Customer Reviews

Fever

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

The book is extremely well plotted, fast-paced, with very well-drawn characters. Excellent use of language. I'm not usually a fan of crime-drama, but this thing had me up all night. Very gritty read. Highly reccomended!

When Matt Shannon runs into his half-brother, Jack Fontana, at a Miami brew pub, the two men sit on the patio with their drinks, watching the flow of ships through the waterway. Fontana has just been released after three years of hard time, although he intimates that he took the fall for Matt. While discussing a freighter just passing, Jack hands Matt what looks like a small video game to try. As soon as Matt activates the game, the word "bang" appears on the screen and the freighter they were watching blows up, sinking immediately and blocking the channel. After the shock of the explosion, Matt looks around for the game, but realizes it has disappeared with his fingerprints all over it.

The agencies on site are looking at terrorism and a Cuban-related protest among other options. All the while, Matt knows he is the cause of the explosion, thanks to Jack: "Jack was the trickster, the jack-in-the-box, the carnival barker." As the ingenious plot unfolds, Matt is drawn into a heist of monumental proportions, one involving the robbery of a Festival Cruise Line vessel, the company that employs ex-FBI Shannon as Head of Security. Jack has prepared for every contingency, bringing in a few others with particular skills, even a young woman who caught Matt's eye on the day he met with Jack to discuss the deal. Wracking his brain for an escape plan, Matt is trapped by rapidly evolving circumstances. Matt knows that no matter how well any operation is planned, the unpredictable is expected, in this case a formidable adversary who will stop at nothing to protect her investment. The heist goes as planned, almost. But the collateral damage leaves few survivors of Jack's team.

Fast-paced and well-plotted, this energetic suspense novel rolls downhill toward a dangerous and bloody confrontation. Along the way, Matt Shannon is forced to re-examine his past assumptions, accept some difficult truths and get out of Dodge before he's the last man standing. Luan Gaines/ 2005.

Matt Shannon is an ex-FBI agent turned cruise line security chief. He enjoys women, loves booze and has a painful past that isn't healing due to ongoing poor life choices. Shannon also has a stepbrother, Jack Fontana, newly released from an unpleasant stint in the penitentiary, who is calling in an IOU from Shannon.

Fontana wants Shannon to help him out with a heist that involves one of the ships from the cruise line Shannon he works for. Everything that can go wrong does, and people are losing their lives in the most brutal of ways. If Shannon doesn't catch a break, it may mean his own life or that of his stepbrother, or even the mysterious woman who seems to have a strong connection to Shannon and Fontana.

Sean Rowe's debut novel Fever is a crisp, fast-paced thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat, grimacing at the depravity of human beings, but begging for more. The story is gritty and a bit edgier than the novels I usually read. But Rowe's masterful language skills gives us just enough before he pulls back and allows us a bit of rest before hitting us once again with the raw ugliness of the underworld.

Armchair Interviews predicts that Rowe will be a force to reckon with in the world of the crime thriller and we can't wait to read the next installment.

I have to agree with the people who didn't like this book. The glowing reviews of it must be coming from people working for the publisher or friends of the author. There were some interesting parts and it had great story potential, but there were holes in the plot the size of a cruise ship! A couple of small irritating things like attributing a line of dialogue to the wrong character during the main heist you could probably overlook, but the last two chapters of this book are just plain intolerable. These people are wanted and they are driving around a small town in the car the cops are looking for! With a trailer on the back! The ending itself is just lazy and bizarre. This guy knows he's being followed, has two guns available and doesn't even think to maybe try and kill them first??? And I'm still not even sure HOW it ended. I guess it was supposed to be some sort of twist, but why? She could have taken everything and left when she went the first time. Why even come back? I liked the short story about the cannibals more than the rest of the book. It was at least interesting and somewhat amusing even for a tale about cannibals. I do hate the ending was so bad though. I could have tossed it in my pile of paperbacks to sell at the yard sale if the main character had half the smarts at the end that he had in the other twenty-some chapters. But I'm afraid this one goes in the dumpster.

