Dirty Work (A Stone Barrington Novel Book 9)

Like a menage a trois that has become so predictable that it can only be boring, Stuart Woods extrudes another pile of poop. Wood's phallic driven hero hones in on a spy or two and he screws them both: one is British; the other is an Arab. The Brit is a Jane Bond type who does Stone when she's not doing for her country. The Arab changes wigs, clothing, and murder weapons as often as she hops into the sack with a stranger. Dino, the dummy, is there to give the appearance that there's an investigation going on. In reality, the book is just one adolescent fantasy after another. The plot twist, a buy out, is so puerile that I promised myself I'd finish the book just to write an accurate review. Here's a sample scene: the book ends when the Arab hottie mounts a 300 pound football player as if he were a horse, and demands he piggy back her out of a hotel filled with Feds & NYPD. Spoiler: Jane Bond shoots her in the throat. A prepubescent could have written this plot.

Wow, what a disappointment. I've read a few of the other bad reviews of this book and find myself agreeing with several main points.SPOILERS AHEAD::The biggest letdown was Stone's choosing the side of a serial assassin over the British Secret Service. The assassin not only had killed several British spies, but a number of totally innocent people whose deaths expedited her process. The bathroom attendant towards the end? Really? Stone, in weighing, his approach doesn't explicitly mention this victim. He also glosses over the New York lesbian whom was killed earlier in the book. The "lawyer confidentiality" thing came across to me as a pompous, overly officious angle that Woods shoehorned into the plot to provide the necessary "twist" that all murder mysteries require. And the misplaced fax? This was the most preposterous element of the book. Particularly the way in which the fax was misplaced. I realize that, according to Woods, a requisite sex scene needs to pop up every chapter or so, but the bank employee responsible for collecting faxes? And while I'm on the subject, why didn't the assassin check with the receiving bank to see if the transfer was made? Why did she only rely on the Swiss account, which was the secondary destination of the funds? Both accounts were in her control. Anyway, I now have to decide whether to continue reading the series. It's funny, the protagonist, Stone, is just not that likable any more.

This story follows on from "The Short Forever" with many of the same characters. The beautiful spy Barrington knows as "Carpenter" is back and visiting New York. Of course, she ends up spending time in Barrington's home and bed. She brought stuffy old Mason along. We find out Carpenter's real name: "Felicity Devonshire." Woods takes this opportunity to contrast the philosophies of Barrington, the cop, and Carpenter, the spy. Woods introduces Marie-Therese du Bois, a super villain who has taken the job of killing a bunch of British spies, many of whom took part in the murder of her parents when she was a small child. Mason and Carpenter were two of the spies who participated in killing M-T's parents. Things get interesting when Stone hires a youn man to get photos of an adultorous couple and things do not go quite right. The photographer falls into a skylight and kills the cheating man. Or does he? the man was already dead at the hand of his masseus who turns out to be Marie-Therese. Now we find that, rather than just being in New York to visit with Stone, Carpenter was chasing the girl, Marie-Therese who is considered a major criminal in Europe. Dino captures the girl but then discovers he can't hold her. There are no living witnesses against her. This is mainly because Carpenter and her friends leave the witnesses in no condition to testify after getting the information they want!Stone is bothered by this aspect of Carpenter's character. Near the end he sees her fire two fatal shots into a "bad guy" whose gun was empty. This tears it for Stone. Woods handles this divergence very well. We have enough information to see justification for Stone's view and for Felicity's view.

Keep to Read AgainThis review is for the Signet (Penguin Group) paperback edition, October 2003, 348 pages of story. DIRTY WORK was on the USA Today's Top 150 Best-Selling books list for 9 weeks between April and November 2003, reaching the peak position of 33. Stuart Woods has 31 novels on the USA Today best-seller list.The series character Stone Barrington is a lawyer, unmarried, living in an office/home that is a mansion in New York. He also has a cottage up in Connecticut, buys two dozen tailor made shirts at a time without asking the price, and never has less than twenty-five thousand cash in his safe. He is not the sort you would expect to get his hands soiled doing dirty work, but he does. Stone accepts the task of hiring a young photographer to snap pictures of a tryst so a very rich lady can dump her cheating husband without losing a dime. The job goes badly. The photographer kid falls through a skylight and lands on the husband who has just died. And so begins a tale of, spies, murder, a talented female assassin and a randy lady from M15 or M16.This is a good story if you like vanilla thrillers and need a beach read or cannot sleep on long airplane flights. Neither plot nor prose will strain your brain. When you finish, do not give the book away. Keep it to read again for no doubt you will soon forget what it was all about.

If you like Stuart Woods's writing and characters, you won't be disappointed. They're great for escapism, and they're page-turners, but there's really nothing that you haven't seen many times in his stories: everyone succeeds well at what they do, every character has either a trust fund, a divorce settlement, or a huge inheritance. No one lacks for money or means, and Barrington has no trouble getting laid. But if you enjoyed one of these books, you will enjoy all of them.

Nothing new. Nothing special. The same old Stone Barrington. The same old jokes. What ever happened to the author who wrote "Chiefs" or "Grass Roots".

Excellent as Always, easy read.

Good story, good value, big fan of Stuart Woods.books.

前作のShort Foreverに比べ、展開にスピード感があって、最後の3分の１は一気に読める。　スパイものの味付けはあるが、本来のStoneシリーズに戻ったような感じがします。　テロリストに共感を覚えるのはかまいませんが、何の関係もない人たちを次々と殺していく女性に共感を覚えるのはいかがなものかと思いました。　一作ごとにストーリーが工夫されており、面白いのですが、地道な事件も扱わないと、そのうち種切れになってしまいそうで心配しています。

このシリーズはやっぱりすらすら読めます。読みやすいけど中身が薄いというわけではなく、Woodsの全作に渡る傾向として文体が（私には）取っつきやすい感じがしてます。ストーリーは前作からの流れでイギリスからカーペンターがNYにやってくるところから始まり、いつものようにディノとの漫才めいた会話を楽しんでいる内に本業の方で受けた依頼（浮気現場の証拠写真撮影）がカーペンターとシンクロして、テロリストと御懇意になるというところ。雇ったカメラマンの若造が起こした不始末から、巡り合わせが悪くて当たった判事が強面で、保釈金に大金を要求されしかもそのカメラマンが逃げ出したもんだから、さぁ大変。そのカメラマンが撮った写真に写っていた浮気相手の女をカーペンターが見たところから話は急展開。話の流れ・スピード感も充分です。ただ、ラスト近くで四人も殺されるのですが、その理由というか発端があれではちょっと可哀相かな。