Word: broderick
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Dunne's is a cold, cruel and murderous world observed from an emotional distance. "I am by disposition one of life's neutrals, a human Switzerland," says Jack Broderick, the novel's woeful narrator. He combines the characteristics of a disillusioned moralist with the casualness of an old- fashioned remittance man. A $10 million trust fund from his billionaire father allows him to play at making a living, if not a life...
Sometimes Broderick is a San Francisco newspaper columnist who roams the city looking for human-interest stories. His father, whose holdings include the paper, does not approve: "The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker -- you're very tight with that whole bunch of deadbeats now, aren't you?" Sometimes Jack is a Hollywood scriptwriter, and the bunch is livelier: Producer Marty Magnin, "reeking of Pinaud Lime Sec cologne . . . his shirt open four buttons down . . . beads of sweat around the plugs of his hair transplant"; Las Vegas Club Performer Buddy Seville, formerly Buddy Singapore and before that, Sandy Cairo; a collection...
...Broderick works best as a culture buzzard, circling scenes of death and derangement, identifying choice morsels by stripe and cry. His range includes a wide variety of wildlife: a condemned murderer named Germany Baker, a radical feminist with a wardrobe of obscene T shirts, an ambitious, self- absorbed television newswoman, black and Hispanic militants, limousine , liberals and Fritz Finn, President of the U.S., who has had an affair with Broderick's late sister. Jack's brother Augustine, affectionately known throughout the world as Bro, is a Benedictine priest with 14 honorary degrees, a 43-line entry...
...Leah's splashy assassinations at the hands of a crazed Viet Nam veteran are a navigational point in Broderick's looping narrative. His delivery owes something to Raymond Chandler, but rather than plot there is a proliferation of character and incident that builds to an ugly and violent mood. Dunne is a masterly setter of scenes and a merciless satirist, whether the target is an incontinent captain of industry or a criminal who has been packaged as a black revolutionary and needs an investment adviser: "The Merc and I were thinking more along the lines of Ornstein and Shay...
...revisions came from the top level of FAA management. Anthony Broderick, the agency's associate administrator for aviation standards, took the highly unusual step of returning the voluminous report and documentation to the Western Pacific regional office with orders to rewrite it. As he said to the Senate subcommittee, "I requested that they . . . remove any material that was unwarranted generalization or unsubstantiated opinion not supported by facts." The rewrite, however, left in undocumented statements of opinion favorable to Continental...