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Title: TOO MANY AT SLOPPY JOE'S?
Review: This is nowhere as good as Islands in the Stream. The story is in the first 123 pages. Racist labelings apart, the prose is quite gripping up to that point. Then the protagonist Cap'n Harry Morgan gets forgotten and some drunk and not very interesting characters squabble in the bar and in the bedroom, who really have very little to do with the plot, except to justify the title (these are the Have's). Harry Morgan is basically a good, hard-livin' guy who likes to drink and fish (like Hemingway), but it's as though the author ran out of steam with him. A deeper plot, with less time gaps and jumping about between characters might have made this a much better novel, but you'll find trademark H. understatement and great descriptions of the sea, especially of a marlin jumping out of the water.
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