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the complete review - fiction

Walking the Cat

by
John Calvin Batchelor

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B- : Enjoyable read. Not entirely consistent, and a bit far-fetched, but enough good parts to keep you entertained.

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries

Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
Boston Globe	.	10/1/91	Mark Feeney
Chicago Trib.	.	16/6/1991	Helen Dudar
Kirkus Reviews	.	15/3/1991	.
The LA Times	.	3/6/1991	Carolyn See
Publishers Weekly	B	19/4/1991	--
Village Voice	.	7/5/1991	Albert Mobilio
The Washington Post	.	18/7/1991	Douglas Glover

  From the Reviews:

• "This is a superb book. We ought to elect John Calvin Batchelor as President. Or at the very least, we should buy his book, and scrounge around for that first one on G. Gordon Liddy." - Carolyn See, The Los Angeles Times

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       The second memoir by spy-novelist Tommy "Tip" Paine, subtitled Gordon Liddy is my Muse II, begins breezily enough. Smart -- but not smart enough -- Paine gets drawn into a complicated blackmail scheme by his wealthy neighbor's Korean governess, Rosie. The neighbor, Charles Parcell, is entangled in a nightmarish double (triple...) dealing mess and Paine winds up volunteering to help set things right. Lied to by basically everyone involved Paine thinks he can muddle his way through, and he does.

       There is much too much money involved in this book -- and everyone has too much of it, Paine included. Batchelor can't keep up his clever, witty style consistently and the book flags and slogs through the middle, though he does tie things up neatly at the end. Gordon Liddy may again be his muse, but the book could actually use more of his inspiration and less of some of the more fanciful twists Batchelor comes up with. It is an entertaining read, and though Batchelor overextends himself, plotwise, it is a decent book that we can recommend.

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Links:

• Kirkus Reviews
• The Los Angeles Times
• Publishers Weekly
• The Washington Post

• Gordon Liddy is my Muse

• See Index of Contemporary American fiction
• See Index of Series and Sequels under review

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About the Author:

       American author John Calvin Batchelor was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania in 1948.

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