What do you think?
Rate this book
Fiddler and Fiora Mystery #2
The Frog and the Scorpion
Book by Maxwell, A.E.
218 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
19 people are currently reading
74 people want to read
About the author
A.E. Maxwell
18 books20 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
(1)
collaboration of Ann Maxwell and Evan Maxwell
also aka Lowell Charters, Elizabeth Lowell, and Annalise Sun
(1)
collaboration of Ann Maxwell and Evan Maxwell
also aka Lowell Charters, Elizabeth Lowell, and Annalise Sun
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 27, 2019
”Old man, you don’t need to understand American law, because we’re both outside it. Understand this: You will pay what I ask or the authorities will receive the names and addresses of the Zahedi war criminals who are in America. You will be shipped back to Iran, Jew. Then you will be executed and your women will be stoned to death as whores.”
It wasn’t only the Shah of Iran who had to flee Iran in 1979. Jews living in Iran knew what would happen to them under the control of the fanatical, conservative, religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini. Many of these Iranian Jews came to America on temporary visas, and when those visas ran out, they stayed. To go back to Iran was going back to their own deaths.
The Shah had attempted to modernize Iran by nationalizing certain industries and restructuring the economic, political, and social traditions in an attempt to make Iran into a Middle Eastern superpower. One of the reforms that I’m sure was like sticking lighted bamboo slivers under the fingernails of the religious right was that the Shah wanted to grant women suffrage. It didn’t help that the Shah’s regime and his ideas were backed by the US and the UK. ”You see, most of the Arab states are educationally in the Dark Ages. If it isn’t in the Koran, it simply doesn’t exist. But you can’t build twentieth-century technology using the sayings of a seventh-century holy man.” Of course, this is seeing Iran through a mid-1980s lens.
The Arab Spring that began in 2010, though convoluted to determine exactly what exactly the revolutionaries wanted from country to country, showed me that the young people of the Middle East want more social freedom. Maybe they even want a separation of church and state.
We shall see, but for the moment, for the purposes of this review, otherwise known as a meandering thought process, we are back about 34 years ago with our intrepid protagonist known as Fiddler. He is a wealthy, charming, ruggedly (another term for a man showing the scars of life) handsome man, who has a rather unusually complicated relationship with his ex-wife Fiora.
”Fiora slid a nail into the crease between my lips and I opened my teeth to catch it. Like I say, we have a very complicated relationship with a pretty simple core.
‘Sex is a part of this,’ she said, tapping the package. ‘But it has a lot of other things you like, too. Power and competition, courage and cowardice. All the bloody absolutes that fascinate you.’
With that introduction I was not expecting a bird feeder. I gave her a look that had become familiar after years of marriage and separation.
‘Love,’ she whispered, bending over, ruffling my hair and nerve endings. ‘Have I ever misled you?’”
I call this relationship unusually complicated, but it might only be a precursor to the Facebook era of trying to define the exact nature of our relationships for the world. Their interactions are sultry, witty, marvelously intelligent, and passionate. Get that official piece of paper out of the way, and for some people the relationship continues to expand instead of constrict under the weight of mutual ownership.
When Shahpour Zahedi needs help he calls Fiddler. A PLO terrorist going by the name of Salameh has contacted Shahpour and wants $5000 a month or he turns the family, who are in the US illegally, over to the proper authorities. That is when the executions and the stoning of their women for being whores would commence. It seems that Salameh has gotten his hands on a list of Jews with vulnerable residency statuses and is using their monthly “contributions” to aid in the PLO fight against Israel.
Shahpour can not call the authorities for obvious reasons, but situations like this are tailor made for a guy like Fiddler. His investigation will take him from the halls of USC to the slimy corridors of corporate America. He will hear terms like yellowcake and Al-Makr thrown about. He will find a bomb in his Shelby Cobra. He will meet a vivacious Israeli agent, who is as dangerous as she is seductive. He will discover that there is a lot more to uncover than just a shakedown organization. This case has the potential to drop all the problems in the Middle East right in the lap of Southern California.
