Customer Reviews

Adept

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I love this book. It's so rare that you find an easy to read thriller that has pace and style and balances a clever plotline with interesting characters.

David Braun is an investigator, bored by his job, who gets involved in an unusual case. He seeks the help of Susan, an expert from the London School of Antiquities, to help him answer some of the puzzling questions. The interplay between these two characters and their developing romance is a perfect foil to the unravelling of the mystery. I won't give too much away about the story because it's truly original and it would be a shame to spoil it at all. However, I particularly liked the balanced way the story and characters developed around each other, with both of the main characters coming to understand that they couldn't control everything in life. A really rewarding, clever, imaginative and thrilling discovery.

This book for some reason seems to have been lumped with the Da Vinci Code. I can see some slight similarities to it but this book stands on its own merits and those expected a virtul mirror image of the Dan Brown book will be in for a disappointment. For one thing this book has an edge of humour to it. Something I must have missed in the Da Vinci Code.

True the book is a thriller. It is fast paced with an extremely well thought out plot and the main characters interact with one another very well. I enjoyed the book enormously, a real page-turner in the true sense of the word. I will try to give a brief synopsis without giving too much of the plot away, something I hate in write up. Some of them are so detailed that it is a waste of time reading the book.

After being called out to an unusually violent break in, David Braun finds himself in the position of having more questions than answers. Nothing is missing from the break-in and one of the criminals has managed to jump from a great height and get away, leaving his two associates dead. So begins a story that will lead David Braun and his new found friend and associate, the academic Susan Milton into grave danger following the trail of a ruthless criminal who is hell bent on getting hold of an ancient antique. An antique that has a bloody history.

The insurance investigator and his friend Susan are in more danger than they could every realise. They are on the trail of someone even the resources of the police force cannot bring to justice . . .

The book is a mixture of mystery with some occult thrown in--sorta along an illuminatus conspiracy line. Oh, and of course a love story (I think it's a requirement in a mystery story?). Nicely paced, not terribly predictable. It won't keep you up nights pondering deep thoughts or stop you in your tracks with elegant phrasing, but it is entertaining.

Finn tries really hard to not be silly, and he almost succeeded. But there was just too much cartoonery and unlikeliness. If it were possible, I'd raise him to a 2-1/2, because it was borderline.

This book is nothing like DaVinci code, and I was glad....at first. I was captivated and thought after the first couple of chapters I was in for a treat. Unfortunately, the suspense just totally peters out by the end, it became very predictable and I wanted to smack the "heroine" in the face. Supposedly she has this attractive, physically capable, intelligent, caring man in love with her but she can't love him back because she "has to be her own person"?????? I have to agree there were quite a few inconsistencies, and I couldn't help but think that I was already familiar with the general idea, namely the first time I saw the movie "Highlander". I won't buy the sequel.

This book was truly terrible. The plot was lame with major inconsistencies. The villain had no master plan and posed no threat to society - so why do our heros have to kill him? The writing was pretty bad to boot. The action scenes were completely impossible to figure out what was happening, so I just ended up skipping over them. The dialogue was corny also. If you want a good thriller, this is not it. The only redeeming quality is that it was only about $1.99 on a bargain basement table.