Word: firman
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Like Kamen, Jerry Firman, 62, got acquainted with computers years ago. But when he sold his weekly Ohio newspaper, the Coshocton Free Enterpriser, he was looking for a new sense of community. He had taken up residence in an RV and loved the freedom but felt rootless. His solution: to build communities online. Through Third Age, an online site for seniors, Firman founded a chat room called Butt Out, which offers support for seniors trying to stop smoking. He joined another called the Novel Approach, where 16 regulars critique one another's manuscripts...
...Paul Firman pulls a string of European companies offering tax-haven advice for the wealthy. To hear Firman tell it, his setup "is an organization concerned with tax avoidance by strictly legal means." A Dutch criminologist named Professor Frits Krom had once glimpsed Firman in a different guise, as an agent in an extortion and embezzlement ring...
Fiscal Crimes. Ambler sets these two adversaries down in a Mediterranean villa and proceeds to complicate an already tangled web. Firman's task is to feed Krom a diet of "truth, rubbish and half-truth" that will leave his interrogator totally befuddled and, most important, hide the identity of Firman's boss: Mat Williamson, a Fiji-born financial wizard who can be terminally mean when his interests are threatened. While Firman tries to bamboozle the professor and his two academic assistants, Williamson decides to hasten things by killing everyone involved...
...allowing Firman to tell his own story, Ambler produces the same moral blur that characterized his earlier spy novels. Because Firman is indeed under siege, from several directions, it is hard not to root for him. An avowed liar who frequently protests his own innocence, Firman also deserves all the trouble he gets. If nothing else, he is guilty of rampant pettifogging...
Granted, calling a piece finished is the hardest step for an author to take; but it is a necessary step. No one appreciates the house manager's offering a prologue that says in effect: this production isn't "official." Firman Houghton's new play, The Portable Tiger, is an entertaining one that could have amused far more people than the fortunate few who saw it this weekend. And the playwright would have learned a great deal more from a wider crowd; limited audiences are limiting...