Customer Reviews

Iron House

5 star:		(86)
4 star:		(43)
3 star:		(24)
2 star:		(21)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

One of the things I love about John Hart is the depth of his writing. Reading a John Hart book is like having the most incredible dinner with ALL the trimmings. His characters are deep, often flawed but you become totally involved with them. In this particular story, he does get harsh and sometimes, well maybe often, bloody. But it does not stop you from wanting to know where all the little jigsaw pieces are going to fit. Every time you think you know where he is headed, he slips onto a new path. Its a love story of many facets. It is also a brutal story of horrible beginnings with people who, at the end, will still be damaged goods. They will learn to be the best they can with all that has happened to them. There is mystery. Yep, lots of it. It will keep you on your toes worrying about how this can turn out ok. But it basically does.
Each John Hart story is unique in its subject but very much the same in the good prose and depth. This is the fourth I have read and I think the most raw one. I suggest you pick up any one of his books. May I say, start with "Down River" or "The Last Child" and then graduate to "Iron House". You should be impressed . No, take that back, you WILL be impressed.

Have you ever considered how difficult it is to get out of an impossible situation and change the future?

Michael and his brother, Julian, were raised in a home for boys. Iron House provided shelter and discipline. Julian was constantly abused and bullied by the other boys. Michael wanted to protect his brother and was forced to fight for both of them. As a result, he became a ferocious combatant. When Julian finally struck back at his main tormentor, Michael took the blame.

Julian was adopted and Michael left the home and lived on the streets, constantly having to defend himself. At age fifteen, he was attacked by a group of boys in Spanish Harlem. He fought courageously and Otto Kaitlin, a crime boss, witnessed the fight and rescued Michael. Otto saw a similarity to himself as a youngster. Michael became his protege and later, his main enforcer. Otto's own son, Steven, continued his education but didn't have Michael's fighting spirit.

Years later, Michael meets Elena and falls in love. The author describes the setting vividly and when she becomes pregnant, Michael realizes that he wants to leave the life of crime to have a normal existence. He has loved three people, his brother Julian, Otto, and now Elena. His love of these people becomes the motivating force in his life.

Michael's final scene with Otto shows his compassion in a way that is beautifully written and memorable.

John Hart is one of the finest mystery writers that we have and is a mulitple Edgar Award winner. He portrays the enviable ability to describe his central characters with a view of life which make them interesting and sympathetic. Michael leads the way and shows admirable qualities of the love he has for his family. He is brave in his actions to protect those he loves, no matter what the cost to himself. These qualities make the reader want to know all that they can about him.

The story is reminiscent of a number of Charles Dickens' novels such as "David Cooperfied" and "Oliver Twist," where the children who are the central characters at the start of the story are in terrible situations and are impoverished. The reader feels empathetic about them and knows that somehow they must rise above the destitute. The manner in which John Hart shows this transformation is entirely realistic and well described.

With this novel, John Hart's readers will be taken on a dramatic ride that they have never experienced.

When I read the product description for "Iron House" on Amazon I thought it seemed a little clichéd, the mob enforcer who finds love and seeks to break out of his old life, but can't because the mob won't let him go. He finds himself on the run with the woman he loves, who, of course, has no idea who he really is because he has been lying to her ever since he met her. I decided to give it a shot for two reasons; the first is the excellent reputation of John Hart. The second is the creepy, Southern Gothic atmosphere it looked like the book would deliver.

Well, the book does deliver. "Iron House" is consistently interesting, smoothly written, and has a variety of, for the most part, well-drawn characters . I did think the book would center more on the relationship between the two brothers, Julian and Michael, so I was a bit disappointed that Julian himself is missing for much of the book.

There were elements of this book I really enjoyed, and it always held my interest. However, and I know my opinion is in the minority here, I can only give it three stars. One of the main reasons is for the scenes where the torture inflicted on characters is graphically detailed. Yes, I expected darkness in this book, but how the author chooses to depict it makes a big difference to the reader. For me, it went too far. In the end, it all seemed excessive; too many deaths and too much craziness. I also got tired of reading about the obscene amount of money some of the characters had at their disposal. I would like to have had some hint that Michael was at least going to try to do some good with the money, especially since it was basically ill-gotten gains. I also thought the last two chapters should have been left out of the book. For me, Michael and Julian's last visit to Iron House was a satisfying and proper ending. I imagine a lot of readers will disagree with me on this, but I would have preferred the Michael and Elena storyline to have ended on an ambiguous note. I won't be more specific, because I don't want to spoil anything, but the last chapter did not sit right with me and, in fact, seemed kind of silly.

Judging by the reviews already written for "Iron House," most readers seem to really like it. I just had too many problems with it to rate it any higher.

"Trees thrashed in the storm, their trunks hard and black and rough as stone, their limbs bent beneath the weight of snow. It was dark out, night. Between the trunks, a boy ran and fell and ran again. Snow melted against the heat of his body, soaked his clothing, then froze solid. His world was black and white, except where it was red.

On his hands and under his nails.

Frozen to the blade of a knife no child should own.

For one instant the clouds tore, then darkness came complete and an iron trunk bloodied the boy's nose as he struck a tree and fell again. He pulled himself up and ran through snow that piled to his knees, his waist. Branches caught his hair, tore skin. Light speared out far behind, and the sound of pursuit welled like breath in the forest's throat."


Well, I found that the most interesting part of the book. A ten-year-old boy runs into a snowstorm in the remote North Carolina mountains , with nothing but the clothes on his back, and survives.

Michael has a successful "whack em and stack em " career working for his N.Y. mobster foster father but when he finds true, pure love he wants to take his 80 million dollars and leave the "family". As we all know ,that isn't done. They have to get rid of his pregnant girlfriend and the brother he hasn't seen since he ran away from the orphanage 23 years before. So the chase begins. Bodies pile up along the way. There is the usual extracting-of-body-parts torture, $1,000 tips right and left and revealing of childhood family secrets.
Spoiler: All ends well. Big whoop there.

I had a little trouble getting past the flowery prose: "Red fingers of dawn clawed red from the sky"...."She wanted to run and scream and carve giant chunks from her heart."...Whuh?

Maybe I read too much mystery/thriller stuff. I just didn't find anything new or interesting in the story. Alright crucify me, other reviewers. I deserve it.

I readily awarded Hart's first three books either 4 or 5 stars, but could not round-up Iron House's grade to four. Hart's preface has an ominous foreshadowed "confession" (my word) that doubted his ability to pull this story off, not in a self-effacing manner but almost as a "pre-apology" for trying something different that does not measure up to his three previous plots.

Yes, I flew through the book due to it's candy-coated plot and crisp writing, but the story lacked the depth and originality that set the first three books apart. The first three were infused with "realistic" settings and flawed characters that made the stories compelling and far more unpredictable. The characters of the other books were not always what they seemed, and other than the driver/bodyguard, I felt all the others were cliches of other cardboard characters you could find in any "thriller." The powerful, slimy Senator; the trophy wife with mysterious past, the mafia contact killer with a heart; the evil, psycho nemesis; the fragile, broken, yet sweet and brilliant sibling, etc, etc. Nearly everyone was black or white, (or psychologically black AND white) and had a superior skill (killing, art, politics, money, evil). It was a new league of extraordinary people.

Moreover, I felt Hart could have easily dropped the first storyline and created other more "realistic" scenarios to drive the plot. It was if Hart started with one story, fell back into more familiar "small town" plot and then tried to reconcile them.

However, Hart not lost his writing skill, he knows how to construct scenes and atmosphere, and can easily propel even the most cliched, ludicrous story lines along. I just wish he had listened to the doubts he seems to admit having and started over again, or just put this one aside. I'm confident this was just a late-blooming sophomore slump and that Hart will once again churn out another great story.

"Iron House," the new thriller from the estimable John Hart, is a novel loaded with brutality, violence and bloodshed. A relentlessly paced page turner, the novel whisks you from the halls of an isolated mountain orphanage to the mean streets of a lawless city to the fabulous estate of a wealthy politician. There are enough sadistic orphans, cold blooded hit men, unsavory back room machinations and unpleasant family secrets to fuel several comparable potboilers. With all this orchestrated mayhem, let's just say that "Iron House" won't win any awards for dramatic realism. It is pure escapism--albeit with a decidedly hard edge. And Hart's tale is a fantastic descent into darkness. But surprisingly, amidst all the murder and manipulations, we are served a cast of colorful characters that actually connect. At the heart of the foreboding story lies the power of familial love and the strong bonds of commitment. And despite the cards we're dealt, we all have the choice to try to make a better life.

Yes, this brutal story is also a telling exploration of regret and redemption. Despite all of the novel's violence, it is ultimately the characters yearning to break free from their various chains that delivers a powerful and emotional resonance that I wasn't really expecting. The central figure in Hart's story is a mob assassin named Michael. Having found unexpected love and joy, Michael seeks to part with his dangerous past--but it's not as easy as all that. In a blood soaked escape from the city, Michael reconnects with a disturbed brother and his influential new adoptive family in an effort to keep them safe. Still reeling from their troubled years in a state institution, the brother is facing some demons of his own as people from their collective past are turning up dead. A combination of mob retribution, southern gothic horror, and murder mystery combine to make this relentlessly entertaining.

There is no denying that Hart has a talent for his action set pieces. A torture scene as well as several exquisite gunfights really come alive with palpable tension. In truth, there's almost too much going on here. The dark family secrets are both suitably unpleasant but relatively expected. But it is in the quieter moments that "Iron House" feels the freshest and most surprising. Sequences featuring genuine tenderness really add a needed dimension to what might have been a bleak and twisted drama. But out of the heart of darkness comes light--and the novel's hopefulness strikes a real emotional chord. I wished for even a few more of these in-depth moments. Not for the squeamish or faint of heart, this is an easy recommendation for fans of action thrillers. When the momentum is at a frenzied pitch, it is near impossible to put the book down. KGHarris, 6/11.

Read by Scott Sowers
Duration: 15 hours

Multiple Edgar Award-winning author John Hart delivers a dud with Iron House, a book with too many disparate themes, too many stereotypical storylines and characters that might have been stolen from central casting at any Hollywood and too much detail about the scenery. Combine it with an overly dramatic reading by Scott Sowers and it makes for an altogether unsatisfying audiobook experience.

In Iron House we have a mafia crime boss on his death bed. His adopted son, Michael, has asked to be released from his obligations to the family business so that he might pursue a normal life with his pregnant girlfriend. But, as everyone knows, you cannot just walk away from the mafia, especially if you are known as the most effective hit man in the organization. So, Michael becomes a target of the organization he helped build. After he kills his adopted father (a mercy killing - he was dying from cancer and had been resuscitated several times against his wishes) the crime family comes after him with guns, bombs and assassination teams.

Michael and his girlfriend Elena go on the run. They head for the home of Michael's brother, a person that Elena has never heard of until the mafia family threatens his life. Micheal reveals that he and his brother Julian grew up in a dystopian orphanage named Iron House in the rural south - a community full of stereotypes such as the hilljack inbred (but very sexy) witch family, rampant mental illness and rich families that use and abuse their neighbors and women who are willing to sell everything, including their bodies and possibly their souls to get out of crushing poverty. Micheal's brother Julian was adopted by a rich senator billionaire (imagine the most stereotypical "southern senator" character you have seen in a movie and you understand this character -distinguished, a serial philanderer, abusive of his power, more concerned about his career than his family, etc.) and his young beautiful wife the very day that Micheal ran away from the orphanage.

Every character except Michael is absorbed in their own selfish designs. Orphanage managers are bribed, neighbors steal from one another, sex is used as a weapon by nearly everyone. Even Michael's girlfriend Elena is so concerned about the safety of her unborn child that she argues that Michael should not check on the safety of his own brother because she and the baby are his family now - not his brother. Really? I cannot imagine my wife abandoning my family to mafia killers who will torture people for information.

The mixing of the mafia story with the Southern Gothic theme is, at best, a difficult one. It can be done since both story lines often emphasize family bonds, loyalty and shocking violence but Hart does not handle it well. The scenes with the adopted mother of Julian, Abigail, have stilted, awkward language. There are seemingly endless descriptions of scenery, including roofing tile, reflections of sunlight, telephone poles, floor tile patterns, gates, lawn and trees. Throw in strange phrasing like "he was 4 inches over six feet tall", a saccharine sweet ending and Scott Sowers overly dramatic reading style and you have the makings of an unsatisfactory audiobook experience.

Although I am impressed by John Hart's talents as an author, I was disappointed in his work in Iron House. He is capable of much better writing, as evidenced in his former excellent novels.
This story is somewhat complicated, but the saga of a "bad man-gone-good-because-of-true love" is familiar, and in Hart's hands the old story gets an entertaining treatment. My reservations lie in the credibility of many aspects of the story. Michael, the hit man and beloved "adopted" son of a feared mobster, falls for innocent Elena and wants out of his life of crime, for which his dying boss/father-figure grants permission. However, the reformed Michael must flee the wrath of the other mobsters, two of which are potent enemies: Stevan, the actual son of the dead chief, insanely jealous of Michael because of his father's favoritism, and Jimmy, the sociopathic henchman who has trained Michael since his entry to the gang as a lost teenager. Michael's plan to escape with Elena is complicated by his need to say farewell to his brother Julian, who was a child with Michael in a hideous orphanage, Iron House, buried in the mountains of North Carolina. Throughout the story, with its many violent convolutions, Michael sails on unscathed. The reader sympathizes with Julian, a schizophrenic suspected of multiple murders, who flees into a dense forest with the aid of a feral girlfriend. The reader sympathizes with the wealthy mother of the adopted Julian; she is the prisoner of deadly secrets, and is vulnerable before her jealous, power-crazed husband. The reader sympathizes with innocent Elena, pregnant by Michael and kidnapped by the bloodthirsty gang of mobsters. However, it is hard for the reader to sympathize with Michael, whose decision to be good somehow ignores the murderer he is, considering he was so deadly even the insane Jimmy fears him. Michael never shows a grain of regret for the murders of his past, and the reader must accept him as having converted into a noble champion for lost brother (whom he has not seen for twenty years) and kidnapped, terrified lover/fiancée/whatever. Michael goes from place to place in the spooky mountainous setting, not knowing "why, but he must go"--and in each place finds exactly the right person to speak with in unraveling the mysteries of the past. The mysteries eventually come to light: cleverly woven into the fabric of the story with a few clues dropped along the way. ~~ The story is a good read, a page-turner at times. But this fact is unfortunately balanced by the need to constantly accept incredible coincidences, and the fact that the reader never worries about the protagonist. He rides over the tempest with hardly a scratch (even a gunshot seems to heal overnight) and actually `gets the girl in the end'. A book that simultaneously entertains and disappoints, which is a kind of accomplishment. I guess.

That's the only explanation I could come up with for the out-of-character and gruesome violence that this book includes.

I loved Hart's first three books, but was hesitant to pass this one one to fellow readers, as I had nightmares after reading the torture chapter mentioned by other reviewers.

Hart, who in the forward gave many reasons why this book almost wasn't, perhaps should have shelved it. There were places in this where, unlike in his previous works, he failed to achieve the suspension of disbelief. His editors also missed details that didn't add up. For instance, the protagonist, Michael, changes vehicles often and makes a spur-of-the-moment decision to travel in someone else's vehicle. Yet, miraculously - even when the plot doesn't allow him enough time to fetch his things - he manages to have his weapons and a satchel of more than $200,000 with him, wherever he turns up.

After his initial success, Grisham became predictable. Hart is not the least bit predictable here, but neither is he true the standards he set for himself in his first three works.

I hope the movie rights are worth it.

John Hart reminds me of James Lee Burke. Both write thrillers. Both write literature. And they do it at the same time. Prose just drips of their keyboards, prose that keeps you glued to the page.

This story opens in an orphanage dubbed Iron House, older brother Michael protects younger brother Julian, who is perennially picked on. When Julian finally strikes back tragedy, well tragedy depending on your point of view, occurs. Michael takes the blame and flees Iron House with nothing more than the clothes on his back.

Michael winds up being taken under the wing of a crime boss, becomes a hitman, makes a bundle, then falls in love. To live the life he wants to with his new love, he has to leave his life of crime behind, something that is not so easy to do.

Okay, that's the premise of the beautifully written book that is littered with bodies. Don't let the prose put you off, if you're into a Jack Reacher kind of story with bad guys dying left and right and our hero doing whatever it takes to get what he wants, you'll be pleased with this book. Yes, there is violence here, but there is justice too, after a fashion.