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Mr. Clarinet | 
 enlarge | Author: Nick Stone
Publisher: HarperCollins
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 194601
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 448
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 1.4
ISBN: 0060897295
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.92
EAN: 9780060897291
ASIN: 0060897295
Publication Date: July 1, 2007
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Product Description
Max Mingus wanted to turn down the case—fifteen million bucks on the table or not. The boy was dead, Max was sure of it. Three years had passed since Haitian billionaire Allain Carver's five-year-old son was abducted. Why bother now? The huge bounty and the resources of the most powerful white family in Haiti hadn't turned up a lead. Sure, Max had been the best detective in Miami once. But that was eight years back. Before he served time for killing a pair of junkie child-murderers. Before his wife, Sandra, died. Plus, he'd heard what had happened to the other PI's sent to Haiti before him—all dead, or their lives permanently screwed up, without ever getting close to finding Charlie Carver. But with nothing left to lose—and for all that money—Max does go down there. The talk of voodoo and black magic is nothing compared to the haunting quiet of his own empty house. What Max doesn't count on is the depth of corruption, manipulation, and greed Haiti breeds in its inhabitants, a murky evil worse than death, which can easily swallow a man whole—especially a troubled man like Max Mingus. When the trail to Charlie Carver points to a local myth—"Mr. Clarinet," a spirit figure who for decades is said to have been tempting children away from their families—could the truth be even more shocking than the legend? Max's job suddenly isn't all about finding the boy, his killers, or the money—it's about just staying alive....
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 (4.5) "Myths are stronger than death." June 28, 2007
Luan Gaines (Dana Point, CA USA)
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
It is 1996. Max Mingus, ex-cop and PI, has just been released from prison for killing a pair of junkie child murderers. In an emotional vacuum since his wife's death in a freak accident, Max has no desire to follow through with their plans for world travel, returning home to Miami. Unable after all to endure the home he shared with his wife, a woman who wrought profound changes in a downward-spiraling life, Max checks into a hotel. There he is contacted by Allain Carver, a rich white Haitian, who has been actively pursuing Max to search for his kidnapped son, Charlie, now five-years-old. Inclined toward a change of scene, Mingus accepts the assignment with much trepidation, the three former PIs on the case either dead, physically mutilated or missing. Maintaining his jailhouse persona, Mingus arrives in chaotic Haiti with few expectations.
Posters of Charlie Carver are everywhere, each marked with the symbol of Ton Ton Clarinet, the child-stealer to whom native superstition assigns the blame for a country of disappeared children. While ascertaining the wealthy Carver family's reputation, it becomes obvious that their enemies are legion, the family patriarch cruel and uncompromising, the boy's mother desperate to leave Haiti and her marriage, but not without her son. Max plunges himself into the local scene, assaulted by the poverty and violence around him. Papa Doc, Baby Doc Duvalier and Aristide have set the stage for the unparalleled greed and larceny of bloody reigns, the country now occupied by the Americans and the CIA, dictatorships replaced by special interests and the politics of expedience, mass poverty and superstition devastating the population.
Mingus plunges into a bizarre culture where a few reputations are larger than life: Vincent Paul, the King of Cite Soleil, a "cocaine Castro" with a secret El Dorado; Max's nemesis, Solomon Boukman, their fates on a collision course since Max put him in prison in the States. Boukman returned to Haiti, this is an old feud that requires resolution but Max is in no hurry, the missing boy his priority. Surrounded by hougans, vodou, bokors and black magic, Max resists the seductive pull of blackness that taunts him, teetering on an emotional cusp. Surrounded by the evil bred of greed and exploitation, Haiti offers a hellish landscape. In such a place, one man's soul is a useless commodity, yet Max ignores the siren call of corruption, sorting through villains and innocents with a grim resolve. Submerged in an exotic culture, Max muddles through a maze of half-truths, the moral morass a great challenge for the emotionally impaired PI, perhaps the perfect prescription for the reawakening of his soul: "He'd never known a place so dark."
With a cast of characters straight out of Dante's Inferno, this taut thriller features an unsettling plot and an impressive protagonist who perseveres in spite of hardships, with the aid of an unexpected ally. Stone's edgy and provocative Max Mingus raises the bar in the genre. Luan Gaines/2007.
