Customer Reviews

The Next To Die

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

In Portland, happily married Jim Gelder meets actor Tony Katz at a restaurant. The famous Hollywood star invites Jim to accompany him for a drink at the Vogue Vertigo. Awe-struck, Jim agrees. However, when Tony realizes that Jim is not gay, he tries to end the evening because the Vogue Vertigo caters to the homosexual crowd. Before they can part, assassins arrive and kill both men. The media plays up Tony's gay lifestyle while concluding that Jim was his new boy toy in spite of the complaints of his family.

Rock and Roll superstar Leigh Simone requests that actress Dayle Sutton provide a eulogy at a special tribute to Katz. Dayle agrees and provides a moving tribulation by underscoring her role. Dayle and Leigh meet not long after the event, but not long afterward someone kills Leigh for her open support of gay rights. With Dayle connected to Tony and Leigh and about to play the role of a lesbian lawyer, one must wonder if she might be THE NEXT TO DIE?

Kevin O'Brien provides a taut thriller that centers on a sexual preference cleansing. The story line is crisp and non-stop as the audience wonders if Dayle or some other Hollywood star is next. The cast seems genuine adding to the tight plot. Fans of a killer thriller that focuses on extreme homophobia will want to read Mr. O'Brien's powerful novel.

Harriet Klausner

SUMMARY: Someone is murdering Hollywood celebrities who purport, or are even only loosely associated with, liberal political agendas. The bodies are positioned to be found in such a debasing and humiliating way, that any credibility the victims may have had is shattered, and they become mere fodder for the gossip rags. A successful actress with only tangential relationships with those slain is now being targeted. She soon realizes that she is ensnared in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with an ultraconservative political terrorist organzition, one with unlimited resources, and she may be powerful to stop them.

WHY YOU'LL LIKE IT: Taut, well-written action scenes, with a pulse-pounding, nail-biting sense of suspense throughout the work. A plethora of interesting characters, and a genuinely terrifying premise.

WHY YOU WON'T: You must be willing to suspend a considerable amount of disbelief in order to fully be absorbed into the story. While there are many unique characters, they number too many, and as a result, a depth of characterization is lacking, often rendering characters too innocuous or archetypal.

BOTTOM LINE: Good fun, well-written, and maintains a level of suspense not often found in recent thrillers. Doesn't reinvent the wheel, but is excellent for getting lost for a while.

I enjoyed Kevin O'Brien's second novel, "The Next to Die," and found it to be a well-paced and nicely orchestrated thriller.

The basic premise is that a right wing group is knocking off people with "alternative" lifestyles. They end up targeting an actress that portrayed and lesbian and an actor that portrayed an abortion doctor.

The novel takes jabs at the entertainment industry, cheesy private investigators, white supremacists in Idaho and far, far right-wingers on television.

There were a couple gaffs and plot holes that could have been fixed. In one scene, a man is talking to a woman in her kitchen and a gun falls out of his pocket on to the floor, and she doesn't notice. She gets shot, of course. The worst one was a blatant lie of a red herring where a shadow character smiles into a phone for no other apparent reason than to be part of an evil plot. Later, this character is innocent. I felt cheated.

I hope the author will clean up some of these types of slips in his next work. He shows promise as a thrill-writer and I can see his novels being optioned for screenplays.

This book was really fast paced until it slowed down to almost a complete halt! When I first picked this book up I loved it; it was like riding a lighting bolt; but about page a hundred I started realizing that all the surprises were so old and used they were like a piece of gum on the road that's been hit by every other Mac truck that goes by. By about page two hundred I saw the surprises coming so far ahead it made me feel like I was writing the book. Worse I found that the heroes's characters could be summed up as sexy but normal, plain, bland, boring huminoid robots. I got so mad I skipped to the epilogue read it. That's when I sat up in bed and said, "That's stuuuuuupid." I haven't finished the book and don't plan on doing so. The writer said some certain things in the book would happen, but they didn't. I'm not talking about a twist. I love twists; I'm talking about a narrative lie; and if you ask me, he cheated the reader; he cheated me!! And I'm mad!!

