Fallen Idols - Softcover

Freedman, J. F. F.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0446614181 ISBN 13: 9780446614184

Publisher: Warner Books, 2004

Synopsis

Our Parents are the Reason We Exist. From the New York Times bestselling author J. F. Freedman comes a roaring suspense thriller about one family's deadly encounter and the disturbing betrayals uncovered by three brothers. But What if Everything We Thought We Knew About Them...was Wrong? Walt Gaines is a prominent archaeologist, husband of thirty years, and father of three. But after his wife is murdered near an ancient Mayan ruin, he cuts off nearly all contact with his family. Now Walt's sons decide to perform an excavation of their own. Beyond their father's sudden change of lifestyle-his new million-dollar home and young girlfriend-the secrets the sons are about to unearth are more complex, and more devastating, than anything they could have imagined...

About this title

About the Author:

J. F. Freedman lives in Santa Barbara, California.

From Publishers Weekly:

Beyond lust, beyond vengeance, beyond murder lie the dark truths of retirement planning, all of them revealed in this flabby suspense novel by Freedman (Bird's-Eye View, etc.). When famed archeologist Walt Gaines ends up with unexplained wealth and a girlfriend half his age a year after his wife was killed on a Central American dig, his sons grow suspicious. Stolid yuppies that they are, they investigate by delving into Walt's asset portfolio, which they wheedle out of a succession of real estate agents, brokers and pension administrators in scenes that carry all the electricity of an appointment with a financial professional. The trail leads them to an illicit market for Mayan relics and the lair of a guerrilla chieftain, with nonviolent and inconsequential results, before the final revelation that readers will have seen coming a mile off. Freedman fills out the slack narrative with random, banal details ("he paid with his mileage-plus Visa card and put the Dodge Neon Hertz rental car on the same card"), a few solemn sex scenes and many lengthy exchanges of pop-psychology truisms ("We can't live in our grief forever, or it'll pull us under") with which Walt and his sons hash out their tepid sibling and Oedipal rivalries. Something might have been made of the Indiana Jonesish archeological noir premise, but Freedman's impoverished prose ("this [jaguar] was so unique a sighting that it had to have an incredible meaning to match its specialness") flattens the most exotic settings.-- was so unique a sighting that it had to have an incredible meaning to match its specialness") flattens the most exotic settings.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Warner Books
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0446614181
• ISBN 13: 9780446614184
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 500