The Tragic Flaw
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
Cicero, a college-educated gangster who knows no bounds, is plagued with recurring nightmares—and due to one small flaw in his character, forces greater than him are prepared to teach him a lesson he will not soon forget.
Following in his Italian father's gangster footsteps, the biracial Cicero Day has little problem rising to the top of the Kansas City underworld. He and his comrades deal with their enemies with all manner of weaponry: guns, knives, poison, trained beasts, and even HIV.
Yet, Cicero is haunted by recurring nightmares, and bothered with his mother's steadfast belief in God. Cicero, who is an atheist, feels there's no place for myths in a man's life who is trying to ascend to power. While he is the master of his domain and even viewed as a hero to some, there is an unseen kink in his seemingly impregnable armor.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
After a lyrical opening that promises a profound and insightful look at life on the mean streets of Kansas City, Mo., Parker's debut loses its way. Cicero Day, illegitimate biracial son of one of the city's late mob leaders, plots to flood the U.S. with a new superdrug while looking for opportunities to kill and maim, purely for sadistic pleasure. Day's lack of interest in a news report that the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to ban religion from "schools, libraries, privately owned businesses, and the Internet" says less about his character than it does about the novel's scattered nature, as this implausible potential shift in the law appears without any context or follow-up. Readers should be prepared for some purple prose ("The solstice bids farewell and the equinox comes to pass. Life explodes with vibrancy, then diminishes as the Earth tilts on its axis") and a story with little substance to offset the gore.
