Wed 25 May 2022
Archived Mystery Review: LAWRENCE SANDERS – The Tangent Factor.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[6] Comments
LAWRENCE SANDERS – The Tangent Factor. Peter Tangent #2. Putnam’s, hardcover, 1978. Berkley, paperback, 1979.
Out of the patchwork quilt that’s the map of present-day Africa comes a dream of a united continent. Obiri Anokye is today but the ruler of the small (fictional) country of Asante, but with a little help from busily pumping oil wells, and the advice of men like Peter Tangent, nominally a representative of American commercial interests, that dream may yet become a reality.
It’d be unfair to reveal whether this novel ends as a setback toward that goal, or as a step forward, but as a story it does suffer from the fact that the effort has by no means ended. Nevertheless, rich in detail but still aesthetically lean in dialogue and characterization, and punctuated briefly by sophisticated sex and extreme violence, this has all the hallmarks of a top seller.
Rating: C plus
May 26th, 2022 at 12:39 pm
I was a big fan of Sanders in the 70s and 80s and always considered his best novel, “The First Deadly Sin”(1973), to be the most obvious precursor to the Thomas Harris novels that set off the serial killer craze in the 80s. By the early 80s his best work was done. In the 90s he started the popular Archy McNally, which I didn’t much like. It was later revealed that they were written with (or perhaps by) a writer named Vincent Lardo.
May 26th, 2022 at 4:46 pm
I believe that THE TANGENT FACTOR was only his fourth crime novel, so when I wrote this review, his writing career was just starting. He went to be the James Patterson of his day, although the latter has gone on to surpass him tenfold by now. But there was a day when Lawrence Sanders books filled an entire shelf at Waldenbooks. By the time the McNally books came out, though, he and Lardo were just coasting.
May 26th, 2022 at 4:53 pm
PS. I no longer remember what I meant in this old review by the story line of the Tangent books not ending with this one, but in any case, there never were more than the two books in the series, the other being THE TANGENT OBJECTIVE, which came out two years earlier.
May 26th, 2022 at 8:19 pm
I never warmed to Sanders, but it may be because the first I read was a rather bad SF novel, THE TOMORROW FILE.
No argument he was popular and THE FIRST DEADLY SIN a trendsetter.
May 26th, 2022 at 11:18 pm
I’d forgotten that I started THE TOMORROW FILE. No, it was not very good. It’s the kind of SF that’s produced by writers not all that knowledgeable about the field but who try anyway.
September 15th, 2022 at 2:03 am
I feel Sanders is highly underrated, in retrospect of what he accomplished. The guy was prolific; incisive; probing; deft. Remember, he penned. “The Anderson Tapes”. Most of his other works are equally as good. The “Deadly Sin” series, “The Case of Lucy Bending”, “The Seduction of Peter S.” …these are inventive, extremely honed, gripping, crime romps.
At the time Sanders was in top form the market for *mainstream* sophisticated, gritty realism was dead. Best-selling authors were Sidney Sheldon and Jackie Collins. Baby mush.
Sanders simply walloped. He never gets the credit he truly deserves.
Naturally, I defer to others here who are MUCH more knowledgeable than I, re: serial killer plots.
But what I think Sanders did FIRST was the “fetization” of the killer’s grisly implement. “The First Deadly Sin” is harrowing in its description of the eerie, disturbing, mountaineer’s ice-axe so beloved by the brutal madman at the center of the tale.
Sanders demonstrated again and again, that he could seize on a slender idea like this and run away with it; make it his own.
Take this test: try Sanders’ “The Loves of Harry Dancer” and see what you think. I personally consider it one of the best modern espionage yarns ever rolled out.