Tag Archives: Thriller

Review | FaceOff, edited by David Baldacci

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18775278Ever wondered what would happen if Lee Child’s Jack Reacher teamed up with Joseph Finder’s Nick Heller? Or if Ian Rankin’s John Rebus and Peter James’ Roy Grace worked together to solve a cold case? FaceOff, edited by David Baldacci and featuring 23 of the world’s best thriller writers, sounds like a thriller fan’s ultimate fantasy, and with such a super star line up of authors, it should come as no surprise that the collection is one of the best page turners I’ve read this year.

The best part for me was the introduction before each story, where Baldacci explains why these authors were paired up, what they decided would be the most natural way for their characters to end up together, and how they collaborated on the story. In the first face-off, for example, we learn that Michael Connelly wrote the first six pages of the story and a few ideas on how the story could go, and expected Dennis Lehane to take a couple of days to finish the story. Instead, Lehane took several weeks and added twenty more pages, “evolving the plot from the shorthand to the complex and humorous.” I love this peek into the working styles of these great writers. The book is purportedly a series of face-offs between popular thriller characters, but these introductions reveal how much it is also a series of collaborations between the authors.

I especially love that the collaboration between these writers I admire goes beyond the collaboration we see in this volume. For example, Steve Berry and James Rollins have inserted sly references to the other’s characters in their own books in the past, and with this anthology, finally got the opportunity to bring Cotton Malone and Gray Pierce together for a full story.

The stories in this anthology are all solid thriller shorts. It’s exciting to see characters you like working together, but that’s a gimmick that could grow old pretty quick. The authors in this anthology had a delicate balancing act — how to feature both major characters equally and still have it be about the story rather than simply a fan fiction mashup of audience favourite cameos? Sure, at times, there was a bit of expository dialogue that served more to highlight the characters as stars rather than the story, but that’s forgivable, given the purpose of this anthology. What’s important is that even with these little asides to wink at the fans, each of the stories here is solidly constructed, and with a compelling plot.

While all the stories were fun reads, there were a few standouts. Gaslighted, by R.L. Stine, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child pitted Slappy the Ventriloquist Dummy vs Aloysius Pendergast and was creepy as hell. Unlike the other match ups, this one featured a clear battle between the main characters. I’m unfamiliar with both characters — I’d read only R.L. Stine’s Fear Street series and don’t remember Slappy at all, and I’d read only one Preston/Child book years ago, which I found so scary (can’t remember why, to be honest) that I never dared read them again. Unsurprisingly then, this story really gave me the chills, and in a collection primarily of detective stories and real world crimes, it stood out.

Another standout is M.J. Rose and Lisa Gardner’s The Laughing Buddha, which pits the pragmatic police work of D.D. Warren vs the more esoteric Malachai Samuels, using the theft of a Buddha statue to spin a tale of past lives and a crime from centuries ago. It was suspenseful, and while both characters were apparently after solving the same crime, the contrast between Warren’s job and Samuels’ mission made it a race to the solution.

Finally, one of my favourites in the collection is Good and Valuable Consideration by Lee Child and Joseph Finder. I love the unexpected nature of the encounter, and the almost offhand way that the collaboration between Jack Reacher and Nick Heller began. Both characters were watching the same baseball game at a bar and end up sitting near a man in need of their help. Much of the conversation happens in glances between the characters — two men who don’t know each other but instinctively sense the other’s power and somehow reach a silent understanding. The writing as well seemed especially smooth, as if the authors shared the same level of mutual understanding that their characters achieved in a night at a bar. As Baldacci writes in his introduction to this face-off, “Actually, their biggest problem was who would win the Yankees-Sox game that kicks the whole thing off.”

Overall, FaceOff was a lot of fun to read. I’m a fan of thrillers in general, and so I was particularly excited to see that one of my favourite authors ever, Ian Rankin, was paired with another personal favourite, Peter James. I did wish that other personal favourites Stuart MacBride and Val McDermid had been included — can you imagine Logan McRae and Tony Hill working together to catch a super-psychopath? Epic! Volume 2, perhaps, Mr. Baldacci?

