Customer Reviews

THE Fury

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is his latest in the series about Henry Parker, the newspaper reporter that seems to get himself into lots of trouble investigating his stories. I love this character, so well-defined and so likeable! You are always rooting for him. But what I really like most his Amanda, his girlfriend, and their verbal exchanges. She is so cool and smart and has such a way with words! If I might quote an example, which has nothing to do with the story, so I'm not giving anything away, but Amanda and Henry have just rented a car and are driving up to the Adirondacks, Amanda has plugged in her ipod and is scrolling through the songs.

"You know, isn't there some kind of rule stating that whoever drives gets to choose the music?"

"I think that law was considered outdated in the 1970s. Now the female in the car gets to choose the tunes."

"What if there's more than one woman in the car?" I asked.

"Then it goes to the most dominant female," she said drily.

It goes on, but you get the idea. I really like these characters, and the plots are great! I've read all of this series starting with The Mark, The Guilty, The Stolen, and now, The Fury. Each can stand alone, but you must read them in order to really enjoy how these characters grow and the author keeps getting better and better! I highly recommend this series, and hope you'll give them a try.

I recently had a conversation with an author --- a gentleman full to the brim with wit, intelligence and talent --- who put forth the proposition that the most wonderful thing in the world is the mass market paperback book. I agreed; these paperbacks cost but a few dollars, is available just about anywhere, provides several hours of entertainment, is quiet, does not require a power source, and can be taken literally anywhere.

It is the latter element --- portability --- that I found to be a blessing when reading THE FURY, which is the latest and, by far, the best of Jason Pinter's paperback series involving New York Gazette reporter Henry Parker. I picked up the book at a time when I was bopping around a bit. Once I started, I did not want to stop reading it. And, thankfully, I did not have to. I just brought it with me while waiting for appointments, standing in line, suffering through elevator music, and the like.

Pinter hits it out of the park with THE FURY. While the three previous Parker books have been great reads, this one takes it a step further as Pinter really gets into the soul of Henry Parker. It begins interestingly enough with Parker being accosted on his way home from work by an individual who he takes to be a common homeless person. Although a total stranger, the man seems to know Parker, who manages to extricate himself from the situation. Those of us who live and/or work in larger cities have experienced variations on this theme, have we not? But the change up from normal, everyday happenstance in THE FURY occurs a few hours later when Parker learns that the stranger, Stephen Gaines, has been found executed. The major surprise for Parker, however, is that Gaines was the brother whom Parker never knew he had, the result of a long-ago liaison between Parker's estranged father and a woman who was in the picture before Parker was born.

Naturally, Parker wants answers. He returns to his hometown of Bend, Oregon, accompanied by Amanda Davies, his wonderful and true-to-life significant other, for the purpose of confronting his father. James is a belligerent, hostile man whose ambition (or lack thereof) is in inverse proportion to his anger at the world. The reunion between father and son is awkward enough, but is made more so when James is inexplicably arrested by the Bend Police Department on a warrant from New York for the murder of Gaines.

Don't worry; there is an explanation here --- THE FURY is not a variation on THE COLORADO KID, a book littered with dead-ends and unanswered questions --- but I won't spoil the revelation for you. Suffice to say that Parker, in spite of their strained relationship, attempts to prove his father's innocence, demonstrating, as Davies notes, that he is not his father. In order to prove that James did not kill Stephen, however, Parker must solve the murder of the brother he never knew he had. Using his reporter's instincts and tenacity, he begins working backwards, picking up the trail of Gaines's life. While doing so, he uncovers an ingenious (and dangerous) criminal organization operating in plain sight in the heart of Manhattan, an organization that will remove anyone who might get in their way.

There is much to love in THE FURY. Pinter has been slowly but steadily building a supporting cast around Parker that manages not to overshadow the main character and yet remains memorable in their own individual ways. Pinter is also quite adept at sprinkling surprises throughout his narratives, and THE FURY is no exception: it is like unwrapping a Christmas present from beginning to end.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

"The Fury" is a taut, fast-paced mystery/thriller and a thoroughly enjoyable read. New York journalist Henry Parker is accosted by a skid row junkie with a secret to reveal ... a secret Parker doesn't take the time to hear. The very next day the junkie turns up dead, and to his consternation, Parker learns that the deceased was actually a half-brother Parker never knew existed. That's just the first shock in an avalanche of surprise that descends on Parker as he is forced to deal with a dysfunctional family he thought he had left behind in small town Oregon.

Author Jason Pinter keeps the action boiling throughout the narrative. The mystery's solution is a double-edged sword ... although Parker frees the man falsely accused of his brother's murder, his investigation has led him down an even more dangerous path and into the next book of the series, "The Darkness" (don't forget to read the Epilogue), which promises to be equally fascinating.

My only quibble with "The Fury" is that Mira Books, the publisher, needed to hire a more efficient proofreader. When you have an engrossing story that clips along like this one, it is jarring to suddenly be stopped in mid-paragraph by a mis-spelled word or a displaced sentence. Nevertheless, I highly recommend "The Fury", and liked it well enough that I plan to go back and catch up on the Henry Parker books which preceded it.

New York Gazette reporter Henry Parker feels good as he leaves the office overlooking Rockefeller center because the obnoxious sports reporter got a well deserved "donkey-whupping". On the street, a homeless man accosts Parker begging to talk with him as he claims the city is burning, but the journalist is in a rush to meet Amanda Davies and besides has images of a donkey whupping on his mind; Henry tells the man to call him tomorrow.

Later the police inform Henry the man who approached him earlier is dead, a murder victim; and evidence exists that this Stephen Gaines was Parker's half-brother. They shared the same father though Henry had no idea he even had sibling. Unable to resist and feeling remorse for blowing away his apparent brother, Parker investigates the homicide starting with confronting his father, who the cops suspect is the killer.

The latest Henry Parker investigation (see THE STOLEN, THE MARK and GUILTY) is a terrific suspense laden thriller with a personal angst twist to the reporter's current inquiry. The super story line is fast-paced from the onset and never takes a breather. However, THE FURY is part one of a duology with THE DARKNESS coming out in December so fans might want wait for part two and read both one after another.

Harriet Klausner

2 1/2 stars
The is the 4th Henry Parker book. This is the first one that I have read. I don't feel that I missed out on the story in this book without having read the prior books, but they were mentioned quite a bit and I may have missed out on some of the relationships that that Henry has with other characters.

In this book, Henry finds out that he has a brother, but only after his brother is murdered. Then his father is accused of the crime. Henry isn't close to his father, but he believes in his father's innocence and sets out to prove it.

The basic story in this book is good. The plot is developed and interesting. Where the problems lie are in the details. I was irritated on multiple occasions with editing errors. For instance, there was a big to-do about Henry taking a shower and noticing that there were no towels, so he air dried and put on shorts. Then later, he is awakened by the phone and gets out of bed in a towel. huh? I had to go back and read the previous couple of paragraphs to see if I could find where the towel came from, but to no avail. This is only one instance--there were at least a couple more in the book.

I was also a little annoyed with too many descriptions of things with no importance to the story. For instance, there was history of the park near one of the character's homes. It didn't mean anything, but took up a couple of pages of text. It really bored me and I started to skim through some of the descriptions.

This book also is not a stand-alone book. I don't believe the prior books need to be read, but the story isn't complete and the next book continues the story of The Fury, which was not completely explained in this book. I was a bit disappointed in that, but I still plan to read the next book, The Darkness. I am hoping to find fewer editing errors and if I still find the errors, it will be my last Jason Pinter book.

The Fury by Jason Pinter
I chose this book based on some of the good reviews and stars rated here on Amazon. I sure wish I had known this wasn't the first Henry Parker as I am a stickler for reading in order. Now that I found this out after reading THE FURY I guess that was some of the back story of the characters that I didn't understand so I will go back and read the first three; THE MARK, THE GUILTY, and THE STOLEN. At first I was a little disappointed with the story and some of the repetitiveness (how many times do we need to be told his colleague is an alcoholic and he has the best girlfriend ever and other trivialities?). But, as I read on, Pinter accelerated the story to an intriguing ending.
Henry Parker is a reporter and his girlfriend, Amanda Davies are integral in solving the death of Henry's half brother who was found shot to death in his apartment.
Unbeknownst to Henry he had met his brother earlier in the day before he was killed. Motivated by not only guilt but sense of duty he sets out to figure why his brother was killed and Pinter takes us on a captivating fast paced ride to the end.

I have the next book in the series, THE DARKNESS here to read and I look forward to another suspenseful adventure.

This is my first Jason Pinter and I just ordered another.

As an ex-cop, I'm usually bored by movies and books about the drug trade business but this one took a different angle, one that kept me reading. Pinter has an excellent sense of story and is quite masterful at characterization. I especially like the lead, Henry Parker and his girlfriend. I like the humor, too.

I didn't give it 5 stars because there were the occassionally poorly written sentences that wrenched me out of the story for a moment. Most of these occurred in the first half of the book. Additionally, I didn't care for the ending, the big surprise that that character is involved. While being a neat device to carry the story into another book, it rang as not quite believable to me.

Good stuff, though, and I look forward to reading Painter again.

I have a particularly annoying habit of reading books of a series out of order. As was once again the case when I picked up Jason Pinter's The Fury.

Fortunately, the author anticipated people like me and wrote this as well as the sequel with that in mind - so it's all good.

Henry Parker escaped his mundane life as an only child of two pathetic parents in Bend, Oregon to chase his journalist dreams in Manhattan.

The past will meet the present when Parker discovers he has a brother; a man recently found murdered in an Alphabet City apartment.

Although the old saying tells us that curiousity killed the cat, journalists are notorious for ignoring common sense to get the story; but for Henry Parker, it's more than just the story.

The fourth in a series known as the Henry Parker novels, The Fury furiously leaves the starting gate; hooking a reader from the get-go with a concatenation of events that leads to a cryptic ending - the setting for book five, The Darkness.

Sure, it's another book where the good guy saves the day and gets the girl (as another reviewer commented); but it's the writing style, the vivid descriptions of New York, and tightly knit plot without lulls that sealed my new found addiction to Pinter's books.

Secrets from the past collide with the present in the continuing saga of journalist Henry Parker when a seemingly indigent and strung-out addict approaches him outside his office building desperate to speak to him. The man is later found murdered and police discover that he is Parker's half-brother, Stephen Gaines.

Haunted by painful memories of his estranged, abusive father and cowered mother, he nevertheless decides to journey from New York to his childhood home in Bend, Oregon seeking answers concerning this previously unknown brother.

Parker's father James is a real piece of work and their meeting can only be described as confrontational and antagonistic. When dear old dad is subsequently arrested for Stephens murder, most reader's will be hard pressed to feel anything but "What goes around comes around" and it is hard to understand why Parker would waste time trying to clear his father of the charges. Possibly it is more in keeping with Parkers "investigative reporter" instincts that he pursues the matter of discovering who killed Stephen and why.

As he follows various leads, he discovers more murders with the same M.O. as his brothers', a drug ring employing gangland style enforcers and a godfather type who may or may not exist. (Think Keyser Soze in the movie "THE USUAL SUSPECTS).

Jason Pinter has created a strong, compelling story with mystery that continues through the end of the book......and beyond. (A perfect set up for the next chapter in the life and times of Henry Parker, a rising star in a dying profession).

There is a lot to like about Jason Pinter's The Fury (Henry Parker Novels) as the writing is earnest and clean with a likable protagonist in Henry Parker. The plot is also interesting with its overlaps of questions on the economy, its impact on the people and of course, the human element of "Am I my brother's keeper?"

The elements of a very good novel is there and at a brisk 329 pages, there isn't a lot of fat in the book which is my favorite kind of book.

I honestly liked Henry and his dilemma. First, he misses the opportunity to help someone who later turns out to be his brother. Adding more to his guilt is that his father is the primary suspect. There was some very nice layering to the story but it wasn't overdone. Best of all, Pinter actually lets the mystery be resolved with promise for more.

I give the novel a solid 3.5 stars and I look forward to more from Mr Pinter.