Review - The Never Game

I am a fan of Jeffrey Deaver, I just have sooo many books to read that his tend to get pushed aside.  I have been watching the new TV show "Tracker" and I wanted to read at least the first in the series that inspired the show.  I've only reviewed two prior books of his, although I've read more of the Lincoln Rhyme books than shown here.  

 The Burning Wire: Lincoln Rhyme (click here) 

XO: Kathryn Dance (click here)  

Author: Jeffery Deaver

Copyright: Mar 2019 (G.P. Putnam's Sons) 413 pgs

Series: 1st in Colter Shaw Mysteries

Sensuality: Adult topics, intimacy-no details

Mystery Sub-genre: Contemporary Detective

Main Character: Colter Shaw, rewardist with a heart 

Setting: Contemporary Silicon Valley, California

Obtained Through: Library

 Book Blurb:  "The son of a survivalist family, Colter Shaw is an expert tracker. Now he makes a living as a “reward seeker,” traveling the country to help police solve crimes and locate missing persons for private citizens.

“You’ve been abandoned. Escape if you can. Or die with dignity.”

Hired by the father of a young woman who has gone missing in Silicon Valley, Shaw's search takes him into the dark heart of America’s cutthroat billion-dollar video-game industry. When another person goes missing, Shaw must ask: Is a madman bringing a twisted video game to life?

Encountering eccentric designers, trigger-happy gamers, and ruthless tech titans, Shaw soon learns that he isn't the only one on the hunt: someone is on his trail and closing fast...."

I'll be reviewing the television series based on this book shortly, but for now let's focus on the books that lead to the show. 

MY Thoughts:

Colter Shaw was raised by a paranoid schizophrenic father (formerly history, political science, and humanities professor) who was a survivalist and a medical school professor mother.  He graduated from the University of Michigan in law and interned at a law firm, but he couldn't stand working in an office.  Colter and his siblings were raised on roughly 1,000 acres in Sierra Nevada foothills living off the grid.  His father ingrained in the children his list of "nevers" such as: 

Never antagonize beast or man.

Never adopt a strategy or approach without assigning percentages.

Never assign a percentage until you have as many facts as possible and many more.

Colter has a team backing him: Teddy and Velma Bruin, who watch his actual home while he's traveling in a Winnebago and find him reward jobs, plus he has a private investigator, Mack whose last name is not yet mentioned . They are introduced and we get a little bit about Teddy and Velma but they aren't developed much yet.  Local cop LaDonna Standish was a gem I enjoyed.

The plot is finally crafted with plenty of red herrings to lead you down to the wrong person.  The setting of Silicon Valley shows the wealthy in sharp contrast to those struggling to get by pay check by pay check.  I have to say this character and the pacing kept me fully engaged.  

The climax was thrilling and nail biting.  Perfection.  The writing style is detailed where needed and efficient when needed.  Some chapters are flashbacks to Colter's growing up and that is doling out peeks into his non-traditional upbringing and a mystery involving his father.  This will be an ongoing theme in the next book, apparently.  I'm a fan of this new series and will be going to the next in the series.

Rating:  Excellent - Loved it! Buy it now and put this author on your watch list 

Thank you for reading this blog and please recommend to friends and family who will enjoy it.

New Thriller Spotlight

Here is an exciting new thriller I wanted to share with you.  If you like suspense thrillers consider this for your next read.  I recommend it.

The Society (Elizabeth Grant Thriller 1) by C.G. Abbot

     A troubled young woman looking into the disappearance of her friend, an FBI agent, and a young journalist each on the trail of a White Supremacist secret society manipulating events to gain control of the nation. Each has parts of the puzzle, but time is running out to stop the well-planned agenda and save the nation from disaster.
     When Elizabeth Grant sees her childhood friend, she is thrown into a world of secret societies laced with conspiracies.
     Elizabeth has been plagued with visions since the disappearance of Loralie. When she returns to the small town of her childhood, she’s unaware that she’s walking into the middle of what killed her friend.
     Unknown to the rest of the world, The Society for a Restored America has been preparing to seize control of the government through manipulation of a national crisis. The Society's membership has already infiltrated the government and military at the highest levels. The only thing between them and success is Elizabeth Grant.
     Elizabeth must accept her special gift and stay alive long enough to uncover the Society's dark plot to seize control from a nation that blindly supports them.

A Goodreads reviewer said:  
"What can I say but WOW! This is a true suspense thriller. I couldn’t believe how the characters lives eventually intertwined to an ending that is just surprising. I don’t want to spoil your experience by giving too much away. Let’s just say Elizabeth’s “gift” is remarkable. Great story line that kept me guessing out loud while I was reading and really did not have this one figured out at all!"

$1.99 (BUY HERE)

Review - The Hit

Although I was holding out hope for another Camel Club release from Mr. Baldacci, I was enticed by the blurb on this book.  I did not read the first book that debuted the character Will Robie, but this second in the series is on par to best the Camel Club (hard to imagine, I know.)

Author: David Baldacci

Copyright: April 2013 (Grand Central Publishing) 400 pgs

Series: 2nd in Will Robie-Assassin Thriller series

Sensuality: n/a

Mystery Sub-genre: Thriller

Main Characters: Wiliam Robie, a U.S. sanctioned elite assassin

Setting: Modern day, Washington DC

Obtained Through: Personal purchase

The book opens with Doug Jacobs, a handler, watching a live feed of a planned assassination.  From everything that he observes, including a shot of the assassin's sniper position, the hit will take place as planned.  What he didn't know was that it was smoke and mirrors, the assassin was actually in Washington D.C. targeting him.  The shot hits its Doug Jacobs instead of some Middle East wannabe to the shock of the intelligence community.  Will Robie is called in and given the assignment to track down and kill the person believed behind the killing of Doug Jacobs -- Jessica Reel, another elite U.S. assassin who seems to have gone rogue.  Jessica and Will know each other, and they know each others strengths and training.  But Will starts to uncover that there is something more going on, the information he has been given to track Jessica down is redacted and the crime scene was cleaned before he could see it.  What is the government hiding, and is Jessica Reel a traitor or a patriot?  Will Robie has suspicions that all is not as it appears, so what does he do about tracking down and killing Jessica Reel? 

