The Cutting Season

An avid fan of the gentle mystery, I was not keen to read a story with gore and violence. However, the first chapter intriqued and by the third I was hooked! Arthur Rosenfeld is a masterful storyteller who can weave the fanciful and unbelievable into a hypnotic spell. The violence plays off the sense of hopelessness we have when bad things happen to good people and we must wait upon the wheels of justice to slowly grind thier paths. However, his protagonist is not without a conscience and his agony over his role in this life draws us into our own fantasies of wanting to be able to avenge evil and the frustration of being constrained by the rules of civilization. The "blood and gore" is cleverly done to allow the reader to visualize the event without his spelling out every detail. Indeed, the use of the acupuncture needles is a unique twist which lends a touch of reprieve from the violence usually associated with martial arts. Best of all, I understand the passion in the romance without having every action described in minute detail. This book was a spellbinder which could not be put down to even fix dinner until it was finished. Good thing I have a hubby that doesn't mind eating late! The only problem I had was that for me it ended too soon...I wanted more. But that's the mark of a gifted author. I'll be reading more of his stories soon!

The Cutting Season is a multi-level novel - the complicated main character, Xenon, is a martial arts expert, Jewish, and a brain surgeon that can wield a sword with the same degree of expertise as he does a scalpel. While you may not like this guy in the beginning - and may seriously question his sanity at times, by the end of the book you will have to say you respect his dedication to making things right. Engaging quick-read novel that keeps you interested throughout.

Arthur Rosenfeld's "The Cutting Season" is a medical thriller, a novel of psychological suspense, a fantasy, a martial arts adventure, a romance, and a crime drama, all neatly packaged into three hundred engrossing pages. The hero is a brilliant neurosurgeon, Dr. Xenon Pearl, who secretly practices the fighting techniques that he learned from his former Chinese nanny, Wu Tie Mei. The nanny also passed on to her protege her vast knowledge of Chinese history and philosophy, acupuncture, and the use of medicinal herbs. Zee, as Xenon is called, is no garden-variety medical professional. He rides a motorcycle, wears a ponytail, savors exotic chocolates, meditates regularly, and generally eschews the trappings of materialism that so many doctors cherish. The author immediately captures the reader's attention with his electrifying opening chapter. The scene is an operating room in South Florida. Zee is startled when the soul of the eleven-year old boy who is lying on his table suddenly flits from his small body and rises upward. Zee's scalpel slips and nicks an artery, and the patient is soon declared dead. The child, whose name is Rafik, came into the hospital after suffering a terrible beating. His father, a powerful Russian mob boss named Vlexei Petrossov, claims that his son fell off his bicycle, a statement that is patently absurd. Before Zee confronts Petrossov, he sees the ghost of Wu Tie Mei, who has been dead for ten years. She tells Zee, "You are a fearsome warrior no matter what skin you wear." Tie Mei is warning Xenon that he is about to confront some tough challenges that will ultimately make him stronger. To prepare himself for what lies ahead, Zee mounts his bright yellow Triumph Thruxton motorcycle in search of Thaddeus Jones, a master swordsmith. Zee learns that Jones died two years ago. However, his daughter, the beautiful Jordan Jones, is a talented craftswoman in her own right who has inherited her father's rare skill. Zee asks Jordan to create a special weapon for him, "a straight sword, double-edged, flexible, with a voice through the air." She agrees and gradually, Xenon develops a close relationshiop with this amazing and unusual woman. As time goes on, Zee wonders whether he is a healer, an avenger, or both. The ghost of his former teacher reappears regularly, trying to convince Zee that he was a warrior in a former incarnation and that he must fight again to fulfill his destiny. Goaded by Tie Mei, Zee is tempted to exact retribution against those who have harmed innocent people. However, he worries that his visions of Tie Mei may be hallucinations, brought on by overwork and too many sleepless nights. Should he trust the police to do their job, or should he take the law into his own deadly hands? What if, by embracing the role of a vigilante, he places himself and those he loves in danger? This is a complex and textured novel, with vivid characters, sardonic humor, scenes of explosive violence, a

Most readers (or watchers of movies/TV) have preconceived notions about martial arts: it's violent (UFC, Pride); it's hokey (chop suey martial arts movies with bad sound tracks); it's mystical (warriors flying through the air like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which is an excellent movies, BTW). What martial artists enjoy (or at least what I enjoy) about the martial arts is the integration of mind, body and spirit. And this is not something that is solely the realm of martial artists; dancers, yoga practitioners, even piano players and other musicians experience the clarity of thought when mind, body and spirit come together. Most media representations either show too much fighting (body), too much mysticism (spirit), or simply miss the mark by representing a martial artist as a one-dimensional human. Arthur Rosenfeld's new book The Cutting Season gets the balance right. It is classified as "martial arts fiction"; rightly so. The story begins with a doctor who is sometimes a martial arts practitioner, and ends with the man being a martial artist, integrating the concepts of martial arts throughout his life, not just on the side. It is the story of Dr. Xenon Pearl, a neurosurgeon (yes, my son, the brain surgeon!) who was trained in the martial arts from an early age by his Chinese nanny, Wu Tie Mei, who's death is mysterious until the end of the book. Wu Tie Mei begins appearing to Zee (Xenon), and initially he puts it off to lack of sleep and general stress. But he slowly realizes that he needs to be on a path, a path that he has been on as a warrior in previous lives; this could be cliche' (there are no coincidences, everything happens for a reason) and there are moments in the book when Zee's re-transformation is too easy (an average human would react differently in a situation). Rosenfeld handles this journey, this metamorphosis, very well. Mr. Rosenfeld's descriptions and dialog are best when lessons are being given. It is easy to see that he is a martial arts instructor: "Stretch is twenty percent in your legs, eighty percent in your mind," I said. "My mind is saying my body hurts." "You mind believes your body is a torso with arms sticking out the top and legs sticking out the bottom. Big mistake. The spine is the only hard piece connecting the top and bottom halves of you; the truth is you've got two separate entities to work with, limited only by that bony link. Your top half can do one thing while your bottom half does another, just the way you can learn to chew gun and walk at the same time. Realizing this is very freeing. It opens up a whole world of possibilities." Kind of like realizing that you really can play point and counterpoint with your two different hands on the piano, true? My only peeve on the novel is that different meaningless characters were brought into the story, and, at the time they were brought in, I found them distracting (the Miami Dolphi fullback Derringer, for example). But Mr. Rosenfeld

The story of one man who did make a difference and did it in a way most can only dream about. With an unstoppable narrative power, this book will cause much thinking. This is a great read with a you-are-there quality. The action junkies will find what they need, as will those who seek a deeper meaning. This book has it all. I could not stop reading. I feel as if I know, and have known all the major players. I look forward to the next one.