 More than a little disappointed. August 21, 2007
J.P. Noes (Fort Lauderdale, FL USA)
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
Bought this book based on a review I read in the local paper. I am a fan of mystery thrillers especially Sanford, Kellerman, Corban, Lehane, Connelly and others. I am always looking for new authors to enjoy. Unfortunately this book was very disappointing to me. Slow to start and finish and more a treatise on Haiti than anything else.
This is a Very Impressive Debut January 12, 2008
Thriller Lover (Las Vegas, Nevada)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
MR CLARINET is a highly acclaimed thriller, that won both the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award (for best adventure/thriller novel) and an International Thriller Award (for best debut novel of 2007). I think it's largely deserving of those awards.
The plot of MR CLARINET is straightforward. Max Mingus is a police detective who served seven years in prison for a vigilante killing. After being released, Mingus is offered a job by a rich man named Allain Carver. He is asked to find Carver's son Charlie, who disappeared three years ago on the island of Haiti. If he succeeds, he will get paid $10 million. Mingus then travels to Haiti, and learns the case is much more complicated than it seems.
Overall I thought MR CLARINET was well written. Nick Stone's writing style reminds me a lot of another UK author, John Connolly. Stone's the type of writer who takes a lot of time to set up the story, the main character's background, and the surrounding atmosphere. This is not what I would describe as a leanly written, fast-paced novel.
In MR CLARINET, Stone does a great job detailing the realities of Haitian society in the mid-1990s. Needless to say, it's not a great place to live. If you have a pre-existing interest in this region, this novel provides some fascinating insights into what daily life is like in the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. If you couldn't care less about Haiti, you might find all the detail to be tedious.
Personally, I though Stone paid a bit too much attention to the setting, and not enough time on developing the characters. Other than the anti-hero Max Mingus, I didn't feel most of the characters in this book had much depth. I also felt that the plotline was a bit too convoluted for my tastes, with one clever twist too many.
MR CLARINET is gritty to the extreme. This book has a ton of graphic violence and sexual content (of the non-erotic variety), and readers sensitive to such material should definitely stay away.
But in the end, I very much enjoyed MR CLARINET. The story was well told, and the writing of very impressive quality. This is the first book in a series, and I look forward to future installments.
Yaaaawwwnn! January 16, 2008
still searching (MK UK)
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
Author: Think I'll write a crime novel for my debut!
Agent: Okay but whatever you do try to be original! But don't ignore the tried and tested formula - make sure you stick with it.
Author: Oh don't worry; originality was at the forefront of my mind. In fact I've already done quite a bit of research.
Agent: Okay - I'm listening.
Author: Well, for a start the `hero' has to be tough, you know, a bit like Burke's Robicheaux and Connelly's Bosch.
Agent: Like it! And his wife must have died horribly a bit like John Connolly's Charlie Parker's! and, because of it, he has to be all haunted and bitter and twisted and vicious; a bit like Connelly's Bosch! And someone who can barely wait for his shot of Jack Daniels; a bit like Burke's Robicheaux!
Author: Wow, didn't think of that but great! He's got to be a big guy who despises villains and good with guns and things; a bit like Child's Jack Reacher!
Agent: We're onto something here! And he's got to be a brilliant investigator a bit like Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme!
Author: You read my mind! The villain must be a twisted, vicious, homicidal maniac whose lackeys look upon him as some sort of messiah, a bit like the twisted, vicious, messianic, homicidal maniac in Hecht's Babel!
Agent: That's it! And he's got to have a recognizable patch, a bit like Bosch's L.A., Parker's New England, Davenport's Minneapolis, Robicheax' New Iberia, Brunetti's Venice, Zen's Rome; Morse's Oxford.
Author: Blimey! Is there anywhere left?
Agent: er, how about, er, Haiti?
Author: Brilliant! Where is it?
Pause
Agent: Besides, isn't originality overvalued?
Author: Well, who'll notice anyway?
Agent: He's got to have a ridiculous name! You forgot the ridiculous name!
Author: No I didn't.
 Powerful storytelling November 4, 2007
Gail A. Germanson (MILWAUKEE, WI USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
What John Sandford does with Lucas Davenport in Minneapolis, Nick Stone does with his anti-hero in Haiti. I kept comparing the two, Max and Lucas. Max has more baggage than Lucas, but they share the same world-view. If a good book has an impact on its readers, then, this is a brilliant book. I immediately wanted to look up Haitian past and current history. Storytelling at its best...but not for the easily offended!
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