The Death and Life of Bobby Z (original) (raw)
Author 10 books7,082 followers
This is another excellent, fast-moving novel from Don Winslow. The protagonist is a lifelong loser named Tim Kearney who is doing a stint in San Quentin when he gets into a beef with a Hells Angel named Stinkdog. Knowing that Stinkdog will be looking to kill him, Kearney, a former Marine, makes a preemptive strike, cutting Stinkdog's throat with a sharpened license plate. Kearney knows, however, that his reprieve will be short-lived. The murder makes him a three-time loser. He can expect to spend the rest of his life as a guest of the state of California, but that's of little consequence. Kearney knows that it will only be a matter of days or weeks until the Hells Angels take their revenge and kill him for murdering one of their own.
Just in the nick of time, though, Kearney gets the luckiest break of his life when a DEA agent named Tad Gruza offers to get him out of jail permanently in return for doing the DEA a small favor. Gruza explains that a notorious Mexican drug dealer named Don Huertero is holding a DEA agent captive. Huertero has offered to exchange the agent for a drug dealer named Bobby Z that the feds are holding. Sadly, though, unbeknownst to anyone outside of the DEA, Bobby Z has died of a heart attack while in custody and so it looks like the exchange is off.
It turns out, however, that Tim Kearney is the spitting image of Bobby Z and Gruza proposes that Kearney impersonate Bobby Z for the purpose of the exchange. Once the swap has been made, Gruza promises to extricate Kearney and let him run away and start his life anew. It's a scary idea, but a lot more palatable than sitting around in prison waiting for the Hells Angels to execute him and so Kearney agrees.
Inevitably, of course, as the exchange is to be made, the grand plan goes to hell in a handbasket. Kearney winds up in the hands of Huertero's people who treat him like royalty while awaiting the boss's arrival at a luxurious compound belonging to one of his henchmen. Kearney discovers, though, that Huertero actually intends to torture and kill him because the real Bobby Z apparently stole a large sum of money from him.
Kearny now finds himself on the run from the drug dealers, the cops and, of course the Hells Angels who still want his hide as well. His chances of survival look pretty grim, but he intends to give it his best shot and wreak as much havoc on his enemies as he can before he succumbs.
This is a very entertaining novel and Kearney, for all is faults, is a tremendously appealing protagonist. Winslow tells the story in staccato bursts of narrative and dialog that seem perfectly suited to the subject and that keep you turning the pages. Winslow has gone on to even bigger and much better things since this book first appeared twenty-three years ago, but fans of the author who don't know this book will certainly want to search it out.
682 reviews167 followers
I listened to the audio version of The Death and the Life of Bobby Z mainly just to get a feel for the author before I tackle the considerably heftier The Power of the Dog. This book was of course turned into the film of the same name staring the late Paul Walker, so it’s always interesting to compare the two.
Currently serving a life sentence without parole, decorated Gulf War veteran Tim Kearney gets a poisoned chalice of an offer from the DEA to impersonate the notorious and now dead drug smuggler Bobby Zacharias and to be honest, it’s not the deal of a lifetime.
Freedom is freedom though and having just slashed the throat of a Hell’s Angel wrecking ball, whatever’s in store for him on the outside is going to be a damn site more preferential to the waves of revenge heading his way.
The deal, he’s about to be exchanged for the captured DEA agent Arthur Moreno and given to Don Huertero, a Mexican druglord and yeah, it doesn’t sound like an monumentally rejoiceful moment for our hero and token loser.
And it doesn’t take long for him to get right in the middle of a seriously fucked up situation, snatched at gunpoint, held prisoner in the desert, waiting for the Don. Luckily though he’s a US Marine, the greatest soldiers on the planet and we then step into the realms of predictability with an escape, tracked by Indians, loads of killing etc.
Our hero then actually comes into the role of Bobby Z with a bit of a flourish but unfortunately there’s a shit load of baggage that comes with it and a lot of people wanting to end his life.
