A Low-Budget Remake of His Vile Career

July 7, 2023 2:51 PM

Central Park West is a legal workplace drama that aspires to the cursed union of #MeToo revenge story and buddy-cop rib tickler. Here, Comey repackages his experiences in New York working as an assistant U.S. attorney, including a stint under Rudy Giuliani in the late 1980s, in an attempt to genetically modify the meager fruit of an appointed bureaucrat’s imagination with some vestige of intrigue. The prose is clear enough to call it a beach read, if by “beach” we mean the sunny Riker’s Island shoreline. from Comey As You Are

How Bad Is James Comey’s New Crime Novel, Really? [Slate]
James Comey’s first thriller keeps its hands clean [Washington Post]
James Comey: ‘I’d like to take readers inside the White House’ [Grauniad]

posted by chavenet (8 comments total)

I, uh, what, huh? Jeezus. We are deep into the postmodern, aren't we?
posted by mollweide at 5:03 PM on July 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

no we’re just trying to hide in the postmodern’s curtains
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 5:07 PM on July 7, 2023 [5 favorites]

Are you sure that doesn't prove my point? Admittedly, I don't care.
posted by mollweide at 5:29 PM on July 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

If we're talking about flashbacks to NYC politics and law from the late 1980s, I'd rather talk about this one - one of the original exonerated Central Park Five is all but confirmed to win a city council seat representing Harlem this year.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:34 PM on July 7, 2023 [23 favorites]

Sorry, that came off as dismissive, when I meant it to just be blithely postmodern. I lived through the 1990s in academia, it was a time.
posted by mollweide at 5:52 PM on July 7, 2023 [4 favorites]

This is kinda like letting Sean Spicer on Dancing With the Stars. Once you’re a media figure, gatekeepers let you through because they might make money off or.
posted by Jon_Evil at 6:29 PM on July 7, 2023 [8 favorites]

That might be one of the better reviewer takes down author reviews I have read in a while.

Great takedown: Central Park West is a boring souvenir from the federal courtroom, an ostentatious recapitulation of the author’s memoirs populated by guileless characters based on his friends.

I can only hope a banality of evil creature like Comey gets someone to read it to him.
posted by oldnumberseven at 10:09 PM on July 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

The WaPo review is brutal too.
posted by bendy at 7:11 PM on July 8, 2023 [1 favorite]