Flyboy

Loved the pace

Revisado: 12-25-22

I enjoyed the first in the series, but thought it dragged in places. The second part cuts the running time in half, and that works in its favor. There’s not a wasted scene. Of the three main characters I really like Ben, but found Naomi nearly intolerable. Regardless, characters and their motivations were adequately fleshed out. Narrator was excellent.

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Fine…until the last 3rd

Revisado: 12-25-22

I enjoyed the first 2/3 for the most part, even though I found some of the dialogue childish. But the last 20 minutes of this we’re so horrible all I could do was laugh. By then I wanted every single character who wasn’t named duke to die horribly. I’m not sure, based on the final paragraph, if Zuko has ever spoken to another man because the actions of the world's biggest doormat don't compute with the reactions that the large majority of men would realistically have. It's a huge oh-my-god moment that turns the character into simpy Jello. Worse, I couldn’t suspend disbelief enough to buy a silly scene between a 15 year old girl and history’s deadliest serial killer. Dreadful.

Lastly, the narrator has never heard of a period. He drones from sentence to sentence without taking a breath.

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Solid stand-alone thriller

Revisado: 10-25-20

Trust No One starts with a bang. A SWAT team bursts into Nick Horrigan's apartment, rounding him up, demanding to know why a known terrorist, who calls himself Charlie, to destroy a nuclear reactor, unless he gets a meeting with Horrigan. He doesn't know why, but law enforcement insists that he meet with Charlie anyway.

Does it have something to do with Horrigan's past? His stepfather was a Secret Service agent who was executed years ago. Nick, fearing he was directly responsible, has been carrying the guilt of that night into adulthood. Charlie promises that he has information that may change Nick's memories of exactly what happened that night.

What follows is a conspiracy that ultimately leads to a presidential candidate with the keys to the answers Nick has been searching for.

Trust No One really never slows down as it reaches back into Nick's memories to piece together everything that he thought he knew about his stepfather. I wouldn't call it a page turner, and it's not Hurwitz's best book, but it is a good standalone thriller that should please most.

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Well balanced mixture of action & espionage

Revisado: 10-25-20

Michael Tanner returns home from a business trip, and while at the airport, he picks up the wrong laptop in baggage. The laptop belongs to a US senator who has some files stored that she (and many other people) would rather not see the light of day. Once Michael realizes what he has - documents about a shadowy covert operation called Chrysalis - and who it belongs to, he's on the run to save himself and his family.

Michael is nobody special. He's an every day coffee shop owner way in over his head.. One that people would kill for to keep from the public. There's a balanced mixture of action and espionage as this man's life is turned upside down. Micheal learns he's smarter and braver than he ever thought, and he's willing to go the distance to protect everything he lives for.

Sure, it's another in a long line of government-spies-on-American-citizens books, but Finder doesn't approach it as anything but. He knows we've been here before, but he's clearly having fun with Michael, and I did too. This is not the kind of thing that is supposed to happen to an everyman like Michael. He's the little guy, and watching him take on forces bigger than himself is where Finder's imaginative writing really shines through.

Finder made a good choice in not making the antagonist a mustache twirling walking trope whose lines you can telegraph pages beforehand. There is just as much depth to the character as there is to very likable Tanner, and you can almost understand the motivations behind such a desperate attempt at keeping such a deadly operation out of the eyes of the American public.

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It's Ty Grady's world, you just live in it

Revisado: 10-25-20

My god. Where to start.

This series has gone so far off the wall that all the King's horses and all the King's men...well...you know. At this point, Ty is really just a superhero. He's not even human anymore. If it's something that's been done, he's done it. If it's a person to bed, he's bedded them. If there's a special skill to be had, he has it. Zane is really just a secondary character now, since for some godless reason we have to give Nick (you know, the guy who Ty totally made no bones about finding a hella good kisser right to his own boyfriend), and all of his Sidewinder nonsense chapters of dialogue. We are seven books in and we still don't know nearly as much about Zane as we do about Ty.

The book left me scratching my head fairly early on when Roux completely torpedoed the first six books in terms of why and how these two became a couple in the first place. It was all downhill from there.

Ty an Zane head to New Orleans to help out Nick, despite Zane's trust issues with him. We get more character development for Ty - he's a pretty, charismatic assassin with a big case of the feels, but Zane's story continues to be largely unexplored - we never run into anyone from Zane's past, for example, while Ty's past drips from the woodwork.