The only thing to set this apart from other stories of similar persuasion was the rescue of a kid, the real Bobby Z’s son, which sort of stopped the story going dark and dirty. There’s some snippets of humour in there amidst the betrayals and gunfire. All told the narration was good, the story and plot were good, characters were ok if not a bit cliché and that summed it up for me, just sort of OK.
Also posted at http://paulnelson.booklikes.com/post/...
2015-books-read crime-thrillers
113 reviews14 followers
Read my reviews at http://jenchaosreviews.com
Don Winslow
Vintage Crime/Black Lizard September 12, 2006; Reprint edition August 1, 2012
259 Pages, Hardcover
RATING: 5 Stars
Tim Kearney, a small-time criminal, slits the throat of a Hell's Angel in prison earning him a life sentence and certain death. When offered a chance to impersonate the late Bobby Z- an infamous drug smuggler-so the DEA can swap him for one of their own being held hostage in a drug cartel's compound, he takes the chance. A mix up happens at the exchange in Mexico, and suddenly Tim is in the cartel's lavish home and being treated like royalty. He meets Elizabeth, Bobby's ex and her son. Everything is fine and like a great vacation until bullets fly, and things get bloody. He goes on the run like never before through the vast Mexican desert with everyone dogging his trail. With military training, a keen sense of desert and a good sense of humor, does Tim make it out of this alive with the boy and Elizabeth, or has he signed everyone's death warrant?
RATING: 5 Stars
REVIEW:
From start to finish this book packed action, comedy, and intrigue in it with the stroke of one man's hand. Tim Kearney, a luckless small-time crook, in jail for something stupid, does something he would later regret only to do something that may not even be worth it. Given promises of freedom by the DEA, he goes for this strange arrangement to fall for Bobby's ex and become enchanted by a little boy who has no business being in a cartel house.
Tim left the cartel house when things got bad, and the journey through the Mexican Desert was replete with the accurate descriptions regarding geography and, yes, climate. But the heat is on him, drug lords, angry Hell's Angels, Native trackers, and cops are all on his trail and getting closer by the minute. This story takes several twists, while he tries desperately to stay ahead of the enemies.
I have to admit; this was an unexpected book. I thought I had it all figured out. However, this writer is very good at writing in twists. He is also good at throwing in surprises at the very end. This left me in mystery. I enjoyed that.
WRITING:
The writing exhibited someone of great talent and a strong aptitude for imagination. Something like this came from someone who is very creative. Though I have seen stories about impersonation before, this particular story was different. It did not contain any of the cliche stuff you see on T.V. or in movies. He wrote it so well; I was never bored. His descriptions of Southern California and Mexico were also very well described and designed in such a way that one can see it in their mind.
PLOT:
The story was consistent and flowed well. The plot was thick with action and intrigue. You never knew what was going to happen one page to the next. This is how it should be. Tie this with the subplots and a surprise at the end then you've got a perfect and satisfying ending. I enjoyed this book immensely.
WHAT I LIKED:
I Liked the way everything was designed including characters. Not so much worldbuilding, like in Fantasy, but along those lines. Mr. Winslow made the deserts come alive, and the people seem real. This is a very high point in a story.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:
I liked the ending, but I wish it would have had something else to it. It almost seemed as if he got tired of writing the book and said: "oh well, let's just do this." It wasn't bad; it just could have ended better.
OVERALL IMPRESSION:
This is a book that would interest anyone who is an action fanatic or someone who likes to read about drug cartels. I do like action, but not drug cartel stories. I tried reading The Power of the Dog and realized that it's not my thing. Tim Kearney seems like a stupid guy, however, under pressure and fear for death put him in a position to take control and use his brain. I have to say that this impressed me. This is a good book, Don Winslow is a fantastic storyteller, and I would read other books of his (as long as it's not about drug cartels).
861 reviews378 followers
Losers don't get dreams, losers have to settle for real life
And Tim Kearney is your quintessential loser in Don Winslow's relentless, fast-paced noir thriller.