I got this book based on all the glittering stars and glowing reviews on this site. After having tortured myself by sticking with it to the inept end, I can only conclude that there must have been a tear in the fabric of the universe letting through the readers of Bizzaro world to write them, because this book stank. The premise sounded intriguing, but the actual plot, and I use the term very loosely here, was dull, had poor focus and little substance. The ending read like the author suddenly tired of writing the book and just abruptly finished it off. Instead of a mastermind, Mission impossible like plan that would actually be needed to take a major cruise liner, especially after the Achille Lauro, this book describes essentially a walk onto the ship that you'd have to be brain dead to believe. Fast paced? Unh,unh. Thriller? I don't think so. Put this on your 'avoid' list.

In a Miami bar overlooking the Government Cut waterway, former FBI Agent turn cruise line security chief Matt "Loose Cannon" Shannon is having his usual run of bourbon when his stepbrother Jack Fontana arrives having been released from the pen three years early. Jack discusses a freighter passing by and his time as a defrocked drug agent used in blanket party sex by his peers. He hands Matt a small video game for him to try. Jack hits what he assumes is the on button, sees the word bang on the screen, and the freighter blows up. "Vanishing Jack" disappears with the box that contains Matt's prints all over it.

The Feds assume it is terrorism although no one steps forth claiming the deed. Jack demands Matt arrange for him and his comrades to board the Festival Cruise Line ship Norwegian Empress when it next travels to Cuba. The plan is to rob those on board the luxury liner. Matt seeks out of Jack's cleverly arranged trap, but sees no escape except to cooperate, but other players have agendas that cause collateral damage leaving people dead and more probably about to die unless Matt risks his freedom and his life by playing hero.

FEVER takes off with its opening bang and never slows down until the final confrontation with Matt's wife. The story line is action-packed as Matt gets in deeper and deeper while the Norwegian Empress is hijacked with several dead including members of Jack's team. Surprisingly the roguish Jack is the more fascinating character though Matt has his moments. Sean Rowe provides an adrenaline burner that starts at hyperspeed and accelerates from there.

Harriet Klausner

Just finished listening to the full audio version (unabridged) of Fever by Sean Rowe. The concept of hi-jacking a cruise ship should have lead to an exciting thriller, but, it didn't. Frankly long and rather dull with a simple and predictable plotline.

This book has to rate right up there with one of the worst I've read. If you plan to read it and don't want to read about it stop reading this review now.
If the author had a point to make it escaped me. Some of the questions remaining how did someone just out of prison dress in Armani and have a yacht, plus all the money needed to stay in the best hotels, set up all the equipment for the heist of a lifetime.
Meanwhile he step-brother who he served the time for is in a deadend job with nowhere to go but down and deeply in dept.
Poor Matt being eaten up by his conscience and missing his late wife, hooks up with a bunch of misfits including a nurse young enough to be his daughter, in fact finds her birth certificate that states he is indeed her father. She was adopted. But he has already had sex with her and discovers a home pregnancy test kit that shows she is pregnant. But then after his step-brother dies of aids that he evidently contracted in prison, she reveals he is actually her father and not good old Matt.
Then we have the drug czar in the wheelchair popping up everywhere, after she supposedly was pushed out the cargo door of the cruise ship being hijacked at sea. Explain to me how she survived that little escapade!!!! Maybe the moral of the story is crime doesn't pay after all, but the players sure went through a lot to prove.
Skip this one.

Why does a man throw his life away? How strange can it get? A very different kind of thriller. Not always satisfying, but you can't look away.

I have to agree with those who were disappointed in this novel. The entire book up to chapter 24 read like a newspaper clipping. The characters were steriotyped and limited to trading insults. There was too much narrative summary and not enough dialogue, not enough dramatic build up to climatic events. For example in one scene he mentions that he is in a paddy wagon and wets his pants. Except for that one statement he never mentions it again. For most adults this is a humiliating event with consequences, and in two Dean Koontz novels that I have read involving wetting of the pants, it was a major issue for the character. But this was typical of the issues in this novel: they were reported, not dramatized. Abrubt scene changes caught me by surprise and I was constantly going back to see how I got there. It was only because of morbid curiosity that I kept turning the pages until Chapter 24, and then it seemed to pick up and indicated to me that the author might have potential. I have to agree with one critic, however, who mentioned that the ending was a little short on credibility. Well, more than a little. On the positive side, there was some good plot twists. In terms of raw material it appeared to me there was more than enough to craft a novel worthy of the glowing reports of those who gave this five stars. Perhaps Dean Koontz and Stephen King have spoiled me, but compared to what I am used to reading I can give it only one, even if it is a debut novel.