We learn Zane visited a club in NOLA with Becky a few years ago where Ty was a performer while undercover. He invites Zane and Becky for a tryst after the show. The couple politely declined, but after Becky's death, Ty – who was just a mysterious stranger to Zane at the time - had such an influence on him that he jumped the fence and started banging guys who reminded him of this enigmatic stranger, sometimes for cash.

What.

Zane eventually figures this out, and then we go off in a tangent about fate and how it brings lovers together. Whatever.

Ty also has a lot of secrets. And in Touch & Geaux, he's keeping a big one that causes Zane to question their entire relationship. Justifiably angry, Zane has a meltdown, heading back to the bottle after months of sobriety, and letting loose his unchecked rage, beating Ty, both physically and sexually, in a couple of fantastic scenes where Ty really comes to terms with just what he did to Zane. Ty pleads with Zane not to leave him, eventually melting the tension with a sweet, and sincere, “I would die for you Zane.” The friction between the two is emotional, well written, and just as heated as anything else Roux had put the boys through in previous books. The resolution to the betrayal is resolved to satisfaction, and with some exciting action toward the end, the story is elevated from guilty pleasure trash, to simply tolerable.

But the problems that drag it down far outweigh the stories positives.

Roux has a problem of introducing characters who turn out to be one of Ty’s former sex partners - here, we get FOUR, cold blooded killer Liam, and two unseen characters told in flashback – in addition to Ava, who he had a relationship with while undercover (it wafts back and forth as to whether it was a real relationship, or just someone Ty used to further his mission). The problem with this is his past sexual history adds NOTHING to the story. No conflict between Ty, Zane, Liam, Preston, Ava etc, that the detail really just sits there like a dusty ficus tree in a Dentist office. Had we at least gotten some salacious details about their trysts (this is an M/M book with copious amounts of sex, after all), it may have been justified. If she intended to show how much Ty relies on sex to get by – maybe to combat loneliness – she failed.

Other than this, T&G ends up with half ideas, plots that go nowhere, and a missed opportunity to truly give some insight and depth into Zane’s past. It's trite, foolish, and ridiculous. Roux is an exceptionally good writer when it comes to lighter and comedic moments, sex scenes, and action sequences. But she goes off the rails with Ty and Zane’s first meeting (seriously, it really is stupid), and Ty’s pointless history with characters in play, that I was actually surprised when a character was introduced who HADN’T banged Ty.

This is the first book where it seemed that Roux preferred to write about Nick over Zane. Previously, her POV was focused solidly on Ty and Zane, but Nick’s increasing influence on the story was becoming apparent. Touch & Geaux shifted the series from a rocky love story between two vastly different men, to an ensemble piece that treated Zane as a satellite presence revolving around Ty’s circle of friends and family. Every part of Zane’s life is centered around Ty – Roux never gave him his own life (he’s got an addiction to hookers, alcohol and drugs, but that’s never explored as deeply as Ty’s life as a Marine). I didn't dislike the sidewinders, I just thought they were overused.

Roux is walking on mighty thin ice here, and it’s with Touch & Geaux that it becomes clear that the loss of Madeleine Urban was a significant one. Read it for Zane's emotional breakdown,. but you're better off skipping it, and going for the superior first six books, and then jumping into to the first few chapters and last few chapters of Crash & Burn for a rich, satisfying, and delicious story.

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My first Finder novel, won't be my last

Revisado: 08-18-20

This is the first Joseph Finder book that I picked up, and I liked it enough (in fact, I loved it), to grab up a handful of his other works.

Jason Steadman is a middle manager who has his life together, and has a decent, if mediocre job. A salesman, Jason is married to Kate, a woman who thinks he lacks the drive to improve their situation - i.e. negotiate a promotion and bring in a bigger paycheck. She's got needs, you see.

Jason meets former Special Ops agent Kurt Semko following a car accident where Semko comes to his aid. Jason lays out his problems with Kate, his dismissive boss Gordy, and an uber-cutthroat rival named Trevor. Taken with Jason, Kurt decides to start doing a few favors, when suddenly his Jason's career begins taking off. But as Kurt becomes increasingly obsessed with Jason's life, Jason comes to realize that Kurt has a lot more layers - and is far more dangerous - than he ever dreamed.

It's a decently paced story, with an increasingly unstable antagonist in Kurt, and a likable, if rather beige protagonist in Jason. It took me a long time to warm up to his wife Kate, who I originally pegged as superficial, demanding, and spoiled, and Trevor is a bit of a mustache twiller that we've all worked with at some point. There's a great chase scene, and an ever growing sense of dread as Jason slowly comes to realize the stalking, sociopathic behavior, and deadly intentions of his new "friend," the fixer. With friends like these.....

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What a fantastic book

Revisado: 08-04-20

MacArthur Gray is the Sheriff of Widow Town - named for a tragic event which killed a sizable portion of the men in town, leaving a town full of widowed women, and fatherless children. Set 100 years in the future, a vaccine has been created that eradicates the gene responsible for psychopathic behavior in humans. The vaccine is considered a great success - until women begin disappearing, and more men end up dead.

A fast paced book, Widow Town is surprisingly dark, with a few genuinely surprising turns that I never predicted. With many books of this type, you can spot the winners and losers within the first few chapters. But in Hart's world, anyone and everyone is fair game, and I found myself satisfied, shocked, and saddened by each and every addition to its sizable body count..

Gray faces trouble at every turn, from the insufferable Sheriff of a neighboring town who prods Gray into a dick measuring contest every chance he gets, to an ex-wife who blames him for the end of their marriage, to dealing with the memory and the guilt of the loss of his own daughter, a D.A. who reminds Gray he's bedding his ex every chance he gets, to a mayor who is determined to throw Gray off the case after everyone insists he's chasing a killer that doesn't exist.

The mystery here isn't who's abducting and killing with people of Widow Town, we're told that early on. It's who's ultimately behind the whole thing, and their disturbingly twisted reasons for their actions. It's a gory, horrifying book that is worth every second spent with it. By the end of Widow Town Gray has been beaten, burned, and shot so many times that it's a miracle he's able to stand.

If you've not read a Joe Hart novel, change that.

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Someone is out to get Patrick Davis

Revisado: 08-02-20

Davis, a screenwriter who just sold his first screenplay, is watching his life unravel around him. An altercation with an entitled Hollywood actor, an overzealous work schedule driven by a near obsessive desire to succeed, and an extramarital affair are the least of his problems. Someone is sending him cryptic DVDs showing Patrick, filmed at various locations, as he goes through his daily routine. Then a series of threatening phone calls and e-mails begin, and Patrick finds himself on the wrong end of a conspiracy.

It's typical Hurtiwz - and I mean that as a compliment - a desperate man in a life or death situation trying to save himself and the people he loves. It has a nice balance of drama and action, though it is a little on the overlong side, and the final scenes felt a bit rushed, given how much detail was worked into the many action sequences before it.

Hurwitz is a research fiend when it comes to his characters. And while there are a number of things that are far fetched, he's done his homework. It's a good stand-alone, but if you go into Hurwitz with this one, make sure you follow it up with the Orphan X series for an idea of how solid he is as an action/thriller writer.

Scott Brick narrates, and he never fail to disappoint. As always, his reading is steady, clear, and I don't have difficulty telling characters apart from one and other when Brick reads.

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Hurwitz is better than this

Revisado: 07-28-20

I really like Gregg Hurwitz as a story teller. I've read several of his books, and his attention to detail is amazing. But this is the least interesting that I've read. I found the plot contrived, and I really didn't like Daniel. Not because I found anything wrong with the guy personally, I just found him to be a little too much of a Mary Sue with his counseling group, and a little bit too judgmental.

I liked the second half of the book better than the first. It was contrived, but it put the thrill in thriller. It got an extra star for that. This is one of the few books that I gave a lower rating to, not because it's bad per se, but rather for how it compares to the author's other works.

I liked Scott Brick's performance, though. Brick is one of my favorite narrators, and he doesn't disappoint here.

Bottom line, the book is fine, but Hurwitz is better than this. I wasn't sure if I was listening to a thriller/mystery or a Travelocity review of San Francisco.

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M/M romance or Prada catalog?

Revisado: 07-28-20

I don't know how I feel about Mary's writing. Some of it is a little trite, and she spends an awful lot of time on Miro's designer clothes than she does on the relationship between Miro and Ian. There's a nice bit of humor and drama for sure, but just like in book 1, I spent a number of chapters wondering where the hell she was going with all of this. As I said in the Book 1 review, this is obviously influenced by Silence Of The Lambs, but since we're talking about an M/M romance, it can't get deep enough to actually make me care about the dysfunctional relationship between Miro, Hartley, and Ian. The real problem here is that Mary can't delve as deep into this story as she should go. It would be inappropriate for a romance, but it also loses its bite because of it's pretty much forced to be nothing other than superficial. If you can't take it all the way, perhaps you shouldn't go there at all.

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