Bobby Z is a Laguna Beach legend; surfer, drug dealer, all round cool guy and as it happens has a doppelganger in three time felon and dishonourably discharged marine Tim Kearney. DEA agents want to utilise Kearney's looks to fool a Mexican drug cartel but nothing goes to plan for anyone in the ensuing cross country flight/blood bath.
With Bobby Z Winslow takes some typical genre tropes of the classic film noir period, merged them with some classic hard-boiled prose and updated the whole lot for 21st century readers. His plotting is so brilliantly convoluted and reliant on many a deus ex machina that Chandler himself would be proud of and his characters so wildly improbably that true fans of the genre are guaranteed to revel in their behaviour. The speed at which the narrative is developed is phenomenal, this is highlighted several times as Tim keeps taking time out to breath, calm down, think things through, whilst in lesser works this might serve to actually slow the novel down; in this case it merely drives the plot onwards even more relentlessly, in a similar style to Duane Swierczynski's breakneck pace.
Winslow makes a habit of all of this, you can pick up any one of his books and find the same enthusiasm for and appreciation of his genre roots, which readers reactions cannot help but reflect. I challenge anyone to read something as unashamedly giddy as a Winslow novel and not be incredibly happy that they are sharing the authors delight.
The content is admittedly dark and gruesome at times but this balances out with many light hearted moments distributed liberally throughout the story and a relationship between Bobby Z and a six year old boy that works as a wonderful Thelma & Louise type buddy journey, a vehicle for growth in the protagonist and a chance to lighten the mood at just the right moments with some charming observations from the author.
Winslow's/Kearney's voice in this one was incredibly reminiscent of Huston's/Web's in The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death; these likeable loser characters are both relatively normal people thrust in to extraordinary situations and dealing with them in a manner that suits their well written background stories, the kind of believability that you just don't find in your typical populous unit-shifting genre fare. Just one more reason why both these authors are at the very forefront of modern noir writing.
They made a movie of this, it stars Paul Walker and Morpheus. I'm scared to watch it. I just can't imagine anybody having read this wonderful novel, understood its intentions and then thought to themselves that PAUL WALKER!!!!!! could be Tim Kearney. Sure the guy is supposed to be a bit of a surfer but not a wooden piece of wood with no range like the awful Walker is in every movie he is ever in. Sadly it looks as though it will be yet another notch in the disaster column for Don Winslow movie adaptations.
Author 7 books97 followers
The Death and Life of Bobby Z is the book that started Don Winslow on his “drugs in Laguna” series, which isn’t actually a series as much as an attitude and state of mind that led eventually to Savages and its prequel.
Tim Kearney is a three-time loser who gets fished out of a certain-death trip back to prison by a DEA agent who gives him an offer he can’t refuse: impersonate legendary Laguna Beach dope dealer Bobby Z and let himself get traded to a Mexican drug cartel in exchange for a kidnapped DEA agent. I probably don’t have to mention that things go horribly wrong, and eventually much of both sides of the law in Southern California want Tim dead.
Bobby Z seems to be the first appearance of what has now become the “Don Winslow voice” – crazy, slangy, attitudinal, and profane. His previous efforts (the Neal Carey mysteries) appear to be much more conventional and comparatively sedate. The characters change names but have become standards in this “series” – the loser hero, the cool-girl goddess, the psychotic killers, the megawealthy dope dealers, the massively bent cops. Here they’re in their prototype form, a little rough around the edges but still entertaining. Serial screwup though he may be, Tim works out as a pretty okay guy to hang with. The dialog (external and internal) is on the mark, the settings filled in enough to picture in the film version. The prose goes down easy and fast.
