Customer Reviews

Nightkill

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

 

 

NIGHTKILL is a novel about a sniper for the Mob, who gets set-up, paralyzed and recovers through a "new" surgery, and enacts revenge against one of the players of the Mob. It is marketed as a medical thriller, but believe me, it's a thriller with an emphasis on some horrible outcomes. Jake Nacht is a sniper for the Mob. After 17 successive kills, he is set-up, shot and paralyzed by a crooked cop, who is in on the set-up. While recovering, Jake meets Angel, a beautiful nurse whos uncle just happens to be on the verge of a successful new surgery to fix paralysis. After the surgery Jake goes on a revenge mission to get who set him up. In the process Jake falls in love with Angel, who is now being held hostage by the bad guy. As you can tell by my synopsis, its kind of a paint-by-numbers scenario. Everything is familiar and done by rote. This is not to say that the book is unenjoyable. Far from it. It's full of action sequences but the main problem is there are no surprises...everything IS as it seems and we are just awaiting the final shoot of so we can move on to the next book on the shelves. Not a very distinguishing book. Not recommended.

A very fast paced book, Jake is a character with whom i expect to see several sequals, I`d rate the character to have the ability to compete with a Dirk Pitt,Lucas Davenport,and a John Becker......Need i say More...

BROS., THIS BOOK IS DEFINITELY WORTH YOUR TIME. JAKE NACHT IS THE BEST HIT MAN IN THE WORLD OF FICTION AND DESERVES TO BE READ. YOU SHOULD ALL SEE THE STRUGGLING FIGHT FOR LIFE AND DEATH BY JAKE NACHT. A REAL FAST-PACED BOOK THAT'S SURE TO KEEP YOU ON THE EDGE OF YOUR SEATS. HOLD ON TO YOUR HATS FOLKS THIS IS A BOOK THAT WILL BLOW YOU AWAY.

With seventeen kills to his name, Jake Nacht is one of the mob's most reliable hitmen-he'll kill anyone if the price is right. Thus, he accepts a contract on a US Senator, despite his misgivings about having to do the job at a particular time and place. Nacht prepares carefully, but has to hurry his shot when he hears the police knocking on his hotel room door. Thinking quickly, Nacht almost escapes, but is gunned down by an officer who obviously knows who he is.

Paralyzed from the neck down, Nacht wants only to end his existence, but cannot do it alone. He strikes a desperate bargain with his nurse, Angela Graham, who reluctantly promises to assist his suicide if Nacht's physical rehabilitation is unsuccessful. Nacht gives it his all, but shows little improvement after four months. Having fulfilled his end of the bargain Nacht wants to hold Angela to her promise, but she has different ideas. Angela implores Jake to participate in an experiment conducted by her uncle, a scientist who wants to test risky spinal regeneration techniques on humans. Intrigued by the possibility of recovery and revenge on the men who set him up, Nacht agrees.

Jake is healed by the process, but does not know if the effects are permanent Since his time may be short, he immediately embarks on a campaign of vengeance, halting only when Angela is kidnapped in retaliation. Jake must face his enemies on their own ground if he is to save Angela and have his revenge.

Nightkill does not break any new ground, but is a good, solid read, several notches above typical action/adventure fare. Wilson and Lyon (aka Steven Spruill) take great pains to create a believable, engrossing backstory for Nacht, which metamorphosizes into a homage to the movie The Most Dangerous Game. Although Nacht's history is often more interesting than the action of the main story, it never totally eclipses it--the authors skillfully bring the novel to an explosive conclusion, providing ample thrills and drama along the way. Reminiscent of Stephen Hunter's novel Point of Impact and the Steven Seagal movie Hard to Kill, Nightkill is fast moving and hard hitting, a respectful tribute to the men's action/adventure genre.

This is one of the few F. Paul Wilson novels I've read that had nothing to do with the supernatural. In fact, truth be told, it's really off my usual line of novels to read.

It's a revenge novel.

Hit man, working for the mob, kills other 'bad men' making the world a little better place, for a price.

He's offered a lucrative contract to kill a prominent senator, and in doing so breaks several 'rules' that were drilled (pun intended) into him by his mentor 'the Sarge'.

Things go south right from the get-go, and he ends up paralyzed from the neck down.

As with most of my favourite novels, this one is a human story, about finding a reason to live and righting wrongs. You get to see into the soul of this hired killer, and he turns out to be more than just a thug. In the end, what he's willing to do for someone he cares about shows just how much his experience changed him.

I would have given it a higher review, but the novel was too damned short, in my opinion.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that the main character reminded me heavily of 'Jack' from his Repairman Jack series.

Worth reading, don't doubt that for a second.