The writer A. E. Maxwell is actually the married couple Ann and Evan Maxwell. I can only hope that writing about Fiddler and Fiora put some added spark in their relationship as well. There are eight volumes in the series, of which this is the second. The next one is Gatsby’s Vineyard,which it sounds like I’m heading North to Napa for my next sultry caper with Fiddler and Fiora. I’m only a glass of wine away from being ready.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
It wasn’t only the Shah of Iran who had to flee Iran in 1979. Jews living in Iran knew what would happen to them under the control of the fanatical, conservative, religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini. Many of these Iranian Jews came to America on temporary visas, and when those visas ran out, they stayed. To go back to Iran was going back to their own deaths.
The Shah had attempted to modernize Iran by nationalizing certain industries and restructuring the economic, political, and social traditions in an attempt to make Iran into a Middle Eastern superpower. One of the reforms that I’m sure was like sticking lighted bamboo slivers under the fingernails of the religious right was that the Shah wanted to grant women suffrage. It didn’t help that the Shah’s regime and his ideas were backed by the US and the UK. ”You see, most of the Arab states are educationally in the Dark Ages. If it isn’t in the Koran, it simply doesn’t exist. But you can’t build twentieth-century technology using the sayings of a seventh-century holy man.” Of course, this is seeing Iran through a mid-1980s lens.
The Arab Spring that began in 2010, though convoluted to determine exactly what exactly the revolutionaries wanted from country to country, showed me that the young people of the Middle East want more social freedom. Maybe they even want a separation of church and state.
We shall see, but for the moment, for the purposes of this review, otherwise known as a meandering thought process, we are back about 34 years ago with our intrepid protagonist known as Fiddler. He is a wealthy, charming, ruggedly (another term for a man showing the scars of life) handsome man, who has a rather unusually complicated relationship with his ex-wife Fiora.
”Fiora slid a nail into the crease between my lips and I opened my teeth to catch it. Like I say, we have a very complicated relationship with a pretty simple core.
‘Sex is a part of this,’ she said, tapping the package. ‘But it has a lot of other things you like, too. Power and competition, courage and cowardice. All the bloody absolutes that fascinate you.’
With that introduction I was not expecting a bird feeder. I gave her a look that had become familiar after years of marriage and separation.
‘Love,’ she whispered, bending over, ruffling my hair and nerve endings. ‘Have I ever misled you?’”
I call this relationship unusually complicated, but it might only be a precursor to the Facebook era of trying to define the exact nature of our relationships for the world. Their interactions are sultry, witty, marvelously intelligent, and passionate. Get that official piece of paper out of the way, and for some people the relationship continues to expand instead of constrict under the weight of mutual ownership.
When Shahpour Zahedi needs help he calls Fiddler. A PLO terrorist going by the name of Salameh has contacted Shahpour and wants $5000 a month or he turns the family, who are in the US illegally, over to the proper authorities. That is when the executions and the stoning of their women for being whores would commence. It seems that Salameh has gotten his hands on a list of Jews with vulnerable residency statuses and is using their monthly “contributions” to aid in the PLO fight against Israel.
Shahpour can not call the authorities for obvious reasons, but situations like this are tailor made for a guy like Fiddler. His investigation will take him from the halls of USC to the slimy corridors of corporate America. He will hear terms like yellowcake and Al-Makr thrown about. He will find a bomb in his Shelby Cobra. He will meet a vivacious Israeli agent, who is as dangerous as she is seductive. He will discover that there is a lot more to uncover than just a shakedown organization. This case has the potential to drop all the problems in the Middle East right in the lap of Southern California.