As you’d expect for the start of a new adventure, not everything goes together as well as it will down the road. Here the problem is mostly one of plotting, in that too much of it hinges on coincidence or dumb luck. Tim tends to catch all the breaks and the bad guys hardly any, which can get annoying after a while. Also, Winslow hadn’t yet started imbuing his supporting characters with the same level of humanity as his lead; probably the most vivid secondary player is a six-year-old boy.
Winslow had six novels under his belt when he wrote Bobby Z, but with it he radically changes not only his style but milieu (both in fiction and in fact; he moved from New York to California before he wrote it). That’s a hard trick to pull off in any context, and it seems almost churlish to fault him for bobbling it. I’d give this three and a half if we had half-stars, but we don’t, so I’m rounding down to three in fairness to the later works. If you haven’t read Winslow before, start with Savages or Dawn Patrol and backtrack; if you have, then go for it and see where those other books came from.
In style, a terrific hearkening to Christopher Brookmyre and Donald Westlake: hilarious & punchy as well as grim, leaning toward the former. Also, the book is lean in a great Ross McDonald kind of way (plus there's that SoCal setting), although admittedly it's completely different in tone. I could have done w/o the graphic sex scenes. Such scenes don't bother me when they're instrumental to the plot, but just like anything else that is a dead alley in a book, they're annoying, and if it's a sex scene and it's unnecessary and gratuitous, then it just feels like a cheap way to shoehorn in some porn. Yeah, whatever, but totally unnecessary here b/c everything else in this book - story, quality of the writing, characters - totally rocks.
129 reviews21 followers
Tim Kearney es un perdedor, campeón mundial del fracaso, pero cuando tiene que suplantar a Bobby Z, se le abre un mundo lleno de posibilidades.
Moteros del sur de California, mexicanos con sed de venganza, indios rastreadores, droga, surf, desierto... Todo eso en poco menos de 300 páginas.
He oído mucho, muchísimo, hablar de este autor y sé que su obra cumbre es "El poder del perro", pero quería empezar por esta novela, una de sus primeras obras, y he de reconocer que me gusta su estilo. El mayor peso se lo llevan los diálogos que son buenísimos. Es ágil, con un ritmo endiablado, capítulos cortos y mucho humor ácido con grandes dosis de acción.
Don Winslow pasa a estar en mi lista de favoritos de este año.
1,072 reviews36 followers
I've been a fan of Don Winslow for some time now, having begun with his more recent novels. The Death and Life of Bobby Z was (possibly) his first novel and, as such, shows some rough around the edges characteristics. Nevertheless, it possesses all the earmarks of a Winslow work-- gritty, fast paced action and plot development, populated by deeply flawed, yet somehow memorable and, dare I say, lovable characters. Dialogue is punchy and direct, lending depth to the reading experience.
The story revolves around a three time loser named Tim Kearney, a convicted felon in prison who finds himself presented with an "offer he can't refuse" from a rather unscrupulous DEA agent. Seems our boy Tim is the spittin' image of a legendary drug smuggler called "Bobby Z" and with some preparation, the DEA can trade this imposter for a captured agent in a shady exchange at the Mexico border.
But as readers of Winslow know, that won't come off as planned, and before too long, Kearney is running from drug lords, Hell's Angels, a tough-as-nails cowboy and his native tracker, as well as the DEA. Oh, and in case you're bored by such predicaments, he's got a six year old boy who is the real Bobby Z's illegitimate son in tow, saving the lovable little guy from a rather unsavory cast of degenerates. It's complicated.
Of course it is. That's what makes this, and most all of Winslow's novels, so damned engaging. This one has more than its share of over-the-top scenarios in which credulity has been seemingly banned, but forgiving that, it adds up to a very entertaining and touching novel. If you're a Winslow fan, be sure to include this one.
469 reviews
This was the 2nd book I've read by Don Winslow and I'm already thinking about what book of his to read next! His books are just so much fun to read, with crazy plots, wild characters, lots of action, suspense and violence, but with just enough humor to make light of the "heavy" and the "dark".
In this story, a small town criminal, Tim Kearney, gets a life sentence for slitting the throat of a Hell's Angel, while in jail. The DEA makes Tim an offer to impersonate a well known drug smuggler, known as Bobby Z, so that the DEA can trade Tim for DEA agent who's been captured by a major Mexican drug king. So Tim accepts the offer and you'll have to read the book to find out anything else. Believe me, the plot unfolds at record speed with cops, robbers, indians, women, kids, bikers, and even a mystic! To top it all off is Don Winslow's writing. Without it, this would just be one of the thousands of books out there that incorporate all these things. But Winslow's writing is what makes this a one-of-a-kind great novel.
Author 11 books216 followers
A fun, fizzy thriller that starts off at a gallop and rarely lets up the pace. Tim Kearney, a decorated Marine with a serious impulse control problem, is serving some serious prison time when he kills a biker who'd threatened him. Now he's facing certain death inside prison from the biker's pals. So a DEA agent offers him a deal: Impersonate a legendary drug dealer whom he resembles, enabling the DEA to trade him to a Mexican drug lord in exchange for a captured DEA agent. After that he's free to go.
But the exchange goes horribly awry and Kearney, in the guise of uber-cool California surfing/pot-dealing legend Bobby Z, winds up on the run through the Mexican desert with Bobby Z's six-year-old son in tow.
The writing is sharp and funny as ever with Winslow's work, and the relationship between Kearney and little Kit is nicely rendered. There are some interesting twists to the plot as more and more bad guys join the hunt for Kearney/Z, sometimes tripping over (and killing) each other.
The biggest weakness in the book is the lead female character, a woman named Elizabeth who prefers to be called a "courtesan" rather than what she really is. As in his deeper, longer drug-dealer novel "The Power of the Dog," she serves little purpose except for a dash of exposition and a lot of slobbery sex writing. She doesn't even serve as a fulcrum for the plot, as in the sleeker, more violent thriller "Savages." Now that I've read a lot of Winslow's thrillers, I have to say that his strongest female character is the female deputy in "California Fire & Life," and I surely wish he'd try writing a book where the main female character at least shares the heavy lifting with the macho man lead.
But maybe I'm thinking too hard about a book that doesn't really require you to do more than just grab hold and hang on tight until the last loop-de-loop.
460 reviews28 followers
Lifelong loser Tim Kearney looks an awful like legendary drug smuggler Bobby Z. Tim has temper, a tough luck streak, absolutely nothing going for him, and crosshairs on his head. Bobby Z is laid back, cool, and tough. The DEA needs Tim to act as an imposter for a prisoner exchange with a powerful cartel. A la Kegemusha. Chaos descends upon the exchange and Tim must flee as the cool Bobby Z.
After being mildly disappointed with Savages and blown away by Power of the Dog, I wasn't sure what to think of Winslow. I went into Bobby Z with low expectations figuring that Power of the Dog was perhaps a one hit wonder. I was wrong. Winslow has got some chops. He combines cool characters with hip prose. His unconventional style makes the pages fly as the reader becomes engrossed in Bobby Z's survival on the run. At times Bobby Z feels like it was written for frat boys who like to say "like" and "Bro Chi Minh" but it dawned on me that this is part of Winslow's message. Some of the bad guys are yuppies and too cool for school. These characters do not get as many pages as the flawed main character or a shady-assed DEA agent. For me, Winslow is mocking society by saying these douchebags may run the show for a while but will fold like hot laundry when confronted by outside forces like the Hell's Angels or two bit convicts.
Like Power of the Dog, Bobby Z has a spiritual side to it. Power of the Dog focused on losing faith whereas Bobby Z deals with prophecy and salvation. Witnessing Tim's transformation, along with Bobby Z's, shapes the narrative and forces the reader to sympathize. These sort of antiheroes are the best to read about.
If you're looking for some clever writing and thrilling action, look no further. Bobby Z will scratch the itch for crime enthusiasts who appreciate new voices and those who enjoy classic formulas.