Customer Reviews

You Can't Stop Me (Thorndike Crime Scene)

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Field agent and criminologist for the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation, John Christian Harrow is at the Iowa State Fair helping protect the president of the United States. He sees a suspicious looking male with a hand in his pocket and reacts instantly. He becomes a hero for preventing an assassination of the President. However, he comes home to find his wife and son murdered; blood everywhere.

Six years later Harrow works for UBC's reality show Crime Seen! that has led to the capture of more than a dozen dangerous felons. An ambitious P.A. sees on the internet a crime where the victim's finger was cut off (Harrow's wife had her ring removed) a grain of corn grass found in the Heartland, but the crime took place in Florida.

Harrow gathers a team to track down a killer who is waiting to tell his story and killing will get the attention he wants from the cops and the media. He is killing certain targets and the TV coverage is being used by The Messenger who wants Harrow and the public to find him. Harrow wants this violent guy who has killed wives and children all over the country because his M.O. is identical to what happened to his loved ones and other families..

This is a terrific cat and mouse thriller in which readers anticipate the High Noon showdown even if the plot has been used numerous times before though reality TV refreshes it as ratings supersede justice. Whereas UBC counts viewers, Harrow and his team want to prevent more homicides by bringing the message of justice to the killer. Filled with shockers and twists throughout, fans will enjoy this fast-paced tale with the biggest stunner being pity for the psychopath.

Harriet Klausner

the reason i purchased this book was that it was free from kindle... but its worth the price of a patterson, baldacci or kellerman book... i started reading and it really grabbed me and it wouldnt let loose until i had read it all in almost one sitting. its about a sheriff who saved the president and then came home to find his family murdered and then his pursuit of the murderer who turns out to be a serial killer. it was great... i hope to see more of our hero in future books, i liked him.

the could have been better stuff: the main ending was good enough, the surprise extra ending needed lots more work, it was WAY too contrived, maybe flashed back occasionally building a subplot for more background on the graft and corruption for the ending. some loose ends needed tying up example why -was- the clue found in florida...actually there? the hostage recovered too quick, she was nearly killed after all.

its almost a waste of wonderful ideas characters and subplots. i wanted more information more time spent fleshing out the characters on the team i couldnt get to know them well enough.... the book needed to be about twice as long to be a really great one with all the neat sub plot ideas and characters involved.

This is Max Allan Collins phoning it in. It reads like an episode of Criminal Minds (which Collins has written) or NCIS. The premise is almost identical to Criminal Minds and so is the team...down to the cute girl computer hacker who can get any information at the drop of a keyboard. The dialog reads as if it was cribbed right off the TV.

I'm a big fan of MAC's Nathan Heller series and the Quarry series and pretty much everything else he's written that is not TV-related. This is TV-related...and not just because of the plot.

This spring is an excellent time for fans of author Max Allan Collins because he has three new novels out, all collaborations. Earlier in March, his fourth Trash 'n' Treasures mystery written with his wife Barbara Collins (as "Barbara Allan"), Antiques Bizarre, was released, and in May comes his latest posthumous collaboration with Mickey Spillane, the "lost" Mike Hammer novel, The Big Bang.

This review, however, is about You Can't Stop Me, the first time his long-time collaborator Matthew Clemens has received cover credit on a novel, though he has co-written or co-plotted and researched all of Collins's CSI novels (see Mortal Wounds) and other recent TV tie-in work. (He has always received equal credit on their many short stories together, collected in My Lolita Complex and Other Tales of Sex and Violence.)

The idea for You Can't Stop Me began with the popularity of Collins's CSI novels. Tie-ins are traditionally works for hire where the author is paid a flat rate and nothing more, even if the books are enormously popular. Collins and Clemens wanted to create a similar property to which they would own the rights, and consequently the royalties. Thus began their brainstorming. What they came up with is pretty clever indeed.

Sheriff J.C. Harrow has just made the coup of his career -- saving the president from an assassin -- when he arrives home to find his wife and son slaughtered. A few years later, he becomes the voice and face of criminal investigation with the TV show Crime Seen!, which is responsible for the capture and conviction of numerous perpetrators previously on the loose (think John Walsh and America's Most Wanted).

But he's never solved the most important case of his life, that of his family's murder. One day, a production assistant comes to him with some new information linking another murder with his family's and suggests that they try to tie the two together, with her as the anchor. The studio gives Harrow the money and freedom to launch another show to follow this investigation.

