian and a Bush... er... intense disliker (afraid that "Bush" and "hate" in the same sentence will trigger some government computer somewhere), so boy oh boy, this book ought to be good, eh? And it was fun, but it was light on the librarianship. I know some obtuse librarians, but none of them would have sent a patron's private papers to another hard drive without permission, or snuck up on someone at a public computer and announced to the reading room what the patron was looking at. Beinhart lost me when the librarian turned into a Grisham lawyer, suddenly expert at covert ops with a fabulous babe on his arm. I was hoping real library stuff would happen. (At least with Grisham real lawyer stuff happens--I guess.) But I was there all the way with the Bush bashing!
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