Fourth Hand

"Mr. Irving has always had a taste for sprawling, improbable plots, but in his most successful works...he has used his instinctive storytelling gifts to weld all the gimmickry...into resonant moral fables. THE FOURTH HAND, however, never becomes anything more than a collection of farcical episodes strung haphazardly together, an unfortunate throwback to his antic and ham-handed 1981 novel, THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE....Patrick is a cardboard figure who seems to have stepped out of a romance novel or self-help book.Irving, John is the author of 'Fourth Hand' with ISBN 9780375431210 and ISBN 0375431217.