The Next to Die takes advantage of the considerable animosity in the U.S. between conservatives and liberals. An ultra-conservative group, trying to bring their kind of morality back to the populace, takes it upon themselves to ruin the reputations of actors and musicians who support things like gay rights, gun control and abortion and if that doesn't work, they kill them in very public, very ugly ways.

This is a decent thriller that keeps the action moving and about half way through you have some trouble putting it down. The overall writing isn't much above pedestrian but O'Brien knows how to layer a story to keep you guessing to an extent and how to ratchet up the action without going overboard. Some of the dialogue isn't great and their are a few too many characters to keep track of but overall this is a solid suspense novel

When I first read the back of Kevin O'Brien's book Next To Die, I knew I would like it, mainly because I'm a hard core thriller fan, and this book seemed just the thing to satisfy me. It did. It was surprising, and engrossing from start to finish.I was never bored once throughout the whole book. It described without embellishing , and left you wanting to know more, and more. If you're a fan of mystery thrillers, you should love this book.

For the last few years when I would go into a book store, I would always check to see if the new Kevin O'Brien novel was out because I loved his last book, "Only Son". So I was very excited to get my hands on "The Next To Die". However, even though I enjoyed reading it, I found it too preachy and one sided, with the villains very shallow and predictable. Yes, the relationships were believable and most of the characters were well developed, but I have to agree with one of the other reviewers who commented about the research that went into this book. I found a few things that were not correct. For instance, on page 387, a director of a movie calls "Roll cameras" when the clapboard has already been closed. As a filmmaker, it is common knowledge that the slate is closed only AFTER the cameras roll, in order to sync the sound to the picture. This might sound picky, but I found a lot of mistakes throughout the book like this. Maybe this is why the book was released only on paperback instead of hardcover, like "Only Son". Whatever the case, you can be sure I'll still be looking for O'Brien's new novel later next year. You can't make a perfect novel every time.

The Next to Die provides a rich exciting journey with murder, politics and current events as the vehicles for the thrilling ride. This book allows the reader to get inside the leadership of those who will use even murder to get their way. So, while you may even learn some new things along the way, it's an exciting ride to get there. I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting a fresh approach to a mystery-thriller.

Perfect example of what a thriller should be. I will say what I can without leaving any hints, because everyone should read this book. This story is very action action packed. It will keep you guessing. This book has a very high number of characters and at the same time the plot thickens and stays solid. All the characters are very strong. If amazon.com would allow the readers to go as high as a 20 star rating, that is exactly what I would have given this book.
A lot of movie celebrities are murdered for the wrong reasons. The story is so fast moving and has a lot of twists and turns. This is the first book I read by Kevin O'Brien. I notice there are other books out by Kevin O'Brien that I have yet to read. It will be good summer reading material for myself as well as for the rest of the readers out there.
I highly recommend this book. I was only getting very few hours of sleep for a few nights because I was so mesmerised.

This book has a compelling thesis and believable plot, but moves at such a frenetic pace and has so many characters' names to keep track of that I find these factors to be distracting. Also, I suspect O'Brien's research is somewhat sloppy about technical aspects of his story. For example, I am a psychiatrist, and know what goes into the training of one and know about psychiatric treatment facilities. He mentions one character sharing a small apartment with a student who attends medical school, and becomes a psychologist! Psychologists attend graduate school, and may have at most 2 years of experience in an intensive clinical setting, e.g., a hospital or a mental health center, whereas a psychiatrist graduates from medical school and has 6 years of intensive clinical experience in both hospitals and in outpatient clinics, working most of the time with seriously disturbed patients. My second observation has to do with the scenario in which Joanne is in a general hospital following a suicide attempt, and there is talk of sending her to a "sanitarium," a term for psychiatric hospital which has not been used by professionals for literally decades. I am concerned that his research about other technical issues is also less than thorough. Good research is essential for an author to make it to the upper ranks of authors. However, the book is still a fairly good read, and the topic appealed to me. Read this book if the topic appeals to you, for it is a very important topic to the GLBT population and their families. Just don't expect Hemingway!