Cari Mora by Thomas Harris (2019) Readers salivating for a rich, ripe full bodied thriller from the "Silence Of The Lambs" author felt gypped, cheated, ripped off.........
We didn't.
We laughed, chuckled and smirked all the way through it.........which is what we think Harris had in mind all along.
It hardly functions as a novel anyway. It's more like a 'Greatest Hits' compilation of every gruesome, repulsive, cringe inducing sequence that Harris tried to work into his other novels but couldn't find the space or justification for..........
So he just strung 'em all together in a gore-soaked hodge podge that reads like a quickie novelization of some cheeseball horror movie going straight to Netflix.
Once we got the hang of it, we realized we weren't reading a novel at all......but more like a desperate screenwriter's pitch to a skeptical studio head........throwing everything against the wall to see if any of it sticks.......
It you accept it that way, then the book's freakin' hilarious..........a crazy funhouse ride with loads of pop-up monsters coming at you while you get spun around in circles.........
Our prime antagonists here: Monster-In-Chief Hans-Peter Schneider, a hairless horror who deliberately mutilates his captured sex-slaves for sale to 'specialized' clients.
His new object of obsession: Cari Mora, a beautiful Columbian hottie who's housekeeping in the bayside Miami mansion he's leased........for the sole purpose of digging up 25 million in gold that Drug kingpin Pablo Escobar supposedly buried there.
Cari, however, is a force to be reckoned with, having survived a horrific bloody childhood where she was abducted by the Columbian communist rebels to function as a kid soldier and perpetual rape target.
The hunt for the gold turns indescribably barbarous, pitting Hans-Peter and his band of ugly thugs against an equally violent, ruthless drug lord and his gang.........and everybody involved is not averse to double, triple and even quadruple-crossing each other......
Cari Mora herself pitches in to help pile up the body count of people shot, stabbed, decapitated, chomped in half by a crocodile or dissolved in acid.........good clean fun for all........
By now, you should get the idea that we're not reviewing this book as anything like a piece of literary fiction........
We see it as a junky, clunky spunky Guilty Pleasure........like a slightly overlong synopsis of some trashy movie scheduled for production........with only the juicy, gooey good parts left in......you know, all the stuff that makes you shriek with delight, "Ohhh no.....that did not just happen!!!"
Oh yes it does. And then some. (And as icing on the cake for us, Harris even takes a few moments to lob a zinger at Trump's inhuman war on immigrants....)
If you buy and read this book, don't file it with your other hardbacks. It's proper place would be sitting up against your DVD copy of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's"Grindhouse" double feature.......
And try not to get butter popcorn stains on the pages as you turn them...4 stars (****)
No comments:
Post a Comment