Customer Reviews

Nameless Night

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've been a fan of G. M. Ford for a few years now. I've especially enjoyed his books about crusading reporter Frank Corso, and my personal favorite of those books is A BLIND EYE. Ford writes larger than life heroes and about true evil, with a smattering of philosophy concerning the measure of an individual. Not enough to be preachy, but enough to make you stop and think every now and again.

His newest release, NAMELESS NIGHT, is a good fit for him. A suspense story wrapped up with a mystery suspended by enigmas over certain death. It's a stand-alone novel, the first that he's written (unless there's a sequel in the works).

The old hero-has-amnesia from a violent crime has been done near unto death. After THE BOURNE IDENTITY, I really thought we wouldn't see anything like that for a while. Or at least not see a writer pull it off quite so well.

Ford seems to thumb his nose at conventional thinking, though, and heads right to the core of the story on page one. His story is about an amnesiac and the people who are out to kill him, and he's not going to back off from that.

I liked the way Ford sets up the character of Paul Hardy. Hardy is likeable and you can't help feeling for him for all that he's lost. His face is horribly disfigured and his skull is misshapen, which is the obvious reason he's lost his memory. Not only has he lost his long-term memory, but his short-term memory is almost negligible as well. The characters at the house where he's been made a ward of the state are a welcome addition, and I was glad to see that they weren't just tossed away after the initial introduction.

As always, Ford kicks the ball into play from the opening page. Before the first chapter wraps, even Hardy's dismal life as a mentally challenged person suddenly hangs by a thread. While trying to safe another ward of the foster home, he's hit by a car and receives even more extensive damage.

I have to admit, I was ready to start playing the SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN theme song as the doctors rebuilt him, starting with his face and the huge dent in his skull. As soon as he starts healing, he starts getting his memory back. The doctor that performed the surgery even stated that the brain started sliding back to occupy the space that was taken away. I knew something was going to change.

The book quickly moves into familiar territory. Hardy recalls a name and one of the well-meaning people at the home searches for it on the computer. Immediately black cars filled with government agents descend upon the home and start asking questions.

In short order, NAMELESS NIGHT becomes something of a road trip as Hardy, now called Randy, starts trying to pull his new life together while searching for his past. The pursuers are never far away, and the chapters often cut to shadowy bad guys and other people that get roped into the whole affair.

As always, Ford delivers a deftly paced puzzler with some roundhouse gutbusters that remind the reader that not everyone is going to make it out of the book alive. Everything remains up for grabs, and it's interesting to see all of the people that are involved.

I have to admit, Randy's real identity was astounding. I really didn't see it coming, had no real clue. More than that, although there is a political coverup involved, it's not one most readers have before seen.

I had a great time with the novel. NAMELESS NIGHT is one of those perfect weekend reads or you can save it for the beach. Either way, Ford is back in fine form and this is a great little thriller.

Note: The book I'm reviewing is titled "Identity", which is simply the UK copy of "Nameless Night".

GM Ford has a unique writing style. When I started reading the first chapter, I had to slow down a bit to get used to Mr Ford's voice, especially after just having finished reading Mark Gimenez's "The Color of Money", which has a more straightforward style. If you find yourself liking GM's particular tone, you'll enjoy the book.

The story is strong and the plot, despite being slightly telegraphed, was interesting. As the book opens, we find the lead character, Paul Hardy, living in a permanent home for mentally ill residents. He isn't there long, however, as tragedy strikes in the first few pages and he is forced out. We quickly find that Mr Hardy doesn't know who he is and we are left to discover whether he figures it out or not as the chronicle unfolds. Fortunately, the well thought out puzzle lends itself perfectly to his journey of self-discovery. And, the reader is treated to a the added bonus of having the story line take us on a thrilling mystery adventure which ultimately contains meat of the text.

Some of the details in the book were really hard to believe, and since this is fiction, not science fiction, I thought the discrepancies detracted from the story. Plus, while the mystery lends itself to rather rapid page turning, it isn't esoteric enough that an astute person will have trouble figuring out the ending before it occurs.

However, having said that, the crafty theme overcomes the implausibilities and taking the time to peruse the pages is worth the effort. There are enough twists and turns to keep the reader wanting to push forward to the end.

I was sent an advance readers copy of the novel Nameless Night by G. M. Ford. This was my first exposure to Ford, so I wasn't predisposed to like or dislike his work based on prior novels. And since this was billed as a "stand-alone" novel not based on any of his prior characters, I wasn't being dipped into the middle of a story-line I was unprepared for. Overall, Nameless Night was an entertaining read, with plenty of suspense and mystery as the main character searched for his true identity.

Paul Hardy had been living in an assisted-living facility for seven years. He was found near death back then, and he had no recollection or identification as to who he was or where he came from. It didn't help that he had facial injuries that distorted any true image of who he might have been. While out walking with one of his friends at the care center, he's hit by a car and again is near death. The driver, a software tycoon, pays for extensive reconstructive surgery on Paul's face, which also involves correcting some of the skull damage from the original accident. This surgery alters Paul's brain, restoring many of his mental faculties, but still doesn't answer the main question... who was Paul prior to the accident seven years ago? All he knows is that Paul Hardy isn't his real name, he has vague images of a past life in Florida, and all of a sudden federal agents are *very* interested in finding him. He's just as interested in avoiding them until he can get some answers, as being detained as a threat to "national security" means you many never surface again.

Overall, Nameless Night was a page turner. I enjoyed the premise of someone with no identity becoming whoever he wanted to be, since there was no past he had to conform to. I did think the reason behind his initial accident and the subsequent government efforts to find him was a bit strained. While anything is possible in a conspiracy novel, I just didn't get the feeling that this particular event would have led to the level of effort to eliminate Hardy and all the related individuals. Still, that didn't detract from the general urgency in the plot-line to figure out who he was and why someone considered him better off dead.

Nameless Night was a good escape from reality, and was worth the time spent reading it. Based on his work here, I'm likely to go back and check out some of Ford's earlier works.

I was intrigued enough by the setup in GM Ford's Nameless Night to keep reading, and managed to limp through to the end. On the one hand, Ford is obviously a capable, professional writer. On the other hand, if this book had been submitted by an unpublished, new novelist, it would never have been accepted by any publisher. The story meanders about aimlessly. What appear to be major characters are introduced and then either disappear without resolution or are arbitrarily killed. There doesn't seem to be any point or purpose to anything the characters do. At one point in the story, a character commits murder -- cold-blooded, intentional murder with malice aforethought -- and this act, which really has nothing to do with the main plot of the book, is only even mentioned one more time, and then only in passing.

I saw enough potential in Nameless Night to keep reading it all the way through, hoping that the various random threads of plot would weave together eventually. By the end of the book, I was completely disappointed.

I do not recommend this book.

This book is, for lack of a more descriptive word, adequate. You can read it. It's not full of incorrect spellings, the punctuation is good, and the chapters are arranged in order. It has a couple of good moments. But, as conspiracy novels go, it's weak. It's more than improbable (and most conspiracy books need to be at least slightly plausible to work), it's downright impossible. The protagonist is presented as an almost unstoppable force although no mention is made of how he developed his abilities to fight, to evade and elude, to just know how to do certain things. It's a gap. Threads are created and unsatisfyingly dropped. The story is unsatisfactory in its resolution and it's wrapped up way to quickly and easily. It is pat and rushed at the same time.

I'm a GM Ford fan. Really. But I am not a fan of this book.

Ford doesn't waver. This book never fails to move onward, even if the protaganist can't remember. I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of Seattle, always well done by Ford. His home city comes alive in his words. But the plotting and movement around the country as one man tries come to grips with his unknown past makes this a truly fun and literate read.
Don't Mean Nuthin'

First Sentence: Nobody saw it coming.

Paul Hardy has spent seven years living in a group home for disabled adults. He had been found near death with severe injuries and no memory of who he was or his past. Now, a freak car accident has him back in the hospital. The man who hit him has paid for complete reconstructive surgery. Paul wakes up with both a new face, an awareness of what may have been his name and flashes of memory from his past. As soon as he starts a search for his past, he finds himself being sought by the DA's office, the NSA, a dirty cop and someone wants him dead.

Ford's standalone is fast paced and exciting. There is a broad cast with some wonderful characters. Ford has a wonderful penchant for creating unusual characters. But I'm afraid I do get tired of over-the-top government conspiracies. The book is engrossing and a fast, suspenseful read but, for me, a disappointment from his earlier works.

This is the first time a read a novel by G.M. Ford, and halfway through it I was extremely happy. I was experiencing a plot that moved at a breakneck pace, full of intrigue, and with interesting characters. On top of this, the author used the story to present a tough criticism to the current situation in the US regarding the right to privacy. Life was good.

But then it happened. Little by little the story started to lose focus, and the plot moved forward at the expense of a ridiculous series of coincidences. To make matters worse, the storyline started twisting and turning so much that I had trouble keeping things straight. By the end of the novel, the combination of this and the fact that the author uses more than one name for the same character, had me utterly confused.

It is a shame that the overall quality of this novel does not allow me to recommend it, especially since I saw a glimpse of what the author is capable of. I have to say that if you are looking for a thriller, I recommend that you do it elsewhere.

G. M. Ford's first standalone novel, after his two wonderful series featuring Frank Corso and Leo Waterman, opens with a startling scenario: The man known as Paul Hardy had been found near death in a railroad car, patched up as well as possible, his injuries so severe that he is described in the first pages as follows: "...he smiled, or maybe grimaced. With all that scar tissue on his face, it was hard to tell. Looked like somebody had crushed the front of his skull with a crowbar or something, pushed everything back so far it was both a wonder he was alive and a mercy he wasn't tuned to the same channel as the rest of humanity." He had been put in a group home for the adult disabled, almost completely unresponsive. Even his name is unknown - "Paul Hardy" was picked for him at random. Now, seven years later and probably in his mid-thirties, he is the victim of a horrific car accident.

The resulting surgeries [paid for by the anguished driver who had caused the incident] have completely altered his appearance and much more, to the extent that, as one of his doctors says, "this is a brand-new person, somebody who never existed before... six months from now, not even his own mother would recognize this guy." His already crushed face and skull have been radically changed well beyond plastic surgery. The person who had been called Paul Hardy is now a thinking, aware and questioning man with the tiniest fragment of a memory of his life before the past seven years, and determined to find out what that life was, and who he is. He embarks on a search for the answers to those questions, with unimagined and unimaginable consequences. That pursuit gives rise to a novel that is as well-written and suspenseful as anything that this author has previously written, and that is saying quite a lot.

The scenario that plays out after the scene described above seemed to me at first to be like something straight out of George Orwell, only to find that prescient soul's name invoked soon after. But of course Orwell's day didn't have current technology available nor a post-911 era to justify its ubiquitous use. And in no time at all, as the author's storytelling skills quiet assert themselves, this riveting tale, all about "memory" and "reality," has the reader completely in its grip. I loved the book, and it is highly recommended.

I'm very, very disappointed. I was all set to dislike this book, and I couldn't do it. You see, I'm a certified Corso-holic. I loved G.M. Ford's Frank Corso novels. I couldn't believe it when I read on the flyleaf of this book that it wasn't another Corso book. How and why could Ford do it? How could this not be another Corso book? I was crushed, and then royally frosted. I was so ticked I looked up the author on the Internet to give him a few pieces of my mind - not that I could spare them. When I couldn't find an email address for him, I got even more ticked.

I stewed for another minute or two, finally resigned myself, fixed myself a coffee, and sat down to glare at my reflection in the window. "Oh, well! (sigh) I guess I may as well read the damned thing, now that I have it," I decided, and a funny thing happened. I cracked the book and the next thing I knew my coffee was cold and the clock had jumped ahead by two hours.

My two hours of reading started as if I had been walking down a street I'd walked a thousand times before when all of a sudden a store I'd never noticed appeared. I stopped and looked closely. I couldn't believe it, but I was right. I'd never seen it before. I walked on a little further and a second shop I'd never seen appeared. "Am I on the right street?" I asked myself, looking around. When a third, previously unseen shop loomed ahead, I knew I wasn't where I thought I was.

That's the way the story of Nameless Night begins, and then continues. I knew where the plot was going, until suddenly I didn't. Suddenly I was in a plot I didn't see coming. Even when I was in the midst of it, I was still completely at sea.

GM Ford broke the mold on what I'd read of him before, coming up with a new lead character (a stand-alone character, as the flyleaf said); several lead characters, to be sure. The person I thought was the lead character at the beginning of the book was not the same as the lead character who appeared next, and who was not the lead that finally evolved from the mist of the story, although the first lead did reappear later in the book, and again in the closing chapters, then becoming a co-lead. [Confused? Yeah, it'll do that to ya!] It was an ambitious, confusing, ultimately satisfying, and entertaining journey.

Nameless Night is a story of intrigue, gruesome slaughter, comedy, more gruesome slaughter, suspense, action, drama, and still more gruesome slaughter, with the end leaving you pensive, but satisfied. It's a story of a man who sleepwalked for a number of years, marching to his own drummer, and living in a group home.

One day he's hit by a car, and in an unlikely twist of fate, the driver of the car, a software millionaire, pays to completely repair the horrific damage done to our hero, who remains sort of nameless throughout most of the story. Just when you think his identity is finally to become known, Ford throws a slider across the plate. As you prepare to connect with the ball, it makes a little vertical jink that leaves you hitting a grand slam air ball that you suddenly hear smack into the catcher's mitt.

It's also a story about how two seemingly broken human beings come together. The way the book ends, you're not sure if they'll stay together. My thought is that Ford wasn't sure whether they'd stay together, either. He's leaving himself a couple of openings. When the author takes the hero from a schlumpf with the IQ of a turnip to a handsome, intelligent, strong-and-silent type, I think he's made his decision, even though he doesn't realize it.