Will Robbie is a smart character and a very deadly opponent.  He makes a great anti-hero in that his job and ingrained training dictates he should just follow orders.  But, he can't ignore all the clues that there is something deeply wrong in his own agency.  Jessica Reel is a dynamite character.  She is hardened and jaded, and every bit as lethal as Will Robie.  I loved her character and look forward to her in future Robie books.  FBI agent Nicole Vance, who made her appearance in the first book "The Innocent" is back.  She proves herself to be a critical player in key parts of the book, due to her working with Robie in the last book.  Julie, a teenage girl also from the prior book, is present in this story as Robie struggles with being in her life.  A standout character in this book is known only as "Blue Man".  Blue Man is Robie's immediate superior and displays a political acuman as he advises Robie.  Blue Man is somewhat an unsung hero in the tale because he works in the background, but I appreciated him so much.

The setting is mostly Washington D.C. with additional scenes in the Middle East, and New York.  These settings are related through an assassin's eyes, evaluating aspects that are not usually portrayed.

The plot is spot on and continues to grow in magnitude the further you read.  Some sections are written from Jessica's viewpoint, which heightens the tension significantly. This maintains a thriller's sense of urgency and seems rocket fueled. 

The climax is gripping and meets expectations fully.  The wrap-up is dramatic yet nuanced, lingering on the mind long after the book is closed.

"Page-turner" does not even begin to describe this gripping race through a governmental conspiracy at the highest levels.  I devoured this book.  It is a rush, yet the voice is so finely developed that it encompasses wisdom regarding damaged souls as well.

Rating: Near Perfect - Buy two copies: one for you and one for a friend. 

Here is a short interview with David Baldacci on this book.

Review - Marks of Cain

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Author: Tom Knox


Copyright: May 6, 2010 (Viking Adult); 448 pgs.

Series: Stand alone

Sensuality: explicit language, sex scenes, and graphic violence

Mystery sub-genre: Thriller

Main Character: Attorney David Martinez and Journalist Simon Quinn

Setting: Current day England, Spain, France, Africa, Germany

Obtained book through: Publisher for an honest review


Write up from Publisher's Review:
"Two strangers, American David Martinez and Englishman Simon Quinn, become involved in two apparently unconnected strands of what's revealed as one unified conspiracy in Knox's problematic second thriller, which...casts recent human evolution in an unorthodox light. At the urging of his late grandfather, Martinez sets out to learn his family's true history, while Quinn looks into a series of brutal murders involving [elderly wealthy] victims connected to the Basque regions of Spain and France. Both men find answers in the tumultuous history of the Pyrenees and Namibia, answers with implications so terrible that the Catholic Church is willing to conspire with a murderous Basque terrorist to conceal them. Repeated violent confrontations with supposedly deadly assassins somehow never quite result in the protagonists' deaths.  Tom Knox supplies a rational basis for the Nazi genocide that may offend some readers."

I felt that this summary was far more succinct than anything I can come up with.  I will be honest, this was a tough book for me.  I like thrillers - but I don't like a lot of graphic violence etc.  It was also difficult to understand what the book was generally about until about half way through.  I wish I had read that summary before starting this novel, it would have helped me from feeling in the dark until well into this long story.

Although every book has us as readers suspend our natural skepticism and disbelief, I found that hard to maintain a good number of times.  Firstly David Martinez is facing unavoidable death so many times I lost count - even being burned alive, but still manages to miraculously escape time and again.  The downright gross factor was very high with scenes like sludging through the liquid of decomposed bodies.  I found the writing style difficult at times, perhaps the author's being British with a different cultural basis contributed to that (wild guess there).

And...I had an older brother.  We were rather a happy family... At first... Then at eighteen I went off to university and while I was there I got this frantic phone call from my mother.  She said,  your brohter Tim has just lost it.  I asked her what she meant and she said,  he's just lost it.  And it was true.  He'd suddenly come home from university ...

My parents realized my brother had a pretty serious problem - and they took him to a doctor, and they prescribed Tim the usual drugs.  The wretched little pills.  Antipsychotics.  And they worked for a while...But one night when I was home for Christmas I heard this muttering noise and...and it was this voice....And I lay there wondering what to do.  But then I heard this terrible scream and I rushed from my bedroom and my brother was in..."  He closed and opened his eyes.  "My brother was there in my mother's bedroom and they were alone because my father was away...and...and my brother was attacking her, hacking at my mother, with a machette.  A big knife.  A machete.  (I am stopping here for it gets bloody.)

At times I wanted to know why these wealthy elderly people had been killed and how it all fit together, but before long I just wanted to finish the book and read something happy.  This is a very dark and depressing book overall.  Characterization is a mixed bag, David Martinez is rather an insecure loner and Simon is single minded former alcoholic, but otherwise I couldn't really decribe them.  I think an obvious setup in the book is Simon's psychotic brother who is in an asylum for murdering their mother clearly was going to be part of the plot and the mental illness somehow figured in too.  But that was never utilized and I don't know why Simon had a psychotic murderous brother.

If you tend to like Thrillers that are grittier, you don't mind violence or dark stories this book may be for you.  Me personally, I think I need a nice cozy mystery!!

To lighten things up - here is a little something extra from a wedding reception: