Customer Reviews

Adrenaline

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Adrenaline is a great fast paced novel, which is pretty much non stop action from the first to the last page. The only downside is that is clearly the start of a series, by this I mean that even though the majority of the issues in the novel are resolved by the end, a few things aren't. It's still enjoyable as standalone read but you're sort of hooked to now wait in anticipation for the next novel in the series to see those things resolved.

This novel is a little less Harlan Coben style, than Panic and some of his other independent stand alone storyline novels, more like a David Morrell far fetched well trained military/secret agent operative main character than an everyday guy type through the eyes read. It's not realistic (although it is considerably more so than some of Abbott's other work) but that doesn't mean it's not just plain fun.

Basic plot of Adrenaline is a former in the field secret agent type, Sam Capra has settled down to a life of briefing his organisation (known as The Company) on threats to the Western world. He's got a heavily pregnant wife named Lucy whose only days away from giving birth and the biggest risks he now takes is his morning runs through British council estates where he enjoys using the rooves, railings and other parts of those estates as an obstacle course. However during a morning presentation he receives a call on his mobile, his wife is on the other end and tells him he must come down and meet her on the street right now. Since she's heavily pregnant he can get away with this, but as he hits the street his building explodes. He sees his wife being held captive in a car, a man with a scarred face beside her fleeing from the scene. No one believes she has been kidnapped, and it's not long before normal police interviewing is replaced by a needle and Sam awakens in a Polish prison where he is tortured and questioned in the hopes he will confess the details and give up the information on the whereabouts of those responsible. The Company tell him that he either must have known with all his training that his wife was a traitor or he is completely useless as an agent because the signs are always obvious. Sam doesn't want to believe the answer is either of those things and is determined to do whatever it takes to find his wife and would be born now child and to do that he'll have to get to the bottom of the bombing as well.

This has both the good things and the flaws in the author's writing. A replay of elements of previous plots and a pace that goes so quickly that you almost miss the holes in the story.

But it's not 'bad', it is a 'read and forget' thriller, ideal for holidays and journeys and certainly not too taxing.

CIA operative escapes a bombing and finds himself under scrutiny and his pregnant wife the main suspect in the bombing. Our hero goes rogue (with the help of a mysterious organisation) to track down his wife and prove her innocence. A flaw returns from previous books as he turns from a CIA operative (with undercover experience) into a Jason Bourne type who can outsmart and outfight everyone. As our rogue operative gets closer to the truth, he finds there may be very few he can trust....

Like I said, this is an 'okay' thriller, it won't tax you but it should entertain you enough for a couple of hours. Billed as "Sam Capra 1", we may see more of this character, and I won't be sorry if we do.

Recently a lot of books in the spy/ thriller genre have started to run together in my head, but this one is an exception. It was well-written and suspenseful, with several twists that actually did surprise me. There were some limitations to the book, however, which kept me from giving it a higher rating.

This is the story of Sam Capra, a CIA spook whose world gets turned upside down when he narrowly escapes as his office is bombed by a man who has also kidnapped his pregnant wife, Lucy. Sam is immediately considered suspect by the CIA since he is the only one who survives the bombing, and the story is off and running. He is desperate to find Lucy and their unborn child and has to rely on every tool in his arsenal to do so.

The book seemed to ebb and flow for me. There were sections of really rapid-fire, intensive excitement followed by some more tedious segments, and the narrative seemed to meander on for just a bit too long. In addition, there is some science in this book that borders on the ridiculous and really strained my ability to suspend disbelief. I did find the characters to be almost uniformly terrific, though I have to admit that I enjoyed Mila, a mysterious woman in whom Sam has met his match, more than Sam himself.

Probably one of the bigger annoyances to me upon completion of this book was the major unfinished story arc, which sets up the next book in the series. We already know what Sam's next mission will be, but it seemed gratuitous to leave that thread just dangling. I would've picked up the next book based on the strength of the characters, but the latest habit of series-writers to leave a book unfinished annoys me and knocked this book down a star.

Taken together with its myriad pros and cons, this book earned an average rating from me.

In London terrorists bomb the CIA headquarters; twenty people die in the attack. British and American authorities conclude that CIA operative seven months pregnant Lucy Capra was instrumental in aiding the terrorists with the deadly explosion. Her vanishing accentuates their assertion.

CIA agents grab Lucy's husband Sam, also an operative. They assume he abetted his wife as he left the building after a call from her and just prior to the explosion; making him the lone survivor of the mass murders. His colleagues torture him to force him to reveal the truth to them. Throughout his ordeal and in spite of the contrary damning evidence starting with Lucy's warning call, Sam believes she is innocent. He escapes his captors and begins the quest to find his wife and their son who he assumes has been born since his Lucy disappeared.

Although somewhat linear, this gripping thriller hooks the audience from the opening famous last words to the confrontation. Fast-paced and loaded with action without a respite, sub-genre fans will relish joining beleaguered obsessed hero Sam on his odyssey as he learns the hard way how deep the tentacles of the enemy is.

Harriet Klausner

Sam works for the CIA. One morning his pregnant wife phones him and tells him to get out of the building immediately before an explosion rips it apart. Now she's missing and he's the CIA's number one suspect, all the while desperate to find his wife and child. At the same time he's tormented by one burning question: is his wife a traitor?

This is a VERY fast paced thriller. It's lucky that it is, because the breakneck pace allows you to (mostly) ignore the often ludicrous plot twists, paper thin characters and many plot holes. It tears along at 100 miles per hour - in the first 50 pages alone, the building is blown up, Sam is arrested, tortured, held for some weeks and then released.

If you want a fast and occasionally dead exciting, can't-put-down read, this is not a bad choice. It's literary junk food, disengage your mind time. I don't mean that in a judgmental way - sometimes we all feel in the mood for that. It's like going to a Michael Bay movie. However there's nothing memorable here and I'm not quite sure how it made it into Amazon's "best of July" selection. Recent thrillers that I've enjoyed more are The Secret Soldier (A John Wells Novel), Misery Bay: An Alex McKnight Novel (Alex Mcknight Mystery) or Buried Secrets (Nick Heller). Also, another thriller with a similar plot is Rules of Deception.

I bought ADRENALINE in August 2011 for a book club read. It was chosen by a book club member with normally good instincts for action-mystery books. Also, the book seemed to have a recommendation on its jacket by LEE CHILD, who himself really writes excellent action-mysteries. But ADRENALINE was a huge disappointment, the opposite of a "page turner." I had to prod myself to read it at night before bed and finally finished it after several weeks. The writing is insipid. I came away from the book telling myself I'll never read another by Jeff Abbott (sorry, Jeff). Let me try to explain.
The book starts with the hero and his pregnant wife in England, both government operatives, helplessly in love with each other. The action begins with a bombing followed by one of the most unlikely scenarios of torture and abuse of the hero by the CIA that one can imagine, apparently abetted by his wife. The forces of evil have obviously reached into the deepest recesses of the U.S. government (is this a recurrent theme these days, or what, conspiracies by outlaw government agents??!!). When the hero is given a respite by his government captors, and starts work as a bartender in New York, he repeatedly thinks to himself (the reader reads this at least EVERY 10 to 20 pages!) how his wife could not possibly have betrayed him and how he is going to spend his life finding her. This thought repeats itself relentlessly as he chases leads internationally.
The hero is seemingly helped at several key points by a super-secret cabal that is neither allied with the bad guys, nor allied with the U.S. government agents who are out to capture or otherwise neutralize him. But what is the CABAL's purpose? This is one of the mysteries to be solved, and other mysteries arise (of course) from sudden plot twists. As mentioned above, however, the biggest problem with this book is the insipid writing. The hero thinks like a juvenile, and it's tiring for the reader, notwithstanding that our hero occasionally acts with the precision of a Jason Bourne (of the BOURNE IDENTITY series). In the end analysis for me, this book contained about 10-15 percent of creative, interesting, page-turning action scenes, and 85-90 percent of juvenile thinking and outlook by the hero, quite boring.

I reached for Adrenaline because I wanted a book that would really hold my attention, that I would be eager to get back to. It was OK, but did not rise to that standard. That may have more to do with me, though, than with the book. Perhaps most thrillers can only do so much. For Adrenaline does have its share of thriller virtues: fast-paced action almost from the very beginning, well-described battles, a noble hero full of reluctant daring-do, nasty bad guys, government intrigues ripped from the headlines, interesting foreign locales well-described. . . . If all this did not leave me at the edge of my seat but instead, after the 14th twist, waiting for the conclusion with a "whatever" attitude, that may have been my middle-aged dissatisfaction with the genre more than any flaw in the book. At this point, I just need a little something more to keep my mind engaged. . .

Sam Capra is a super intelligent London based CIA agent. Life was good - happily married, he is a loving husband and a father-to-be. He and his wife, Lucy, who is also a U.S. spy, refer to their baby as the Bundle. Life is good as he hurries to his office to make a presentation. Shortly after he arrives his phone beeps. As he says, "When your wife is seven months pregnant, you get a free pass on taking calls in meetings."

He steps outside the room to take the call and hears Lucy say, "I need you to meet me outside." She insists, so he runs outside the office building where he sees Lucy in the passenger seat of a gray Audi - she looked right at him.

"Then the blast hit." The entire top floor of his office building had been shattered - all his friends. colleagues, 20 people have been killed. The Audi has sped off and Lucy is missing.

Logically enough, the authorities believe the bombing was done by a terrorist group, and since Sam is the only one left alive he must have been in cahoots with them. They also believe Lucy is a turncoat and helped the terrorists. Sam is taken to a secret CIA hideout where he is tortured mercilessly. But no matter the pain he cannot bring himself to believe Lucy has become a traitor. After what seems an eternity of cruel interrogation he manages to escape and go in search of Lucy and the child he believes has been born.

If you like a story that absolutely crackles with action ADRENALINE is for you. Sam Capra is a a likable hero, charismatic and an expert at parkour. He leaves readers wanting to hear from him again...and soon.

- Gail Cooke

Apparently the only type of gun that anyone can have in this book is a Glock and the only kind of fighting action that occurs is a kick/hit to the throat then mouth or just one or the other. This book is written poorly and the characters are very two dimensional. Different characters respond the same way to one another, for example the phrase, "your welcome (for me saving your life)" was used by three different characters throughout the book. The book is a bunch of bravado with nothing to back it up. It was not believable and half the way through the book I didn't even care if Sam found his wife or what happened anymore. The only thing that keeps you reading is the set up in the first chapter isn't resolved until the end. Do yourself a favor and read the first chapter and the last two - the middle is full of a lot of nothing.

Parkour is a sport where the runner uses fast, efficient movements, and makes spur of the moment decisions to negotiate a route. CIA agent Sam Capra has to use all these skills to find and try to save his pregnant wife Lucy. She was abducted prior to a deadly explosion at their offices in London, England. Sam is the only one to believe that Lucy is an innocent victim.

I listened to the audio book version of this novel and was captivated from the first minutes. The book is full with a wonderful assortment of characters. Where does Mila come from all of a sudden and for whom does she work. I loathed Piet from the moment he was introduced, yet I couldn't have imagined a more effective bad guy. Even the minor characters, such as the bar managers are more than I expected. Along with these cast, is a story with totally unexpected twists. Each time I thought that a big reveal, or a resolution was going to be unveiled, the story just dug in deeper. As with the parkour running, this story also covered a lot of physical ground: London, a hidden CIA prison, the United States, Holland and a few more sites. Author Jeff Abbott made me feel as though I was in each of those locations along with Sam. I was ducking and weaving with him as he tried to avoid capture on the freighter.

I enjoyed this book so much that several times I found myself sitting in my car in my darkened garage listening for a 'few more minutes'.

From Hachette Audio. Read by Kevin T. Collins - unabridged.