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[seekingferret]

Shakeup by Stuart Woods

Has anyone read anything by Stuart Woods? My library had a display of his books because he recently passed away and the blurb of one didn't sound terrible so I grabbed it. Apparently his Stone Barrington series was a series of 63 novels! After cranking out one a year for the first twenty years of the series, he figured out his groove and was tossing out three a year at some point. This one is something like book 45 of the series.

Stone Barrington is a former NYC cop who became a hotshot lawyer and megamillionaire fixer for the rich and powerful. He owns houses in London, Paris, New York, Miami, and LA and probably others, he owns a Gulfstream jet which he flies himself, and over the course of the book I read, he has sex with the President, the Director of the FBI, a star Hollywood actress, and the head of MI6. It's pretty bonkers.

Shakeup's plot is breezy to the point of being insulting nonsense. I'm going to spoil it because I don't care about it. The chief of the DC police department decides to murder a former lover, the wife of the incoming Secretary of Commerce. She does this, or has her goon do it, on Inauguration Day, and they plant the body in the hotel room of the NYPD commissioner. Why? Nobody ever manages an explanation of the motive or the plan. Something something people who have threesomes are murderers. In any case, the coverup becomes worse than the crime, as the DCPD chief has to have another half dozen witnesses murdered to try to protect herself, before finally her goon is convinced to turn on her. There's a weird detour into Pink Panther territory with a comical heist gone wrong on a British estate before that happens.

I suspect the book is attractive to people who like imagining themselves as millionaire playboy crimesolvers and want to read stories about that life, because it can't possibly be because people like the mysteries.

Comments

[lirazel]

I have not read anything by him, but as a former public librarian, I am deeply familiar with his name and the existence of his many, many works since I used to have to try to keep them in order on the shelves. (We had a mystery patron who always wanted to put books in series order even though we shelved in title order. I had a long-standing war going on with this person.)

So are the President and FBI Directors women or is the main guy bisexual? Because honestly that really determines a lot of how I feel about this character. (Yes, I am willing to cut a fictional bisexual a lot more slack than a fiction straight guy.)

This sounds absolutely horrible and I hate it just from reading about it, and also I'm jealous that this guy could make so much money by writing a Gary Stu. Good for him, I guess?

[seekingferret]

I kinda love that this post brought out all the librarians in my life. Gonna have to ask my mother about him, too.

All the people he sleeps with in this book are female. I'm not sure him being bisexual would make things any better but I understand the sentiment.

[lirazel]

There are certain writers who ALL the librarians have feelings about, even if they haven't read them!

All the people he sleeps with in this book are female.

So we're living in a world full of powerful heads of state and security apparatuses that just happen to be female??? Okay!

Are the sex scenes very terrible or all they all fade to black?

[seekingferret]

Yeah. Apparently the President who is just inaugurated in the book is the second female President. It's a little unclear from context clues but it's possible Barrington has also slept with the first one.

The sex scenes are all fade to black, thankfully.

[lirazel]

What a world.

The sex scenes are all fade to black, thankfully.

Oh, what a relief!

[melannen]

There's this whole genre of "extremely prolific authors of formulaic, wildly unrealistic but not 'genre' fiction that are read by people who only read those books but are very into them" (see also: James Patterson, David Baldacci, Harlan Coben, John Sandford) that I knew nothing about until I got the library job, and are now a very large part of my life. All I know about them now is that if somebody returns one of them and asks for a recommendation, at least two of the others will be on the New Bestsellers rack at any given time. I should probably read one at some point.

(There's a smaller collection of less macho authors who also write unrealistic, formulaic but non genre stuff who are also always there - Nicholas Sparks, Nora Roberts, Danielle Steele - but the people who read them are more likely to sometimes read other stuff.)

[ambyr]

I don't have any opinions on him, because we've never done him in braille! (Audio, yes, but audio is my coworker's problem. Although non-English audio is my problem, and on reflection we have started to acquire him in Russian audio...but we don't have English-language cataloguing records for our Russian books, so the contents of those volumes tend to be a mystery to me.)

[melannen]

I work at a library and thus have *seen* many of these but was never inspired to pick one up...

Is this way gayer than I expected, or does Stone Barrington live in a world where all powerful politicians, intelligence directors, and law enforcement are beautiful women? Because ngl I'm kinda interested either way (though somehow I doubt he did the worldbuilding for why there are so many powerful women.)

[seekingferret]

Nope, not gayer than you expected, all his sex interests in this book are female. Though I did mention that there were some threesomes mentioned, and we all know it's not gay if it's in a threeway, so who knows?

The President is a crossover character from another Woods series, in which she started as a cop from a backwater town in Florida, then became a CIA agent, then the CIA director, then eventually became President (I am not dwelling on the how of any of this very hard). I'm assuming the MI6 director had some similar trajectory, where earlier in the series she was the sexy and mysterious British spy that Barrington slept with while investigating a case, and now she has risen through the ranks. And multiply that by fifty books. I think if your mental model of the world of the powerful does not include glass ceilings (because men and women are equal now amirite?) and does include your hero being irresistible to women, and you write this many books, it's probably an inevitable consequence.

[calledtovienna]

Came here to add to the choir that "he has sex with the President, the Director of the FBI, a star Hollywood actress, and the head of MI6" is either class A queer representation or definitely some sort of accidental feminism (but I assume, not really).

These books sound like what you read when you wanted to watch an airplane movie, but in book form. Something where you are only half-paying attention and every bit is just weirdly delightful. And -- I get it! I have been there a lot recently, though my taste specifics are a bit different.

[seekingferret]

Accidental feminism/ fake feminism, I think. It's like the logical consequence of being in denial of the existence of a glass ceiling, and being attracted to powerful women.

[lannamichaels]

I also came here to 4th this very question and I am unsurprised that the drive to have a heterosexual hero bed the powerful ends up with a ton of women in positions of power without dwelling at all on that.

[melannen]

I want a series that just. Explores this idea. There is a small group of super-powered heterosexual men, and one of their powers is that if they sleep with a woman she is thereafter magically immune to glass ceilings, and what that does to the world.

[calledtovienna]

On the sad part of that note, that reminds me of how Willie Brown (former SF Mayor and still a powerful figure) published a legit editorial in SF Chronicle that literally said "Sure I slept with Kamala Harris and gave her some government post when she was 18, but --".

Anyway, uhm, that happened and it is not great for anyone involved.

[melannen]

Yeah, like that, but in a world where she was completely immune to any repercussions from that story!

[calledtovienna]

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Tangentially, been thinking about that a lot recently because I was revisiting some anime that I loved as a teenager and thinking of how I did love seeing competent women in positions of power (ex: Integra Wingates Hellsing or even like, Neo Genesis Evangelion) even though clearly, even to me at the time, this was less about feminism and more about sex appeal.

I want a name for that. Maybe Horndog Feminism? IDK 😂

[seekingferret]

Joss Whedon Feminism? :P

[calledtovienna]

Eh, Whedon's women are never actually powerful enough. They may have super powers, but they are very rarely actually in charge officially in that way. The best you might get is Buffy in the later seasons or Drusilla and even then, that's a lot of asterisks.