Stephen J. Cannell put me in my place.
About 20 years ago, I was having lunch with Steve at Bistro Garden, his favorite place in Studio City, and somewhere between the gazpacho and the cheeseburger, I boasted about a glowing book review in The Miami Herald. The legendary television writer and producer replied, “If you believe your best reviews, you gotta believe your worst ones, too.”
I didn’t want to hear it.
Sure, I have lots of newspaper clippings filled with glorious words like “riveting” and “breathlessly exciting,” but with the advent of reader reviews on Amazon, I’m also the target of some double-barreled smackdowns from folks who leave no unkind word unsaid.
Here’s the entirety of a 1-star review of BUM RAP.
“I must have been drunk when I downloaded this book.”
In my defense, I was quite sober when writing BUM RAP, which was briefly the Number One bestselling book on Amazon Kindle. But wait! That’s being defensive. I want to take Steve’s advice and listen to the criticism and learn from it. Consider this scathing remark from a female reader:
“This is nothing but rubbish written by a horny man. The story seemed decent, but the characters were unable to accomplish anything because of their animal attraction to anything that moves.”
Grrrrrr! That’s my animalistic growl. The inspiration for BUM RAP was a federal racketeering trial in Miami, known locally as the “Russian Bar Girls case.” Some of the testimony was as racy as anything in the book. Here’s a brief exchange from the transcript between the prosecutor and a Russian bar girl:
Q: Did you zip down men’s pants?
A: Yes, touch them, kiss them, anything you can think.
Q: Giving them hope that they would have sex with you?
A: All my behavior was inclining to this.
“Giving Men Hope” became a chapter title, and men’s idiotic conduct around women moved the story along, as it does in real life.
My favorite review of BUM RAP contained this curt dismissal:
“I didn’t even finish the first chapter.”
Ouch! The first chapter is exactly seven sentences long. (CLICK HERE and scroll down the page to “Read an Excerpt” to find that chapter. I hope you finish it).
Many one-star reviews make no literary judgments. Witness this short but not sweet doozy concerning FLESH & BONES:
“I did not order this book.“
Fair enough, but I didn’t send it to you! Then there’s this brief put-down of THE DEEP BLUE ALIBI:
“There are no hummingbirds in Germany.”
Fine. There also are no hummingbirds in THE DEEP BLUE ALIBI, which is set in the Florida Keys and was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe award.
Some readers take the time for actual literary criticism. This reader gave one star to TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD, the first of the Jake Lassiter series:
“The book is ludicrous and with a completely unlikable so-called hero.”
Whoa, that’s my meal ticket you’re talking about! She goes on:
“I also read three of Levine’s Solomon and Lord books and they got steadily worse. I give up on this guy. He not only writes badly, I’d say he needs a shrink.”
That upset me so much, I had to tell my shrink.
Another reader of TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD also questioned my mental state in this one-star put-down:
“Maybe 25 pages worth reading. The rest just stupid people and porn. Had me wondering if the author was a sex addict. Disgusting!”
Okay, so there are some bedroom hijinks, but “porn” is a little strong. The story is about a surgeon who’s having an affair with his patient’s wife. The patient dies suspiciously following surgery, and the surgeon and widow continue to get it on. The book is loosely based on a famous Florida murder trial that, like the bar girls’ case, had some titillating courtroom testimony.
Am I being too thin-skinned? Should I toughen up? Every author gets slammed. There are more than 200 one-star reviews of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, including this little ditty:
“Gives little, if any, guidance on the killing of mockingbirds. False advertising.”
Okay, that may be tongue-in-cheek, but here’s an apparently serious, punctuation-free, stream-of-consciousness one-star review of the Harper Lee classic:
“It was terrible I didn’t like it at all i was so bored and stressed reading this awful book ugh”
It’s sometimes said that there are no wrong opinions, but facts are indisputable. Here’s a reader’s curt analysis of FALSE DAWN:
“One of the longest books ever.”
Hmm, the hardcover was 303 pages, about one-fourth the length of WAR AND PEACE. This reader would have given Tolstoy one star: “He should have stopped with WAR and saved PEACE for the sequel.” But maybe my book only seemed long, which means it’s my fault. Maybe I should write shorter books. Then again, when I wrote LAST CHANCE LASSITER, a 25,000 word novella, I got a blistering review under the headline:
“More like Lassiter Light.”
My two most recent books are BUM LUCK, which has 92% four and five star reviews, and BUM DEAL, which has 96% and garnered a starred review in Publishers Weekly. Now get this: neither has a one-star review.
But wait a second. Those books will be on Amazon long after Jake Lassiter tosses his briefcase into Biscayne Bay and long after I’m gone. So strike my earlier comment. I should have said: neither book has received a one-star review…yet. It’s only a matter of time.
# # #
Paul Levine
Steve, Thanks for the laughs. You made my day.
A few years back Amazon let “reviewers” post their picture along with their comment.
I received a one-star from a rather corpulent bulldog of a woman naked from the waist up.
I wrote to Amazon and they took down the review but left the gal’s photo. ???
No matter what your shrink says, keep on writing. I’m a big fan (not as big as my one-star reviewer.) Love your books.