Harrow gathers together the best individuals in crime investigation (giving the novel a crew of quirky experts who offer various opportunities for light characterization, mostly of type, and lots of different reactions to the situations. Meanwhile the killer, who calls himself The Messenger, has already left several other "messages" that have not yet been discovered.

It starts out great, but unfortunately You Can't Stop Me takes far too long to get where it's going. Collins and Clemens spread their story out thin, making a novel that could have been much shorter. It's a fascinating premise, but I was never really able to forget that it was a deliberate pastiche of another property, so it often felt more like a copy than an original.

However, the first Barbara Allan Trash 'n' Treasures novel, Antiques Roadkill, was also a weak series opener, but by Antiques Flee Market, Collins and his wife had really hit their stride, so I have faith that the second in this proposed series by Collins and Clemens will be an improvement over You Can't Stop Me.

Collins and Clemens borrow from the TV show America's Most Wanted and its host John Walsh. In You Can't Stop Me, J.C. Harrow is a cop who loses his wife and son to a serial killer. Circumstances send Harrow into the limelight and, consequently, he becomes the host of a reality crime show. He uses this show to assemble an expert crime team and they travel the country tracking the killer with TV cameras following their every move.

This is a quick read, with believable and likable characters. I found the authors had a thing for making most characters cute blondes and for describing what everyone was wearing. And the last line, in my opinion, was just plain silly. But those are minor things. Overall I enjoyed this one and would read another by these two authors.

I've been a fan of Max Allan Collins ever since I first read his Ms. Tree comic books back in the early 1980s, and am always on the lookout for new books from him that have NOTHING to do with any TV show or movie. "You Can't Stop Me" is a fine book that helped pass a few hours, but isn't within range of the Quarry books or the Nate Heller series that Collins writes. This book features a boring main character chasing a serial killer who leaves clues so he can be found. The premise of the book is the interesting part: the main character is the host of a weekly "America's Most Wanted" style TV show, and the character is tracking down the killer 'Live on the air!'

Overall, this was definitely a fun read, but it could have been a lot better. The ending was way too contrived, and the characterizations were way too weak.

Recommended if you're looking for a quick no-brain read.

I was disappointed in this book. Couldn't wait to get to the end; just couldn't get emotionally involved with the story. Character development was weak. So were the plot and sub-plots. Read like a cheap made-for-TV movie. This could have been a better read with a little more work from the authors.

I was severely disappointed the latest from Max Allan Collins and his cohort Matthew Clemens. I have never read anything by Clemens but I had read the Criminal Minds books by Collins and I enjoyed them so I thought I would really like this You Can't Make Me Stop. I was wrong.

I thought the book started off well. It was exciting and interesting and what I expected. But then it seemed to fall apart. Small town Sheriff Harrow saves the President's life and heads home to find his wife and son murdered. Fast forward and he has become the tv host of Crime Seen, a la America's Most Wanted. He vows on tv to find his family's killer and assembles a team to hunt down the murderer on tv. Sounds like a good premise to me, but it fell flat.

I thought the characters were stereotypical and one or two just plain annoyed me. I think there were too many of them on the team. I didn't need to be introduced to such a large cast of characters. Also, Harrow's eyes magically change color from brown to blue in the first few chapters. Did I miss something there?

I give the authors kudos for attempting a twist ending. I didn't feel as attached to the book or the characters as much as I usually like to be. I am wondering if this is in part to my having higher expectations of the book?

Although I did not care for this particular book, I would give the authors another shot because I have been pleased with Collins in the past and hope to be dazzled again in he future.

Read the reviews for this, and was heartened by the fact that they were all five or four star. I was actually really disappointed by it. The characters were poorly drawn and stereotypical, the plot devices implausible and the basic premise of the investigation being carried out through a reality t.v. programme quite silly. The "team" that was put together was so cardboard-cutout as to be ridiculous. The whole thing was just substandard.

...But the actual book seemed to skim over the surface of things too much, as far as the murders themselves and the conclusion. Too much space was given to the choosing of and the personalities of the "team" and even then, their "personalities" were very cliché, and sort of shallow. The book comes through as if the authors decided on a terrific outline to begin with, but then just hurried through the actual writing of the book itself. Sorry, but I don't think I would personally re-read this book, even years from now, after this first read.