Customer Reviews

Killer View (Sun Valley Series)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In a sequel to last year's "Killer Weekend", Sun Valley Sheriff Walt Fleming is back, again juggling the mess of his personal life with his duties as a lawman.

Trying to solve the mystery of the disappearance of one of his best friends while also trying to solve the murder of that friend's brother, Fleming stumbles into a possible conspiracy with much broader implications and possible national ramifications.

It sounds better than it plays, unfortunately.

First, and most tediously, Fleming seems to be a very annoyingly passive-aggressive character who can't seem to get off the dime and make a decision about ANYTHING!

His wife's run off to shack up with his best deputy, abandoning him and their two young twin daughters. Fleming can't seem to decide how to deal with this in any way: fire the deputy? Fulfill his parental duties? File for divorce? Nada. Nothing happens, other than endless and boring angst and self-recriminations. He won't do or say anything much to the deputy; abandons his kids, essentially, to a caretaker; is afraid of his ex-wife; is too wussy to date anyone else.

We should care why?

As to the actual "mystery" itself, it's almost totally lost in the soap opera about Fleming's personal life and travel brochure descriptions of the Sun Valley area.

Yes, it's a beautiful place; I get it.

The characterizations of the secondary players range from thin and two-dimensional to virtually non-existent. Kira, the victim of a brutal rape in the opening segment, is a completely cartoonish character, for example; yet her rape is one of the driving events of the plot.

The "action" segments are strung together almost haphazardly. There's seldom a coherent flow to events, and some are completely skipped, only referred to in later dialogue in which you learn the outcome.

My three stars are generous, and are earned by Pearson's earlier works and the resultant goodwill from them.

Topnotch author Ridley Pearson has lived in the Sun Valley area for some twenty years, so he knows the setting for his story well. Perhaps that's one reason why his scenes are so vivid, seeming to appear before our eyes in full color. Of course, setting is not all this writer knows well as the number of his books on bestseller lists clearly show. He knows how to spin a thriller from opening line to often shocking finish, which he surely does with Killer View.

Sun Valley Sheriff Walt Fleming doesn't hesitate for a nano second when he receives a nighttime call saying that a skier is missing. He assembles his top men as a search and rescue team and goes out into the bone chilling blackness. With him are his best friend, veterinarian Mark Aker, Mark's brother, Randy, and deputy Tommy Brandon. Walt feels little friendship for Tommy due to the deputy's history with Walt's former wife. But Walt is a professional and a job needs to be done.

That job immediately takes a surprising twist when Randy is fatally shot and Mark disappears. It isn't long before a young girl who works at the veterinarians' office is cruelly assaulted. She arrives at a local hospital with no memory of her attacker. Now, Walt is faced with a murder, a missing man, and an assault victim. As he proceeds with his investigation he becomes aware that sheep in the area are falling ill. How does all or any of this tie together and why would a prominent congressman call Walt of all possible sheriffs and tell him to come to Washington to fill in for a conference drop out?

Following Pearson's finely, logically constructed story is both exciting and absorbing. A narration by Audie Award winner Christopher Lane lends additional pleasure, leaving this listener hoping to hear much more from him in the future.

- Gail Cooke

Ridley Pearson is one of my favorite authors; however, his last few attempts have been lukewarm. He really needs to get back to basics and write another in the Lou Boldt series. They were wonderful.

The snows of Sun Valley run red when murder and nefarious conspiracy are abroad. I couldn't tell if the character's in this fairly standard thriller were so sketchily drawn because they'd been introduced in a prior book, or if the writing was a little thin. Our stalwart hero with his troubled home life is a little dull. There are however, a couple good set pieces, namely an avalanche and a hibernating bear.

It's not clear if the environmental subtext was right-or-left wing or conveniently anxious to avoid offense.

This thriller won't win any prizes for breaking new ground, but it's a pretty fun read. Pearson makes good use of the locale and keeps things moving pretty briskly. I won't say I saw every twist coming but I didn't feel overly surprised at any point either. All in all, not a bad beach read.

I thought I was buying a Lou Bolt series book, however the characters in this book are very interesting and easy to connect with. Putting the plot together was a lot of fun and putting the book down is not easy. The killing of animals is one of my major problems with the book. Getting back to Lou Bolt...how about some more of them? This book was purchased through Amazon.

I don't usually read thriller novels but after a few pages of this one, I knew I had found a real writer. You know that feeling when you've run across an author that excels at his art? To me, that feeling is a warm blanket of anticipation. You know you're reading a great book, and letting it play out before you is going to be exhilarating.

This novel, while being #2 in a series of 4, didn't feel like a series book. The characters all seemed fresh and I accredit that to the superb writing.

Thrillers have always been an enigma to me because you have to do so many things right to keep the reader involved, while not pulling what I call the "24 Syndrome." The "24 Syndrome" is the art of taking the characters into an unsolvable situation, then using sheer chance to get them out of it, much like Jack Bauer did in the television series, "24."

In short, that pisses me off. It feels cheap and lazy, and I will only give an author one of those before I put the book down and move on.

Ridley Pearson is the real deal. This guy can flat out write. He does a great job of mixing in some flotsam with real clues and devices so that when a twist comes, you didn't see it coming. A lot of times, a plot device is so evident when it's presented, you spend the rest of the novel wondering when the writer's going to come back to it to "solve the problem."

I will be reading much more Ridley Pearson. The jacket said he's the author of more than twenty novels and I can't wait to get started.

This did keep me interested enough to read through in a short time, but it just isn't notable enough to remember long.The one element that kept me interested was the wilderness setting well depicted by the author and this setting is sufficient for me to recommend it to less choosy readers.

I liked the first installment in Ridley Pearson's new series, following Idaho sheriff Walt Fleming. This second entry shows that the first wasn't exactly a fluke, but it's also not quite the book it should be.

This time around, Walt's involved in a complex case involving two different incidents, that happened pretty much at the same time. First a local was killed, followed quickly by the disappearance of his brother. The brother is a veterinarian, and immediately after his disappearance his assistant, an attractive woman, wanders into a hospital emergency room with date rape drugs wearing off, obviously a victim of sexual assault, but she can't remember anything. It becomes obvious pretty quickly that the incidents are connected, and Walt sort of investigates, but his wife, her infidelity, and the rest of his life get in the way from time to time.

I enjoyed the book for the most part, but I will say one thing: it should have been about 50 pages shorter. At times the story drags in the middle. I think Pearson needs an editor, one with a hard head who will tell him to tighten things up a bit.

Killer View is the second book in Ridley Pearson's series featuring Sheriff Walt Fleming of Sun Valley, Idaho. In this outing Walt has to contend with domestic terrorists, the kidnapping and rape of a young woman, the potential contamination of the water supply, and a missing persons case--all of which may be related to one another. At the same time he's got problems on the home front: emergencies at work keep him away from his twin daughters, and his soon-to-be-ex-wife is starting to think she wants the girls back. But much of the time Walt's most challenging adversary is the weather: early snowfall has made the remote areas in which much of the story takes place impossible to travel by car. There's a lot of trekking around on snowshoes in this book, and Walt sweats through more than one undershirt while climbing mountains and running from avalanches in freezing temperatures.

I've read and enjoyed the first and third books in Pearson's series. Unfortunately this second book was a bit of a disappointment. The principal villain is uninteresting, a madman--or close enough--who's motivated by ideology. It's never made very clear precisely what his cause is, so we don't get a great sense of what's at stake for him. The challenges Walt's up against are for the most part physical rather than cerebral. There are some parts of the book that go on too long and slow down the narrative--descriptions of guns or geography. Walt is beset by self doubt in this book more than in the others. It sometimes seems as if he's a character who's stepped in from a different series. And the book's climactic scene was over the top--the role played by a dead cow was like something out of Silence of the Lambs.

Happily, Pearson regained his mojo in book three, so I've high hopes for whatever he comes up with next.

-- Debra Hamel