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Heads up on Thrillerfest IX, at the Grand Hyatt, NYC July 8 – 12, 2014. Many of the authors in this anthology will be there, and the conference was organized by International Thriller Writers, the group that brought these authors together for this anthology in the first place.

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Thank you to Simon and Schuster for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

 

Review | Boy Nobody, Allen Zadoff

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14740626Allen Zadoff takes the teen-on-a-mission trope to a whole new level in Boy Nobody. The title character is an assassin who works for a mysterious agency. A teenage boy without a past, he is able to slip into the school system, strike a casual friendship with the son or daughter of the target, make the kill and then disappear before anyone connects him to the death. Things get complicated when he falls in love with the daughter of his next target, the mayor of New York City. To make matters worse, he’s been having flashbacks of his life before he became Boy Nobody, which hint that he may have been a victim himself once, and that his current life was forced on him against his will.

Boy Nobody is an action-packed YA thriller and a quick, exciting read. I didn’t expect to like the romance, particularly when I started liking how badass Boy Nobody was as an assassin. But I like Sam — she’s smart and sharp, and able to see through Boy Nobody’s veneer. She calls him out when he’s lying or not standing up for a bullying victim, but she isn’t over the top acerbic either, nor is she by any means perfect. While part of me did wish he would just fulfill his mission already and set to work learning about his own past, another part of me understood why he kept hesitating, and why he began wondering about his orders in general in the first place.

This is the first book in the series, and I can just imagine how exciting the next books will be, as Boy Nobody delves ever deeper into his past and into the organization that sends him on missions. In the meantime, this first book is an exciting ride, a more action-packed, less introspective version of Barry Lyga’s Game series. I particularly love how the romance plays out — the turn it takes is unexpected and, I think, a brave and necessary move. If it were the 90s, I’d say this series would make the perfect TV show. I don’t know if there’s a market for this type of show these days, but as a book series at least, it’s a fantastic read, and I look forward to the rest of the series.

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Thank you to HBG Canada for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

 

Review | Game, Barry Lyga

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0316125873I absolutely loved the concept behind Barry Lyga’s I Hunt Killers. A teenage son of the world’s most notorious serial killer decides to use his father’s training to hunt serial killers himself, and therefore prove he isn’t like his father. Jasper Dent has the daddy of daddy issues, and it makes for a gripping, emotional read, and a hero/potential anti-hero you can really get behind. There are shades of Dexter Morgan’s in Jazz’s own quest, and kudos to Lyga for fearlessly exploring the darkness within his teenage protagonist.

Game ups the ante by pitting father against son in even more overt ways. Jazz is somewhat more confident in his role as serial killer hunter, but his subconscious keeps torturing him with disturbing memories, and he is still unable to shake off the fear that he is predisposed to ultimately become like his father.

On one hand, Game is a bit of a letdown after the absolutely compelling first volume in the series. It reads more like a traditional thriller, except with a teenage protagonist rather than a hardened professional. Jazz’s character development had always fascinated me more than the mysteries themselves, so oddly enough, I found myself somewhat disappointed by the heightened focus on the mystery in this book.

Connie plays a much larger role in this book, and while I like how important she is in keeping Jazz deeply grounded in his own humanity, while I like that Lyga has a female character who can hold her own as well as the male protagonist can, I thought her part in the story mostly unnecessary and would personally have preferred to instead have had Jazz’s solitude offer us a deeper exploration of his psyche.

That being said, there’s still plenty of dark and twisty Jasper Dent psychology to grip readers. Jazz’s hesitation to have sex with Connie, because he’s afraid it’ll awaken some latent psychosis is reminiscent of Angel’s inability to have sex with Buffy at the risk of losing his soul, and it’s particularly striking within the context of the deeply disturbing, highly sexualized, memories surfacing in Jazz’s subconscious.

As well, as an action packed thriller, it’s a hell of a ride. Particularly in the second half of the book, where my Goodreads profile shows comments such as “Holy crap!” at around the 75% mark, and “OMG what a cliff hanger!” at the very end.

The Jasper Dent books is an audacious, utterly fascinating series, and I can’t wait to see where Lyga takes it next.

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Thank you to Hachette Book Group Canada for an advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review.