The Same River Twice
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4.0 • 5 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • “A cut-throat Russian businessman, two ruthlessly ambitious and beautiful young women and a scheme to make unlimited amount of cash—and voilà, you’re caught up in the momentum of a great story. . . . Magnificent.” —The New York Times
“The Same River Twice is the tale of beautiful losers living on the edge. . . . [A] lushly cinematic mystery . . . for the highbrow set—those who take their thrillers with a dash of art history.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Odile Mével is a French clothing designer, her American husband, Max, an independent filmmaker. When Odile agrees to buy a selection of ceremonial May Day banners in the Soviet Union and deliver the contraband to Paris she earns a new job description: smuggler.
Soon her fellow courier disappears, her apartment is ransacked, and her friend’s houseboat is firebombed. While Max has no inkling of Odile’s dealings, he finds himself embroiled in a baffling film world mystery of his own. As their escapades deepen and their deceptions multiply, Odile and Max discover their secrets are connected—endangering not only their marriage but their lives.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A promising plot involving Russian contraband propels this Parisian thriller, but Mooney (Traffic and Laughter) fails to create engaging characters, and his overworked prose doesn't help matters much. Max Colby, who judges himself to be quite possibly the most inventive and daring filmmaker of his time, struggles with creative challenges and with his adventurous wife, Odile, who is having an affair with Turner, an art dealer who has crossed a ruthless Russian mobster and is handling the sale of a small collection of smuggled Russian folk art. Lengthy descriptions of Max's cinematic travails and random filmic insights take up swaths of the book, either supplanting the action or bizarrely coexisting with implausible developments (a pivotal murder is especially hard to believe). Other glitches wooden dialogue, a far-fetched denouement interfere with an occasionally savory if predictable yarn.
