Act of Revenge
By Robert K. Tanenbaum
Reviewed by Ina R. Bort
From the New York Law Journal (1999)
"Calgon, take me away!"
Remember that bubble bath commercial? It featured a frazzled housewife, whose image on the screen was gradually occluded by images of every source of stress in her life: the crying infant, the barking Labrador, the telephone ringing off the hook.
Add one more image: a surly mobster wielding a loaded rifle, and you'd have a reasonable approximation of the life of Marlene Ciampi, the leading lady of Act of Revenge, Robert Tanenbaum's latest.
Marlene, of course, is much too tough for bubble bath. And even if she wanted to take one, there's no way she'd have the time. The former chief of the rape and sex crimes unit at the Manhattan D.A.'s office, Marlene has turned to a life of sometimes-crime herself, providing "security" services to battered women's shelters, abortion clinics, and the like. Her resume includes the vigilante-style fatal shootings of at least two wife-beaters and the "dirtiest mouth in the five boroughs, not excluding Margo the Transvestite down by the Manhattan Bridge."
Despite these esteemed credentials, Marlene has one rather significant shortcoming: she's a lousy mom. She and her husband, Assistant Manhattan D.A. Roger ("Butch") Karp, have three children: fourteen year-old Lucy, and two four-year old twins. As portrayed by Tanenbaum, Marlene has almost no relationship with the offspring, and an only slightly better one with their father. She's often too swamped with work to join the family for a lovely take-out dinner. And when she is at home, she's so strung out from the routine brushes with death that her job entails that she can't possibly converse with them, let alone fulfill her maternal responsibilities. Instead, she usually settles down on the sofa with a generous glass of red wine, her eyelids at half-mast.
In stark contrast, we've got everybody's Number One Dad, Butch Karp. Butch, unlike his wife, is able to balance the demands of work and home quite nicely. Sure, he's tracking down the toughest felons in town by day, but at night, he's there to change diapers, play checkers, and listen to the latest trials and tribulations in the life of his teenage daughter.
Tanenbaum wastes no time in highlighting the differences between Butch and Marlene. In Chapter One, we first hear of Marlene through a phone call to Lucy, telling her she'll be unable to pick her up and instructing her to take a taxi home instead. Yet when Lucy arrives home that same evening (after witnessing a double murder, but that's another story), her loving father awaits her and she "sidle[s] up to h[im] and clutches him about the waist."
These differences become only more glaring as the book proceeds. For as each becomes increasingly entrenched in the respective murders he and she has been hired to solve, Butch nobly holds down the fort at home while Marlene cycles rapidly towards a state akin to nervous breakdown. One can't help but think that Tanenbaum harbors the opinion that mothers just aren't cut out for certain things. Like work, for instance. Had he told a compelling story, perhaps this divergence wouldn't have grated on my nerves so much. Unfortunately, however, this was not the case.
This novel, apparently the most recent installment in a series featuring Ciampi and Karp, tells the likely tale of a double murder of Chinatown thugs and its connection to the assassination of a mob chieftain — a murder that has confounded the D.A.'s office for months. As if that plot line weren't sufficiently convoluted, Tanenbaum, for good measure, throws in a third story, involving the mysterious death, twenty years back, of Jerry Fein — a "mobbed up" attorney who took his own life (or so everyone has assumed) by jumping off the Empire State Building. Jumping Jerry's daughter, Vivian, hires Marlene to get to the bottom of her father's death. Coincidentally, Vivan is married to a mafioso who may be involved in the very same murder that Butch is investigating!!!
Confused? Of course you are. Each one of these stories, which would have provided ample plot fodder, become completely unmanageable when intertwined. Not to mention utterly boring. The ugly truth is that by the time "all is revealed" in the final pages, you're more likely than not to have abandoned the efforts to get there.
To make matters worse, Tanenbaum has a cast of characters that are one-dimensional at best and, at worst, typecast to an almost offensive degree. The Asian gang members are cold, calculating, and emotionless; they kill with precision and without remorse. Their Italian counterparts have names like Little Sally and Tommy Tuna, and lounge around in velour sweatsuits when not knocking someone off out by the piers. The one exception is Butch, who Tanenbaum supplies with a personality. We experience the hectic pace of the D.A.'s office through his eyes, as well as the frustrations of running into dead ends while investigating a murder case.
It's no mystery why Tanenbaum's at his best while writing about Butch. He, too, worked as an attorney in the Manhattan D.A.'s office. Indeed, perhaps the most interesting page in Act of Revenge is that entitled "About the Author." After his stint as a prosecutor, Tanenbaum was elected mayor of Beverly Hills, then served on two Congressional committees investigating the deaths of J.F.K. and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
And he's no novice writer, either (read: there's no excuse for the quality of this novel). This book is, if you can believe, Tanenbaum's thirteenth. Perhaps he'd have been better off heeding the age-old superstitions associated with that number and stopping at twelve.
It's not clear who might like Act of Revenge. In fact, I'm not convinced that Tanenbaum's mother wasn't responsible for the effusive praise that drips from the book jacket. Perhaps Assistant D.A.'s would find the descriptions of the office and of orientation for new prosecutors somewhat amusing. Perhaps former Hong Kong triad members might enjoy the trip down memory lane. And perhaps advocates for an all-male work force will appreciate the validation that Tanenbaum provides.
