5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Byzantine Tale To Keep You Awake Nights, June 19, 2009
This review is from: No Place to Run (Paperback)
Thomas B. Sawyer has such an inventive way with conspiracy novels they
leave the reader wondering if he made the whole thing up or if it
might just have happened that way.
NO PLACE TO RUN's opening lines:
***
There it was again.
Ticka-ticka-ticka-ticka...
He stopped breathing.
Then, almost as quickly as they had come the noises diminished,
vanished. He exhaled. His pulse began to slow. Once again, the loudest
sound in the murky foyer was his heartbeat.
A rat, probably. As frightened as I am. Strike that. Not even close.
Bill Lawrence realized he'd lost count.
His fear bordered on terror. Not of getting caught--he was here, after
all, with the tenant's permission. At his request, actually. Nor was
it the singularity of what he was doing. Skulking on his hands and
knees in dark places was well outside Bill's normal professional
activities.
***
You might assume from the riveting first pages that Bill Lawrence is
the protagonist. You might be right. You might be wrong. Things are
not always what they seem in this Byzantine tale of the discovery of
certain facts about the events leading to 9/11 - and the desperate,
damn-the-costs attempt to prevent them from emerging.
What rogue federal agents do to protect a powerful Washington figure
with a connection to the terror attacks of 9/11 makes for nasty
business. Sawyer brings it down to human levels with a 24 year-old
sister and her young brother running for their lives, trusting no one,
not even the agent intent on saving them, as they try to solve the
cryptic evidence uncovered by their father.
The 12-year-old brother, who has made a science of outwitting adults,
adds a humorous note to this nail-biting, stomach-churning story.
Sawyer is a TV/film veteran and it shows in the quick cuts from scene
to scene, with no wasted motion. The first few chapters are like the
opening of a suspenseful movie. People appear and disappear with only
the briefest of introduction or explanation. There are visuals -
scraps of scratch-paper notes and news clips.
Along about page 50 the story stretches out a little with a bit of
back story. But don't get comfortable. The whole thing blows up with a
shocking twist, and takes off in a different, unexpected direction.
The great director Alfred Hitchcock described a McGuffin as "the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is almost always the necklace and in spy stories it is most always the papers."
Here, it's the papers. Draw your own conclusions. Sawyer's McGuffin propels the plot right up to the surprise ending.
NO PLACE TO RUN is an exciting, satisfying, thought-provoking stomach-churner, one worth staying up late to finish.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Compelling and engaging to the very end., July 13, 2009
This review is from: No Place to Run (Paperback)
As a reader of few thrillers, I wasn't expecting much from Thomas B. Sawyer's NO PLACE TO RUN, even though it was recommended to me from a friend. Little did I know I was in for an adrenalizing, suspenseful conspiracy story that would keep me reading late into the night.
The book takes the reader through numerous twists and turns; a 24-year-old woman and her kid brother are framed for killing their parents, hurling them into a terrifying cat-and-mouse chase as they struggle to unravel the reasons behind the tragedy. Sawyer also creates characters of multiple dimensions: a rogue agent with questionable motives, a professional assassin who appears to be both heroic and tainted in reputation, and a sister and brother team who push and pull at their already strained relationship, trying to work together against unknown forces and reasons while dealing with their lifelong sibling rivalry.
NO PLACE TO RUN is a fast-paced, page-turning book that jumps from one hurried action to another while maintaining a robust and well-developed plot line. Sawyer doesn't sacrifice literary flare for the sake of narrative, either; the book is well-written without being difficult, full of details and interesting observations, but also quick and easy to read.
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