Customer Reviews

Perfect Killer

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

 

 

This is a fun, fast read, obviously with the intent to force mass-market readers to think about Perdue's issues of free will, pharmaceutically-enhanced soldiers, and such.

But, TWO things got in the way of my "total experience."

1) It is very disconcerting for the reader when the story jumps back and forth between first-person and third-person narrative like a volley ball on Spring Break. There's no discernable reason to have a first-person POV when so much of the story has to be told by an omniscient narrator. There's not even the pretense of "this is what I found out later about this."

2) After the FOURTH repetition of describing the female lead as having "a Mona Lisa smile," I was starting to want to time-travel and kill da Vinci before he could paint the thing! The fact that Jasmine has a "Mona Lisa smile" is shorthand for "as the author, I'm too untalented to describe what I mean." I mean, come on! This UNDESCRIPTIVE description appears probably TEN TIMES in this book. For heck's sake, just say, "her mysterious smile made me wonder what she was really thinking," or "her expression drove me crazy trying to figure her out," or SOMETHING that's not repeated over and over.

Other than that, this is a pretty involving, fun read. I would have enjoyed it more had these two things not slapped me (metaphorically) in the face, jolting me out of the story and back to "Oh, yeah, I'm reading a book."

What do YOU think?

The premise of the chemical soldier was really promising for this novel. But the story just really didn't go anywhere. There were a lot of great descriptions of life in the south, but how did that tie in with the story? And the love story between Stone and Jasmine... completely unbelieveable. The last 50 pages started to pick up but then the story ended abruptly. Overall, disappointing.

This had got to be Perdue's best book yet. The characters are complex without getting in the way of the incredible military conspiracy story. It gives me chills to think that our government could actually be trying to create a Perfect Killer through drugs. Where does he come up with this stuff? Definitely a "got to read" book. I actually read it twice back to back!

The action and suspense in Lewis Perdue's latest revolves around some powerful figures who want to dope Americas military soldiers with an new drug called Xantaeus. It "robs a soldier of free will without their knowledge, overides their sense of compassion and neutralizes the fear of injury".
The well researched sciences (psychological, biological, cosmological, etc) involved in the writing of this novel made it both highly entertaining and educational.
A fascinating thriller well worth your time.

From inside: "The human mind is a strange amalgam of deep-seated, foundational Darwinian impulses and rational centers of higher control. The first govern basic animal survival and land people in prison when the second doesn't take control."

"Our quest for the truth begins with three important steps:
"One, free will derives from consciousness. Two, consciousness is our perception of reality. Three, reality is weird."

Purdue has done it again: a perfect read, a perfect thriller. This is the book to take to the beach or the airport. The action is non-stop with some quirky plot turns that make it fun. I like getting to know Purdue's characters because every one of them is intriguing. Now I'm going to go back and read it again, and this time I'm going to cast the movie while I do it!

Perdue is a deft hand at what I think of as the 'paranoia thriller' genre -- Powerful figures conspiring to do something awful, with our hero racing first to figure out that something is actually going on, then figuring out what the heck it is, in great danger all the way, before beating the bad guys.

This is a great read -- fast-paced, solid characters, a good plot that's not, as sometimes happens in this genre, at all confusing.

Recommended.

PERFECT KILLER, the latest in an exemplary series of thrillers by Lewis Perdue, is one of those rare novels that succeeds on so many levels that it is difficult to list all of them. It certainly has the requisite number of explosions --- more so, actually --- and fisticuffs, cliffhanging situations, and a grand concept that such a book needs to make it stand head and shoulders on the shelf with its fellows. But when the dust settles and the smoke clears, Perdue's book has more than that going for it. It is a historical treatise, in its way, wherein redemption is attainable in the present for the sins of the past; there is some (chaste, almost courtly) romance; and, perhaps most interestingly, there are extended discussions dealing with the very essence of who and what we are, individually and collectively.

The primary protagonist of PERFECT KILLER is Dr. Brad Stone, a heavily decorated combat veteran who has transformed himself into one of the most famous neurosurgeons in the country, all the while retaining his combat knowledge and skills. Wholly dedicated to his medical practice, his quiet if melancholy life takes a bizarre turn when he is contacted by Vanessa Thompson, a woman from his distant past. Now a brilliant and controversial civil rights lawyer, Thompson is seeking Stone's help in incongruously defending white racist Daryl Tallmadge, a convicted murderer who is sitting on Mississippi's death row. It develops that Tallmadge has information concerning a secret military research program known as Project Enduring Valor, which seeks to turn ordinary soldiers into totally efficient killing machines.

Several decades in the making, the program is ready to be test marketed, so to speak. Its main proponent is Clark Braxton, a military hero and the apparent favorite to be the next President of the United States. Braxton is himself a product of Enduring Valor --- and the very dangerous side effects that were manifested in the test stages of the program are showing in Braxton's behavior as well. He is driven to implement the program, no matter what the cost and regardless of who gets in his way.

While the basic good guy/bad guy lines are pretty starkly delineated in PERFECT KILLER, Perdue, through Stone, examines some fairly weighty concepts, including those related to God, free will, and the influence that quantum physics may or may not have over human behavior. The discussion goes deep enough to be interesting without diverting from the main storyline. Perdue, in fact, makes these discussions a shadowy but nonetheless visible part of the story, giving the reader plenty to think about in the midst of the action, which is practically non-stop.

The result is a work that causes the mind, as well as the heart, to race; or, to put it in the form of an equation, PERFECT KILLER = Perfect Thriller. This is a work, and an author, not to be missed.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub