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Mr. Death
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 4, 2025
Found this book at a secondhand store and was fascinated. It's not what I anticipated it would be. Any deep insight into overall CIA practices aren't to be prioritized. Instead, Mr. Death is a case conceptualization about a man trying to make sense of his fathers many identities not necessarily caused by arms dealing but instead arms dealing caused by his father's impulsivity for sex, violence, snakes, fireworks, among a variety of other things. The CIA becomes a footnote in a tall tale, almost like a real life Big Fish but if your dad made weapons for the CIA to blow off the feet of civilians in foreign warzones.
I put this book down a few months back because Mr. Death AKA Barry Rothman, shocking I know, was a pretty deplorable person. There's an escalation in the information David Rothman finds that ramps up and into things like trafficking rings of minors Barry visited in Puerto Rico. After that chapter, I stopped for a while to lighten my brain before getting back to it.
When I picked it back up, I was a bit surprised to see how Rothman sidesteps from digging too deeply into that part of his father's identity, leaving a giant elephant in the room for the next 40% of the novel, especially when he talks about his own similarities with his father. Now, I'm not implying anything by that, but it makes for a jarring experience as a reader, especially when the book actively invites you to question and keep track of these many threads and characters before abandoning the model to pivot into some pretty explicit sexual chapters where Rothman hooks up with his freshly deceased father's mistress/sister-in-law. He also spends a lot of time waxing poetic about his dick. It's published by Playboy in the 70s, so it's not entirely unexpected, but the tonal shifts give a lot of whiplash to be sure.
I'd say if any review reader is still interested in the character study after reading this briefest of synopses, it's worth checking out--if you can find it or, like myself, it ends up crossing your path.
I put this book down a few months back because Mr. Death AKA Barry Rothman, shocking I know, was a pretty deplorable person. There's an escalation in the information David Rothman finds that ramps up and into things like trafficking rings of minors Barry visited in Puerto Rico. After that chapter, I stopped for a while to lighten my brain before getting back to it.
When I picked it back up, I was a bit surprised to see how Rothman sidesteps from digging too deeply into that part of his father's identity, leaving a giant elephant in the room for the next 40% of the novel, especially when he talks about his own similarities with his father. Now, I'm not implying anything by that, but it makes for a jarring experience as a reader, especially when the book actively invites you to question and keep track of these many threads and characters before abandoning the model to pivot into some pretty explicit sexual chapters where Rothman hooks up with his freshly deceased father's mistress/sister-in-law. He also spends a lot of time waxing poetic about his dick. It's published by Playboy in the 70s, so it's not entirely unexpected, but the tonal shifts give a lot of whiplash to be sure.
I'd say if any review reader is still interested in the character study after reading this briefest of synopses, it's worth checking out--if you can find it or, like myself, it ends up crossing your path.
Displaying 1 of 1 review