Sock Monkey Blues (Book) - 8/15/2002 4:56:22 PM
Outstanding Book!
After reading some favorable reviews, I had to read this book. Although I don't often read mysteries, I wanted to know what a Sock Monkey was.
I was certainly glad that I read this one. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved the character, Joe Box. As he found himself in one mess after another, his dry wit and sarcastic sense of humor had me laughing many times. Yet, there was a vulnerable side to him that made him a loveable guy.
While reading this story, I kept thinking that it would make a great movie.
I would highly recommend this book. It has plenty of mystery and suspense to keep you guessing, with just the right touch of humor added in.
This one is well worth the time and money. Great job Mr. Robinson.
Sock Monkey Blues (Book) - 6/9/2002 4:33:13 AM
This book was a delightful read in every way. If it isn't a best seller by now, it surely ought to be.
Mr. Robinson writes in the first person, from the perspective of Joe Box, Private Investigator. Joe is a transplanted Kentuckian, a Southern Gentleman of the old school, living and working in Cincinnati. Joe Box is a reluctant hero, a man who uses wry humor and his granny's old time wisdom to make sense out of a life gone dead some time ago. That and his taste for Cutty Sark is all that gets him through each empty day.
Early in the book we meet the inhuman nemesis, "Boneless Chuck". Our hero is outgunned, outmanned, and hopelessly trapped by the horrible aforementioned Chuck. Chuck has a taste for blood, for mind and body wrecking torture. Chuck likes to hurt, maim, and kill. It's at the point where Joe waits helpless for his life to end that we learn what got him into this predicament.
Joe has been hired by the wealthy Michael Taylor to find his missing daughter, and takes the case reluctantly when Taylor says it was GOD who sent him to Joe's agency. If there's one thing Joe Box does NOT believe in, it's a kindly God. What first seems to be the case of a rebellious daughter gone wild, slowly draws the reader in to share Joe Box's horror at the evil he uncovers. Joe stumbles onto the GeneSys corporation and genetic experimentation of the foulest kind imaginable. Nothing his beloved Granny ever told Joe could prepare him for GeneSys and Boneless Chuck. Joe will need the grace of God to make it through what Chuck and GeneSys dish out.
At first I expected this to be a humourous, tongue-in-cheek book with a Thomas Magnum, P.I.-type hero. I was wrong. The author DOES write with self-effacing humor and pulls it off effectively. But I was not prepared for his range, his ability to set a mood, for the sorrow that Joe Box wasted half his life reliving. And I learned that the title I thought so humorous represents a heart breaking episode in Joe's past - a revelation that caught me quite off guard.
John Laurence Robinson writes in a fresh style, with a distinctive "voice". He and Sock Monkey Blues are one of a kind. If the reading public is fortunate, he will follow this book with another, very soon.
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