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PRIVATE SCREENING
By Richard North Patterson
Ballantine Books (1985, 1993)
Reviewed by Robert Thompson 5/26/94
Private Screening is an OK story. Not great, not bad, somewhat better than mediocre. The hero is Tony Lord, an attorney in San Francisco. An attorney as a hero you ask! Not since Perry Mason has an attorney been the hero of a story. Well, the author also happens to be a San Francisco attorney, so that explains that.
Anyway, Tony Lord is a pretty decent guy, ambitious yet fairly honest, a good father if not a great husband.
One of the problems that I had with the story is that it jumps back and forth in time, and sometimes it is a little difficult to be certain what time period it is in. A small part of the book takes place in the mid to late 60s, part in 1984 and part in 1985.
The 1984 part is when Tony is defending Harry Carson- a dysfunctional Vietnam Vet, for the assasination of Senator James Kilcannon, a candidate for president, in front of 20,000 witnesses and several million more on live television when he is being presented at a Stacy Tarrant concert. (Kilcannon & Tarrant is probably based on the Jerry Brown / Linda Ronstadt relationship of the same time period.) Tony manages to win Harry's trial.
A year later, Alexis Parnell, an ex-starlet, now the wife of a wealthy newspaper publisher and John Damone, Stacy Tarrant's manager are kidnapped by a masked "terrorist" named Phoenix, and held for a somewhat strange ransom. Stacy asks Tony to help her out with negotiations with Phoenix..... and things develop from there...
If I had read the story back in '85 it would have been much more topical. Still, it was an interesting and almost exciting story.
Unfortunately, I figured out who Phoenix is somewhere around page 70 and it kind of spoiled my suspense, even if it made a lot of the actions more understandable. I don't know whether figuring out who Phoenix is was luck, sudden insight or an example of my keenly analytical mind (that's a joke, son, a joke.)
Richard North Patterson has several other books out on recent release, and I would not be adverse to reading them. While PRIVATE SCREENING was not enough to put him on my favorite authors list, he can tell a good story.
One minor, minor, nit-picky technical detail that annoyed me, although you'd have to be a gun nut or ex-gun nut like myself to notice, is that both bad guys (Carson, Phoenix) weapon of choice was a "Mauser ‚REVOLVER". Mauser did make a few dozen highly unusual revolvers back in 1878, but they are rare collectors items, worth thousands of dollars each now, and ammunition for them is virtually non-existent. So it is a very unlikely weapon of choice for anyone. Mauser since then has manufactured only rifles, semi-automatic and a few fully automatic handguns of moderate to excellent quality, and no other revolvers. Phoenix even had the effrontery to use a silencer on his "Mauser revolver". HA!
So, Mr. Patterson, if you feel the need to identify weapons by name as well as type, it is a very simple matter to get your facts straight- I'd be happy to advise you myself for the price of a stamp.