Customer Reviews

No Place to Run

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

Author Thomas Sawyer takes the tragic events of 9/11 and uses them for a solid action/adventure suspense thriller in "No Place To Run". This is the story of Mace Merrick, a professional killer who ironically is serving time for a murder he didn't commit. Seeking to negotiate for his release, Mace has documents regarding a hit he carried out on contract the morning 9/11 happened. What follows is a high level cover-up, more deaths, and Claudia, a young lady who, along with her kid brother Adam, find themselves targets of rogue federal agents trying to tie up loose and embarrassing ends. Framed for their parents' murders, they take off on a cross-country race to stay alive long enough to figure out who killed their parents and discover a horrifying truth behind the infamous attacks of 9/11. "No Place To Run" is a tautly written page-turner of a thriller from beginning to end -- and a highly recommended read.

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.

"That was a quick read," commented my wife as I switched off my Kindle. We were descending into the Phoenix airport. I had started reading Thomas B. Sawyer's "No Place to Run" after taking off from Jacksonville earlier that day, and although I had not entirely finished the novel, I was close at 93 percent, according to the Kindle page calculator. Well, if your goal is to finish a book on a transcontinental flight, it helps if massive snowstorms in the Midwest force a schedule change through Miami instead of Dallas involving a 4-hour airport delay.

Still, reading "No Place to Run" had been a rush. What is the Kindle equivalent of Page-Turner: Button-Puncher?

First, a disclaimer: Since Thomas B. Sawyer believes in transparency, he will not be too displeased if I expose him, the former producer of "Murder She Wrote," as a high school buddy. We attended cartooning classes at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts when his name was Tom Scheuer. In my recent novel "Marathon" (plug), I named one of the characters after him: Tom Schorr. Another secret revealed: Our instructor at CAFA was Martin Garrity. The heavy in Tom's latest novel is a Vince Garrity. No coincidence, I am sure. (Remind me to include someone named Garrity in my next work of fiction.)

So, bias exposed, do not expect anything less than a 5-star review for "No Place to Run." If I had even the slightest qualm about endorsing Tom's latest novel, I would have said nothing. The fact that I am posting a review means, yes, I am offering a legitimate 5 stars worth of praise.

Here's what I liked most about "No Place to Run." It did not challenge my mind. That may sound like Faint Praise, but my wife and I recently read another book by a well-respected author. It had page after page of flowery descriptions of locations from Charleston to San Francisco, but we disliked the book and disliked most of the characters in a book that was six plots in search of a resolution that never seemed to come, even after 500 pages.

So I was ready for a Button-Puncher, a book that would propel me from one face-off with the bad guys to the next face-off, the good guys narrowly escaping to get chased and almost caught again. True escapist literature. Also, the good guys were a likable young woman and her equally likable younger brother, so you did not get bogged down in sex scenes added to the narrative only because the author thought his novel would sell better if it contained sex scenes.

I'll let some other reviewer tell you about the plot, which revolves around a 9/11 conspiracy, but 9/11 is merely the "McGuffin," the excuse for all the chases. Like the statue of a bird in "The Maltese Falcon," the work that Tom mentions briefly as though with a wink to an old high school buddy, who also loved that book and film.

So bravo to Tom for being totally honest and giving us a book that was fun to read rather than being "literature" with quotes around it. The next time you're on a transcontinental flight, plan to have "No Place to Run" in your carry-on luggage.

--Hal Higdon, Author: "Marathon"

Thomas B. Sawyers new book, "No Place to Run," is a fast paced, thought provoking, great read! The author draws you into a shadow world and doesn't let go until the last pages. One word of warning: Do not read this book unless you plan or not getting much sleep that night!
Dave Beaty co author: To Save Buddy Holly.

I love literary fiction, which this is not. But given that Mr. Sawyer worked doing television screenplays (Murder, She Wrote) for decades, I can see where the style emerges. Style aside, the plot is an all-night read. Wow!

An entertaining thriller with an `unpleasant' edge. You actually hope it's not true but in the back of our heads we all know it is. Thomas Sawyer rubs our nose into it.
No Place to Run is written like a fast paced movie script. At the end of each chapter you ask yourself `what happens next'. As the story unfolds you feel less and less comfortable about the people and agencies that are supposed to protect us. You wish it was all fiction....