Hitman Jack Nacht is the best in the business with a body count of 17 contract murders over his career. When he is hired to "off" a Senator who's getting a little too close to mob affairs, Jake's world is turned upside down when he is shot and paralyzed by a crooked cop who's in on the double cross. As Jake wallows in self-pity and dispair over his quadrapelegic state, he is befriended by (and falls in love with) his rehabilitation nurse, Angel Deschanel. After weeks of rehabiliation to no avail, Angel tells Jake of a radical procedure that her uncle, Dr. Joseph Graham, has performed on paralyzed rats that have allowed them to regain full range of motion. Jake convinces Angel and Graham to try the procedure on him. Unbeknownst to the medical duo, Jake's motivation for the surgical procedure is to help him regain the use of his limbs so that he can extract his revenge on HIS conspirators.

The book is fast-paced and well-plotted. And, while the surgical procedure used to help Jake regain his movement is more than a little far-fetched, if the reader can overlook that bit of "medical fiction", he or she will find themselves immersed in a very strong story.

Recommended to the fans of Michael Crichton and Robin Cook because of the medical aspects of the book and to the fans of Clive Cussler and Jack DeBrul because of the "heroic" aspect of the book.

A disappointingly bland, generic, and completely forgettable thriller from Wilson and a co-writer whose other work I'm unfamiliar with (but this doesn't exactly make me want to check out). There's a number of things wrong with Nightkill, which follows a betrayed hitman and his quest for revenge, but the most critical is that every single character is exactly who you think they are. There are no hidden depths, no complexities, no novel sides lurking underneath - everyone is who they say they are, and there's nothing more to it. Making matters worse, the one interesting and novel idea in the book - the nature of the hitman's betrayal and what he has to do to come back from it - is largely tossed in as an afterthought and ignored, only used for dramatic tension but for nothing more. I tend to really like Wilson a lot, but this is definitely among his weakest, least interesting books, without even a neat idea or a novel twist to carry it along. Dull, dull, dull. But at least it's short.

Jake Nacht has a rather unusual occupation. He's an assassin or better known in crime circles, a "Hit Man". Trouble is his latest hit didn't work out so well. Jake was set up by his employer and shot by an arresting officer. He was supposed to die but he didn't but as far as he's concerned that would have been far preferable to his present condition. You see Jake is now a paraplegic and he can't even eat a meal on his own let alone get even with his betrayers.

But Jake has a guardian angel. Well not really. Angel is her name and she's gorgeous but she's also his nurse. Jake really likes Angel and is even more frustrated that he can't do anything about it. In fact Jake is helpless. He can't do anything about anything and he wants to die, so he asks Angel to kill him. To his surprise, Angel was not surprised. It seems most paraplegics have similar emotions at first, so Angel agrees to consider this if he will work very hard in therapy for three months.

In his impaired state, Jake, having very little to do, periodically flashes back to his childhood. Jake was an orphan who bounced around until he arrived at Sarge's place. Sarge was a ex marine and sniper who became Jake's mentor and when Jake showed promise as a sniper, Sarge adopted him.

In the meantime unbeknown to Jake, his neurologist Dr. Graham, who is also Angel's uncle and is a research scientist as well, working on regeneration of spinal chords on paralyzed rats, has some success at approximately the same time Jake's ninety days is up. Jake is expecting Angel to help him die but instead is informed about the possibility of a cure.

Dr. Graham at first is angry at Angel for telling Jake and resistant since his procedure is in the early experimental stages. But Jake is persistent and convincing, plus Jake agrees to give him the five million dollar settlement he received from his shooting, which appeared to be a matter of mistaken identity.

Jake is moved to Dr. Graham's laboratory where the operation takes place and is a success and Jake is now free to pursue those who doublecrossed him or Angel but not both. However weeks if not months of physical therapy remain before Jake can think about any course of action.

Unfortunately, moving Jake from the hospital made Jake's former employers suspicious, as a mobile as well as motivated Jake would be a grave danger to them.

Conclusion

F. Paul Wilson is one of my favorite writers if not my overall favorite, however I'm afraid Nightkill was not quite up to the standard of most of his books. At two hundred and eighty-seven pages, Nightkill was a quick easy read and a pleasant one as well. The story showed promise but it never quite lived up to that promise. This book was co-authored with Steve Lyon so I don't know where or how much of a contribution Wilson made. The writing style was still smooth and concise. The story was pretty much from the first person and the character development was ok, though not great.

It was hard to sympathize with our hit man protagonist, even after reading about his strange upbringing with Sarge. I suppose I should touch on that a little. Sarge who had been a Marine Corp sniper evolved into a hired hit man for the Mob but he felt no challenge in killing helpless, unsuspecting, stationary targets. He trained Jake, ostensibly to follow in his footsteps but had something else in mind.

It was also hard to imagine that Jake could have been so lucky to have fallen into the hands of Dr. Graham, the only person in the history of the Universe, who was, amazingly, able to cure him, while having Graham's gorgeous niece/nurse fall in love with him.

In summary Nightkill is only a slightly better than average novel, though highly readable, that should appeal more to Wilson's fans than others. Final rating: 3.3 stars