Product Description
This digital document is an article from The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR), published by Thomson Gale on September 28, 2006. The length of the article is 767 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: TRAPPER GOES TO CHICAGO.(Entertainment)(TV's Gregory Harrison lives in Eugene now, but he still razzle-dazzles audiences)
Author: Gale Reference Team
Publication: The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR) (Newspaper)
Date: September 28, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Page: C1

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
Fatal Attraction meets The Usual Suspects in this dazzling thriller about a businessman whose life becomes a nightmare when he gets involved with the wrong woman. When an English teacher at Attica State Prison asks his incarcerated students to write about why they're in prison, he is astounded by the story of Charles Schine. Schine is a white, upper middle-class ad exec who meets Lucinda, a married woman, on the Long Island Railroad. Sharing pictures of their kids soon leads to a rendezvous in a sordid downtown hotel. But before they actually enter the room, they are held up by a man who rapes Lucinda, assults Charles, and steals both their wallets. He then proceeds to blackmail them. Desperate, Charles hires someone to eliminate him-but it's the hitman who ends up dead. In a world where no one is who they seem to be, Charles sinks deeper into a labyrinth of deceit, murder, and betrayal. And in a final act of stunning retribution, it's clear why Charles is in Attica-and what he's come to do there. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (179)

Sets a new standard for BAD
I rarely stop reading a book. I got 1/4 of the way through it before I did; I should have stopped sooner.

The dialogue is flat and unconvincing; it's unlikely they would have anything to do with each other. The plot is shallow and not believable from the beginning. For example, he takes a beautiful woman he'd like to impress to a seedy hotel; would any guy in lust and with money and do that? I wouldn't. The description of the assault on them is graphic and depressing. Their reactions and actions in response are depressing. The book is depressing, not thrilling.

I wish I'd read the negative reviews before I started reading. I can't understand why there are any, much less so many, positive reviews.

a good read
This was a very good book.I liked this book by James Siegel.The plot was good also.Mystery fans will enjoy this book.

J. Robert Ewbank author "John Wesley, Natural Man, and the 'Isms'"

predictable and cliche bore
By the time I reached page 20 I could predict exactly what happened.Besides some minor plot twists, you could clearly see what was coming.The characters were immature and undeveloped, as was the story line.And all of that could have been forgiven except...

Mr. Siegel is the most self-absorbed author I've ever read.Every few chapters a sentence would be thrown in that basically stated: "I'm such an awesome writer I'll bet you didn't even see that coming!" or "I've really got you on the edge of your seat now, don't I?"Give me a break.You're not all that and a bag of chips, Mr. Siegal.Quit writing, for the love of God, please quit writing!

Don't Understand The Good Reviews
I didn't buy this but picked it up at the library -- thankfully. I imagine I would've been pretty upset if I'd actually paid money for this book. It is in a word terrible. I honestly don't understand the abundance of good reviews here.

I think the main problem is with the characters, the main character especially. All the characters are cardboard cutouts at best. The protagonist is an absolute moron. It's very difficult to believe anyone would make the wrong choice over and over and over unless he had a brain injury or latent suicidal tendencies. Consequently, the protagonist isn't sympathetic in the least. It's sort of like social Darwinism in action: If you're that weak and stupid things aren't going to go well.

The villain is as pathetic as the protagonist -- a walking cliche, a caricature scary Hispanic. He's over simplified to the point of absurdity. He's a walking personification of evil, only he's so poorly drawn he delivers sighs of exasperation rather than scares.

The story is so predictable I'd figured it out pages into the novel. Don't waste your time on this one. If you want actual suspense, and characters that aren't complete imbeciles, try a Lee Child, Lawrence Block, James W. Hall. Nearly anything but this.

Far superior to the movie based on it.
James Siegel, Derailed (Warner, 2003)

I saw the 2005 film version of Derailed a while back, and was unimpressed, to put it kindly. When a friend of mine lent me this novel a couple of months ago, I didn't put two and two together until reading the jacket copy. Of course, I assumed the book would be better, since they almost always are, and dove in anyway.

Charles Schine is an ad executive whose life is going along swimmingly until one fateful week when everything seems to go wrong. He loses the firm's biggest account, for one thing. But what really sends his life spiraling out of control is meeting a beautiful woman one morning when he misses the train. They're attracted to one another, despite both being married, but the stumbling beginnings of an affair are interrupted by a nasty mugging that turns into blackmail. But that's only the beginning...

While the book is most certainly better than the movie, it does break one of the main rules of thriller-writing; there are things that are obvious chance that get woven into the story as if they were planned by the bad guys. There's one painfully obvious place this happens close to the beginning, and it soured a lot of the book for me. Still, Siegel is a very good writer when he's not strangling the conventions of the genre in ways that many have tried and no one has succeeded. He book is well-paced and well-plotted, and the characters are much better drawn here than they are in the film version.

Even if you didn't like the movie, the book is worth checking out. Give it a shot. ***
... Read more

Product Description
When two lovers meet again after thirty-one years of separation, they renew their attraction and grapple with the issues of aging, erotic love, and betrayal. Book available. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (122)

Absolutely beautiful - emotionally engaging and utterly haunting
I don't even know what to write ... this book was amazing - I don't know that "wonderful" is right. I literally had to set aside a couple of hours after I finished it, because any action or activity seemed obtrusive and inappropriate. The story just haunted me.

There are very few books that make me so emotional I cry; I can count on one hand, *maybe* two, the number of books where I've been so affected, but this is now one of them. Shreve is a master at engaging your emotions, twisting you this way and that as you follow her characters in their ordinary, and at the same time extraordinary, lives. (And of course she does this all with absolutely beautiful and "lyrical" prose).

My reaction to and enjoyment of (again, not the right word) this book was unexpected, because although I am always extremely affected and drawn in with this author's work, I am barely ever able to tolerate anything having to do with infidelity - even if it's completely fictional, be it book or movie. Oddly enough, I most recently read Shreve's The Pilot's Wife, where it's the other side of the coin that's being examined.

OTHER READERS' LOW RATING:
I'm so surprised to see this book's average rating on Goodreads and Amazon.com is not very high. I truly thought it was excellent and would recommend it to anyone, no second thoughts. Reading the criticism, some of it is pointless (that one doesn't know how to pronounce Siân's name because it's unusual), but other comments are understandable (Harriet and Stephen, the wronged spouses, are shadows and not very fleshed out) though the "problems" either didn't bother me or, in my opinion, didn't detract from the book and had a reason for being there/being that way.

OTHER GREAT ANITA SHREVE BOOKS (in no particular order):
The Last Time They Met (one of my favorite books of all time), Fortune's Rocks, Where or When, Resistance, Strange Fits of Passion, THE PILOT'S WIFE, All He Ever Wanted

Hated it!
This book is only 240 pages, but an absolute slog to get through.It follows, in excruciatingly detailed inner thoughts, two people who reconnect after thirty-one years.They're middle aged now, and guess what -- they're each other's soul mate!As usually happens with infidelity, they do far more harm to their families than to themselves.Charles is a total loser, Siân is vapid, neither has any kind of personality that would make them interesting to anyone but each other (and themselves, of course).The book jacket promises "a shocking conclusion" -- not!It's telegraphed from the beginning.

There are stupid inconsistencies, the most notable of which is this:if your business has gone bust, your office has been shuttered, your house is being foreclosed upon, and you're about to file for bankruptcy, how is it that your credit card is still allowing you to charge expensive hotel rooms, champagne, countless long distance phone calls from phone booths, and so on?

I've rarely been so happy to reach the end of any book.

Bleak and Depressing
This book is too close to reality.How many marriages end up in divorce?How many people leave their spouses for somebody they have met in a chat room?People who are bored and looking for more from life, dissatisfied with the known, looking for more fun, more excitement, somebody different. So goes this bookThis book reminds me of a long ago song.I can't remember the name but the song begins with 'turn back the hands of time, turn back the sands of time.'

Charles and Sian met in the summer, a pair of fourteen year olds, at a Christian church camp.This was a summer love lasting a week, then both had to return to their homes never to meet again until....

Years later they are in their mid 40s both unhappily married.Charles has never loved his wife.The question is why did he ever marry her,though he likes her better at the present than he had when he first married her.This was no shotgun wedding.The couple was married for sixteen years, their oldest child was fourteen.Charles' oldest child, a girl, looks very much like her father.He dotes on her.The two younger ones, a son and a daughter, resemble their mother.He is indifferent to these two.He is about to lose his house and his business; his wife has no idea of this.Charles is an alcoholic, drinks beer and stares across the ocean and wishes to be across the water in Portugal, far away from where hs is.He hates to go home, dislikes his insurance business which he took over from his sister when she became a widow.The economy in bad, Charles is ineffective at business, or both are the cause of him losing his home and livlihood.

Sian is a poet writing deep, dark, depressing poems.She fell in love with her husband, a strong silent type, then finds him to be too strong and silent.Stephen, her husband, is also unhappy.He is a farmer which he never wanted to be but all of his family were in farming so he feels he must make farming his life' work.The couple had a son who was killed in an automobile accident when he was nine.The couple has a three year old girl who was born to make up for the boy.

Charles sees one of Sian's poetry book then looks her up.The two have a romance in the cold dead of winter.Charles buys Sian gifts, books a room in a nice hotel, in fact the hotel that had once been the youth camp that both had gone too so many years ago.He takes her to dinner in a nice restaurant.All this when he is practically bankrupt and neglects his family.

There are the different seasons of their love, summer and winter, different periods of life, youth, middle age,the same hotel but put to different uses, a nice country hotel, years ago, a youth camp. The book ends tragically, a moral lesson.

Where or When: Anita Shreve
This book is for those that had a first love that got away! It's the story of first love that 'got away', from the male perspective.Both characters were married to other people in the story line, and had families of their own, and this is the first time that I've ever wanted the characters in this circumstance to be together-at all costs! I travel a lot in my job, and I couldn't wait to get on that next airplane so that I would have a chance to read more.The ending is very appropriate-it's the only true ending that would have worked!

Very depressing and unrealistic
I found this book at a library book sale for fifty cents and feel it was over priced! The premise was so unreal - an undying passion formed at the age of 14 that makes two people who have not seen each other in 30 odd years want to end their marriages, hurt their spouses and children and try to find what they had at age 14.I don't think with maybe the exception of Romeo and Juliet anyone falls that deeply in love at age 14.
And please someone tell me how to pronounce Sian!If it is Sean why not just say so.
A truly depressing book.Hard to believe it was by the same person that wrote Fortune's Rock. ... Read more

Product Description
Cast out of academia due to an amorous indiscretion, Fritz Tullis retreats to his familys estate in southern Maryland. While photographing a rare whooping crane whos flown off course, he notices a plane land on his neighbors airstrip. Three men get off the plane, and Fritz sees one man shoot another. The victim is loaded onto the plane, erasing all evidence of a murder. Shocked by his sightings, Fritz searches for answers and finds that the owner of the airstrip is a highly placed official at the State Department with a long history of connections to the CIA, and that the missing dead man was a foreign diplomat. Now, Fritz is more determined than ever to uncover what may be a deadly government conspiracy. Teaming up with a Washington attorney, a local police detective, his own mother, and a sexy ornithologist, Fritz launches into a harrowing investigation of one murder that leads to many moreperhaps his own. J.F. Freedmans previous thriller, Above the Law (Dutton, 2/00), was a Main Selection of The Literary Guild.Amazon.com Review
Penzler Pick, August 2001: J.F. Freedman is a wonderful storyteller whose six previous novels have been nothing less than compulsive page-turners. This, his latest, is no different.

Meet Fritz Tullis, lovable failure. He should be on top of the world. He comes from one of the most prestigious families in Maryland and, until recently, taught at the University of Texas. That all ended when he was discovered having an affair with the wife of one of the university's most generous donors. Now he's back on his mother's land living in a little shack, drinking too much, and indulging in the local women.

But Fritz is also an enthusiastic photographer who spends his early morning hours trying to get rid of a hangover. He takes a small boat to the marshy areas near Chesapeake Bay where he has been watching migrating birds, especially Ollie, a whooping crane (an endangered species) who seems to have lost his way and ended up with a group of sandhill cranes in the marshes of Maryland. Fritz knows that he should be informing a wildlife preservation group about this lost bird, but then the place would be overrun by activists, and there would go his privacy.

One morning as Fritz is watching Ollie he hears a small plane approaching the runway just across the creek. The land belongs to his mother, so Fritz turns his zoom lens towards the plane--and witnesses a murder. That night at his mother's house, Fritz is introduced to the new owner of that piece of property, James Roach, assistant secretary of state. From the moment he meets Roach, Fritz's life is in turmoil. He also meets Maureen O'Hara, the ornithologist from Harvard with the seductive name who just complicates his life further as he tries to keep Ollie's presence a secret. But in Bird's-Eye View nobody is quite who they seem to be, and the reader is kept in suspense until the very last page. --Otto Penzler ... Read more

Customer Reviews (29)

Real Suspense
First book I have read of this Author. I found his story line enjoyable and his craft of saying little but whispering a lot built a very good novel. The Characters envolved all had good personalitys which is important in fiction. There where a few times that a idea was stretched out to far but all in all there where few mistakes as such.
I would highly recommend his book, I found it quite readable.

Review by Nan Kilar and Bob Miller
Fritz Tullis was a successful professor at the University of Texas until he had an affair with the wrong (as in married) woman. He resigned while on leave of absence and is now living in a somewhat renovated sharecropper's shack on family property in southern Maryland. It's on the edge of a swamp where he fishes, photographs the many birds in the area and enjoys the solitude the place offers while he tries to get his head screwed on right.

One day while photographing the birds, he sees a small plane land across the water on the new neighbor's (James Roach) property. He witnesses a murder and vows to himself not to get involved. Then he learns the neighbor is the wealthy, shady assistant secretary of state. Fritz has been reckless most of his life and, against the advice of his lawyer friend, starts nosing into the life and misdeeds of Roach--to see that justice is done. He's soon in way over his head.

The story has a few twists and turns to keep your interest. And there's much more to the story than I've mentioned. This was my first experience with this author and there will be more.

Enjoyable read
My wife and I both liked this novel, and we're really not sure why anyone else wouldn't. The main character is slightly damaged goods, setting aside career and life's other ambitions, and hiding away in the boonies enroute to an undecided future. Not sure why that's apparently such a poor choice for a protagonist who is cast as an unlikely hero, but it did work for us. It's not realistic for all storybook heroes to be alpha male over-achievers who never take a step back to recover from their failures and disappointments.
I appreciated the author's brevity of language, and ability to make the characters accessible and real. The storyline kept me interested all the way through.
When I finished the book, I went looking for more by the same author. I was happy to add this one to my list of favorite authors.

International Intrigue comes home to roost in Maryland swamp
Freedman wrote one of my favorite thrillers ever--Against the Wind, and several dynamite follow-ups.This is not one of them.

The basic plot elements are all great.Ordinary guy falls on hard times, too much alcohol, too much self-pity, too much self-absorbtion.Then a series of events, rooted in gun running in decades past, mixed with political intrigue, conspire to intrude into hero's neat little self-contained world.

The plot twists and turns; no one is quite who we thing he (and, most significantly, she) is.The story unfolds with Freedman's great writing, and the pages keep turning.

Two problems.First, the scenes between Maureen and Franz feel extremely forced, and even to the point of being long winded.Second, the story simply peters out at the end.We don't know if the bad guy gets away with it.We don't know if true love will out.We don't even know what happens to the birds.

I suspect that Freedman got bored with thrillers, and tried to do something more "literary".The title is an excellent double (triple, more?) entendre--it is by viewing his birds that Franz gets sucked in; but it is also by trying to live life from a bird's point of view--above it all, with no cares about the world--that Franz gets sucked deeper and deeper into trouble.Finally, the whole problem is caused by the fact that Ollie (our hero's whooping crane) is not where he belongs--several thousand miles from Texas, where he "belongs".This is also Franz' problem, who got lost in Texas, and ended up a few hundred feet away from Ollie in the Maryland swamps.

Good read, but not as good as the other Freedman's I've read.

I'd Like to Give it More I Really Would
Again I feel the editorial reviews summed the plot up enough, it would be redundant if I gave an additional summary.
First though let me say I am a big fan of Freedman's works, however I couldn't in good conscience give this offering more than 3 stars.
As thriller's go it is interesting, and has many elements I look for in thrillers namely excellent characterization, after all if reader doesn't feel he/she can genuinely care or sympathize for characters why read the book? Freedman again presents an anti-hero worthy of readers' emotion, and it is not there I failed to totally fall for this story.
It is just not exceptional. The tie-in with Ollie the Crane was nice play on title, but the overall plot didn't make me go wow I've gotta stay up all night reading. I know Freedman is an extrememely talented writer and although this could be he most mature work I can't claim its his best. Having said that I am reviewing it not necessarily to give it the ol'2 thumbs up but to at least praise it as being worthy for a quick read. ... Read more