Title: Loses a star because he is often a good author
Review: This was a shrug-worthy book. I am a fan of this particular author, having read his superb novels that he ghost wrote. Here, sadly, I think that he was trying to recreate that tangled web of intrigue that surrounded the Karp family delivered with humor and insight. But it was not to be. In my opinion, he drove every character or plot device into the ground and I stopped caring whether the treasure was real, whether the waif bookbinder was a player or a victim, whether the self-loving lawyer would redeem himself, and so on. Every so often there was that Karp magic and the special command of the English language that the author owns. On its own this was probably a three star book, but I give a special demerit for a favored author who made me not care.
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