The writer A. E. Maxwell is actually the married couple Ann and Evan Maxwell. I can only hope that writing about Fiddler and Fiora put some added spark in their relationship as well. There are eight volumes in the series, of which this is the second. The next one is Gatsby’s Vineyard,which it sounds like I’m heading North to Napa for my next sultry caper with Fiddler and Fiora. I’m only a glass of wine away from being ready.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
May 2, 2014
PROTAGONIST: PI Fiddler
SETTING: Los Angeles
RATING: 3.75
SERIES: #2 OF 8
If you believe that illegal immigration and terrorism are issues that are unique to today's world, think again! THE FROG AND THE SCORPION is set in the 1980s, and those issues and more are at the center of its plot. A PI by the name of Fiddler is approached by a Jewish man, Shahpour Zahedi, who was referred to him by his ex-wife, Fiora. As it turns out, Zahedi is being blackmailed by an unknown group who are threatening to expose the fact that he and his family are in the United States illegally, a fact that if revealed would lead to their deportation. Zahedi hires Fiddler to find out who is behind the extortion so that he and his family can live without the fear of being returned to a land where their most likely fate would be death.
The trail that Fiddler follows leads to a complex web of conspiracy and terrorist activity. There are a lot of players—Iranian Jews, Muslim extortionists, secret agents. One of the critical characters is a man named Mossad, who was present at the massacre of Jewish athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich and distraught at his failure to stop the carnage. His daughter, Sharai Yermiya, is a passionate woman is obsessed with killing the man responsible for her father's humiliation. She and Fiddler are much attracted to one another and partner in trying to attain their two disparate goals.
Fiddler is a great creation, right up there with some of the iconic PIs of crime fiction. The dialogue crackles, and Fiddler's wit and humanity show through all throughout the book. The opening pages describe his somewhat complex relationship with Fiora. They do love each other and spend most of their time together, but marriage is something that just does not work for them. After Maxwell painted a really interesting picture of what Fiora was like, she essentially disappeared from the book, which I found disappointing.
In addition to excellent characterization and dialogue, Maxwell packed a lot of suspense into 250 pages. The ending was action packed and thrilling. One thing that puzzled me was that the bad guys allowed Fiddler to keep a small pistol as they moved into the ultimate showdown. That didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. But that is a minor quibble—overall, I found the book to be an excellent read and was pleased to find a new-to-me PI to follow.
THE FROG AND THE SCORPION, the second in the Fiddler and Fiora series, was originally published in 1986 and recently reissued by Busted Flush Press. The book has aged remarkably well, with issues such as illegal immigration and terrorism that could have been ripped from today's headlines. Busted Flush has done the crime fiction world a real favor by finding forgotten gems such as this and reprinting them.
SETTING: Los Angeles
RATING: 3.75
SERIES: #2 OF 8
If you believe that illegal immigration and terrorism are issues that are unique to today's world, think again! THE FROG AND THE SCORPION is set in the 1980s, and those issues and more are at the center of its plot. A PI by the name of Fiddler is approached by a Jewish man, Shahpour Zahedi, who was referred to him by his ex-wife, Fiora. As it turns out, Zahedi is being blackmailed by an unknown group who are threatening to expose the fact that he and his family are in the United States illegally, a fact that if revealed would lead to their deportation. Zahedi hires Fiddler to find out who is behind the extortion so that he and his family can live without the fear of being returned to a land where their most likely fate would be death.
The trail that Fiddler follows leads to a complex web of conspiracy and terrorist activity. There are a lot of players—Iranian Jews, Muslim extortionists, secret agents. One of the critical characters is a man named Mossad, who was present at the massacre of Jewish athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich and distraught at his failure to stop the carnage. His daughter, Sharai Yermiya, is a passionate woman is obsessed with killing the man responsible for her father's humiliation. She and Fiddler are much attracted to one another and partner in trying to attain their two disparate goals.
Fiddler is a great creation, right up there with some of the iconic PIs of crime fiction. The dialogue crackles, and Fiddler's wit and humanity show through all throughout the book. The opening pages describe his somewhat complex relationship with Fiora. They do love each other and spend most of their time together, but marriage is something that just does not work for them. After Maxwell painted a really interesting picture of what Fiora was like, she essentially disappeared from the book, which I found disappointing.
