Book Review Of Landmark Position By Alan Rolnick
- Posted by Essays Blog in Essays Blog |
- December 29th, 2008 |
- Comments
A novel based around real estate in Miami, I was not convinced that I would enjoy it. I had thoughts of tawdry love affairs among realtor’s, and board room struggles between power brokers. But, instead I found a hugely entertaining, and broadside splittingly funny novel that makes me chuckle every time I accompany the cover. This is humor at its real apex. Humor is a hard genre to be booming in but this author definitely has ‘The Compose Block.’
Alan Rolnick has created a description of life in Miami with Landmark Position that deserves a attack on the best seller list. The characters are chaotic, bent politicians, bent land developers, and even a Ponzi connive tangled in for good measure, and what finer background than Miami?
The hero in our account is attorney Steven Benjamin Bluestone, Benjy to his friends. Benjy is a delightful character, and as he explains early in the book, he became an attorney because his father was one, but he has little interest in haggle and courtroom drama preferring the more calm identify of lawyering that involves breathing Cuban cigars and ogling adolescent ladies! He avoids at all cost the class of Real Estate, ‘Dirt Lawyers’ is how he describes them.
Regrettably for Benjy an old client returns, one who had old his services in a divorce (something else that Benjy doesn’t do), and persuades him to assist in a ‘dirt deal’. If Benjy has a fault it is not being able to have no, when ex client, and friend Walter, who also happens to own one of Benji’s favorite lachrymation holes needs ‘dirt help’, he leaps, albeit reluctantly, into the ride of his life.
The rather decrepit Century Club that Walter owns has short become a much coveted piece of dirt. And thither are few lengths that an crooked developer will not go to assured it’s ownership.
The characters that Alan Rolnick has created are chaotic. But they are so advantageously crafted they accept on a reality in the readers mind. From the accident prone Benjy, to the money hungry mayor Oscar Torres, the even money hungrier would be land developer Chuck Steinbeck and his somewhat aging award woman Evelyn, they are all so advantageously described I can guarantee you will love them. And these are just the beginning, we also have love interest from the Mayors niece Delia, we have Raj the Cigar Man, oh, and of course Rico the bungling bodyguard!
This is a riotous book, you are laughing on page one, and you are allay laughing on the last page. Thither are cars wrecked, planes burned, Hoodoo curses, even cemeteries desecrated, and this is all achieved with a dark humor that I find hard to believe comes from a first time author. This is also a book that would changeover easily into a real real funny movie. And I did note that Alan Rolnick is not only an attorney, and an author, he is also a director, so come on Alan, make it happen!