In addition to excellent characterization and dialogue, Maxwell packed a lot of suspense into 250 pages. The ending was action packed and thrilling. One thing that puzzled me was that the bad guys allowed Fiddler to keep a small pistol as they moved into the ultimate showdown. That didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. But that is a minor quibble—overall, I found the book to be an excellent read and was pleased to find a new-to-me PI to follow.
THE FROG AND THE SCORPION, the second in the Fiddler and Fiora series, was originally published in 1986 and recently reissued by Busted Flush Press. The book has aged remarkably well, with issues such as illegal immigration and terrorism that could have been ripped from today's headlines. Busted Flush has done the crime fiction world a real favor by finding forgotten gems such as this and reprinting them.
July 8, 2008
THE FROG AND THE SCORPION - Ex
Maxwell, A.E. - 2nd in series
Fiddler had no intention of getting embroiled in the ancient blood feud between the Jews and the Arabs. In fact, he'd just as soon stay home in Southern California, feed the freshwater koi and the hummingbirds, and watch the sun set over the Pacific. So why on earth did he ignite the passions of a sultry Israeli spy? And how did he get caught in the crossfire between a Jewish Iranian banker and some Muslim extremists?
Between detonating car bombs and lunching at Spago, Fiddler rides a wave of extortion and vengeance into the heat of a war where only the lucky die. But then that's what he gets for trying to help out a friend.
Loved it!
Maxwell, A.E. - 2nd in series
Fiddler had no intention of getting embroiled in the ancient blood feud between the Jews and the Arabs. In fact, he'd just as soon stay home in Southern California, feed the freshwater koi and the hummingbirds, and watch the sun set over the Pacific. So why on earth did he ignite the passions of a sultry Israeli spy? And how did he get caught in the crossfire between a Jewish Iranian banker and some Muslim extremists?
Between detonating car bombs and lunching at Spago, Fiddler rides a wave of extortion and vengeance into the heat of a war where only the lucky die. But then that's what he gets for trying to help out a friend.
Loved it!
March 12, 2012
Good thing I read this on my nook as I definitely needed a dictionary for help with some of the words. I love the Elizabeth Lowell books but found this a bit dry.
Fiddler is on a case while Fiora is out of town. It involves Jews being extorted by Palestinians. He goes after the extorters with help from the Mossad.
Fiddler is on a case while Fiora is out of town. It involves Jews being extorted by Palestinians. He goes after the extorters with help from the Mossad.
November 22, 2011
I really enjoyed the 1st Fiddler & Fiona by this authoring duo...This one involves shady terrorist-connected Arab blackmail of undocumented Jews in the US...eventually the actions of Mossad and Israeli interests become involved...decent quik read!!!
October 11, 2012
I think it was the subject mattter, but I didn't enjoy this one as much as Another Day In Paradise
November 27, 2014
Great series.
April 8, 2017
I'm really liking this series. This one is quite a bit more political with a lot of Middle East stuff going on. I had to google a few events that happened before I was born. The funny thing is the names have changed but not much else has compared to today. Fiora was really the only thing missing from this book, though it's understandable why she didn't get much page time. I still love the pre-cell phone era here. There are a few minor errors in this ebook version but easily overlooked. On to the next one...
October 23, 2018
“Unlike too many other fictional PI’s, Fiddler has aged well. . . . The plots are well-hewn, the dialogue crackling, the bad guys among the very baddest. . . . From the yachty Newport crowd and the oenophiles of Napa to the dream-seeking denizens of L.A., Maxwell’s books provide a sort of literary amber, capturing the scene and saving it for posterity.”—Bob Morris
“One of the most interesting and engaging private eyes since Robert Parker’s Spenser.”—*Advertising Age*
“Excellent characterization and dialogue...action-packed and thrilling...The book has aged remarkably well, with issues such as illegal immigration and terrorism that could have been ripped from today's headlines. Busted Flush has done the crime fiction world a real favor by finding forgotten gems such as this and reprinting them.”—Maddy Van Hertbruggen, *Reviewing the Evidence*
The second Fiddler & Fiora thriller, back in print. A Jewish Iranian friend of Fiddler’s is being blackmailed by terrorists and needs Fiddler’s help.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews