Customer Reviews

Pursuit

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Of all Thomas Perry's books, this was his least attractive. I'm a HUGE fan of Perry, so much so that every 2 years I reread all his books. Unfortunately "Death Benefits" was weaker than those preceding it and "Pursuit" is even weaker. I'm trying to think if I would have felt differently had I not read all of Perry's books beforehand. I don't think so. Since I get annoyed with reviewers who say "there's much better out there" and fail to make suggestions, I'll recommend the late Ross Thomas' books starting with "Briarpatch" and of course Perry's books prior to the last two.

The entire book dragged. The killer might be called psychotic (I believe it means they can't tell the difference between right and wrong), but I believes he does, he just doesn't care what is right or wrong. The killer's history isn't interesting but we're exposed to a plethora of it. The minutea of his life doesn't enhance my knowledge of his character, especially since he's certainly not a sympathetic character.

The title describes the story. However the biggest disappointment to me was the careless fashion in which the pursuer constantly and incompetently lets the killer get away. Why there wasn't a poison gas canister in the trap in Buffalo, why there wasn't a source of lethal electricity in the house in Minnesota, amazes me. Granted hindsight is 20/20, but we're talking about the pursuer having weeks to plan. Finally, there are a minimum of 4 unnecessary deaths of probably good people before the pursuer follows the course of action he should have in the first place.

I'm sorry, this book started well with a nice set up that appeared to be a contest of cleverness, and dragged into a plodding story in which I just wanted to get it over with.

Thomas Perry is a remarkably good writer of suspense novels. You can pick up any of his books without worrying that you'll feel cheated. This book is not up to the level of the Jane Whitefield novels, but is, nonetheless, an entertaining way to spend a few hours. Perry's trademark trope of having his characters travel cross-country makes for a sense of progress, even when there isn't much happening. The games and traps he creates for his characters to evade and escape maintain a fairly consistent level of suspense--more than enough to keep you reading past your bedtime. Finally, his characters are rarely clear-cut good and bad guys, which makes them more interesting and more human.

So what keeps this novel from being among Perry's best? Two things:
1. Although it is interesting to see things from the antagonist's point of view, he is not a terribly interesting creation--pretty much a montage of stereotypical killers from psycho/spy novels. The time he spends hiding out does not so much illuminate his character (as Prescott's down-time does) as simply provide more of the same. Although the structural parallelling of the two characters' actions is stylistically intriguing, Varney is too conventional for this trick to work well.
2. The multiple points of view prevent the reader forming a real bond with Prescott. It would be interesting to deal with the cognitive dissonance created by identification with an ambivalent character, but just when you start to like him, you get a dose of Varney or Millikan, thus interrupting the connection.

These minor stylistic difficulties aside, this book is easily worth the money you'll spend on it and provides more entertainment than most authors pack into two novels.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who normally read Perry. For someone new I would recommend trying his Butcher's Boy or Jane Whitefield series first. This book seems to combine people with characteristic of Perry's more notable past characters -- a hitman ("The Butcher's Boy" - his first and in my opinion best book), someone smart and highly trained pursuing him, ("Death Benefits") and women a bit like Jane Whitefield (many books). It was a very good story and I enjoyed it and would have given it 5 stars but there were some places that seemed to drag, particularily with all the hitman's overthinking and exercising details. As usual Perry does a good job of fleshing out his main characters and a few sub-characters - I really enjoyed the pursuer character (Prescott) and would have liked more about Millikan (prescott's freind - a professor and excop). Hopefully, we will see another book with Prescott and Millikan.

I read this book in manuscript form while working at the publisher's ad agency. Reading manuscripts is often a dreadful task as many novels are poorly written. PURSUIT was a wonderful exception! Whereas most modern thrillers are overwritten (ie: characters with very little bearing on the story get a full page or more of description or there are endless chapters that do nothing to advance the plot) Perry gives us a taut, electric tale of a hunter and his prey that grabs you by the throat from the first page and simply will not let go until the last. Although the styles are quite different, PURSUIT reminded me of the thrill I used to get from reading Ian Fleming's original James Bond novels. Thank you, Mr. Perry, and please bring back Roy Prescott soon!

Perry has been a very dependable writer throughout his career but this one is not close to his best efforts. The plotting is, as usual, spectacular, but the characters never work for a few reasons. Varney, the hit man, is a killing machine. He kills everyone, so as a character, he's totally boring. The only conflicts are within his own mind and Perry never really establishes any reason for his makeup. Contrast him with the hit man in The Butcher Boy, Perry's first novel, and it makes for a slow read. Prescott, the tracker, could have been an attractive character a la Jane Whitefield, but while Prescott revels in the chase, he seems remarkedly unable to pull the trigger when he has trapped his quarry. While this might make for increased tension in the novel, the believablility factor goes down to zero.
Readers who want the best of Thomas Perry should go back to The Butcher's Boy or his classic, Metzger's Dog, and leave this one on the shelf.

My first by Thomas Perry. Great pace and suspense, but the killing and Spy vs. Spy pursuit scenes take reality completely out of the picture (and a ridiculous typo on page 155 takes the proofreaders down a peg as well).

Thirteen people are killed in a Louisville restaurant. Ex-cop now law professor Dan Milliken believes Bobby Cushner was the target. Bobby's wealthy father wants Milliken to find the killer. Reluctantly, he calls Roy Prescott, a mysterious manhunter who operates on the edge.

They profile the killer right away - James Varney a twenty-something reject who first killed a cranky aunt at age 11. Varney's provoked to call his pursuer Prescott on p. 34 (really?), and the chase is on.

The first two rounds go to Varney who flies to LA and kills two cops. The rest of the way Prescott, who's pushing 60 by the way but seems to have superhuman stamina, has Varney dead to rights a bunch of times, but Varney manages a series of impossible escapes.

In the end there are 25 or so corpses strewn from coast to coast. Two "final" showdowns cap a sequence of great action scenes, but truthfully they'd fit more in a comic book than a novel.

The book opens in a restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky, the scene of a mass murder that has obviously been carried out by a particularly ruthless yet methodical killer. It's certain that this was no frenzied attack and it's also certain that the killer will eventually strike again. So unorthodox methods are required to stop him.

Roy Prescott is such an unorthodox method. He specialises in tracking down particularly hard to find criminals and brings them to justice. This justice is not usually within the limits of the law. Once Prescott begins to hunt, the tempo of the story immediately lifts as you sense that the game is afoot. We are treated to a series of confrontation scenes where the action is intense, punctuated by periods of relative inactivity as both men recover and prepare for the next sortie. It turns into a thrilling game of attack and counterattack.

Thomas Perry has virtually created a new sub-genre of his own, starting with the Jane Whitefield books and through Death Benefits and Pursuit. He has been specialising in books that depend on a person trying to disappear while the pursuers use all their considerable ingenuity to track them down. In this case, we witness a man-hunter at work as he alternately flushes and ambushes his prey. The tension is greatly increased because the hunted is not without significant survival skills and is very capable of switching from the role of the hunted into the hunter in the blink of an eye.

I found this to be a very enjoyable thriller thanks to the evenness of the contest. Told alternately from the perspective of both men, we are allowed into the minds of both men.

Don't you just HATE books that feature "brilliant" protagonists who are soooo incredibly stupid?

In Pursuit, Prescott sets trap after trap for villain Varney and then lets him get away, scott free, every time. (The motel, the booby-trapped office, and multiple times at the country home.) This is implausible fiction at it's worst.

In Perry's previous Jane Whitefield series, the reader had at least three "good guy" characters with which to identify (Jane, her husband, and the client). In Pursuit, however, we have 2 professional killers who are little more than nasty, cardboard icons.

Further, I'd LOVE to see a word count on how many times Perry used the words "got" and "gotten" in this book - a personal hot button of mine, I know, but puleeease ...

To summarize, the last two efforts from Perry aren't even in the same league with his earlier works. If you feel compelled to read Pursuit, I suggest you save your money and wait until it is released in paperback form.

Sometimes I'll finish a book and rush to read the reviews to see if others agreed with me. Many times, I'll find myself scratching my head, wondering if I read the same book as some of the reviewers. This was the case with this book, where Perry has intricately woven a plot where all the pieces in the puzzle are so carefully chiseled leaving no room for error on the part of the protagonist.

The story starts off with a bang....well, actually thirteen of them as nine diners and four employees in a restaurant are all gunned down by a lunatic psychopath. While some might have called this the random work of a madman, Daniel Millikan, homicide detective turned criminology professor, knows better once he's viewed the crime scene. He realizes there was a target and the hit man killed the other twelve people in the restaurant just to make the police work even harder to figure it out. The wealthy father of one of the victims hires Roy Prescott to find his son's killer. Perry writes, "Revenge is not sweet, it's a luxury. It's a necessary restoration of balance in the universe." Since Prescott has a reputation for working outside of the law, usually leaving no prisoners, he's the perfect one to restore this balance.

This book was better than any National Geographic episode where the hunter tracks down his prey. In this case, the hunter is Roy Prescott and the prey is hit man Jim Varney....someone who is almost as smart and cunning as Prescott but not quite. This will be a chase to beat all chases.

Right from the beginning, Perry lets the reader know who the killer is thereby allowing us not only to get into Prescott's head but also into Varney's as he tells the story through both viewpoints. This is sometimes a dangerous technique but one Perry masterfully employs and one I very much enjoy. So many authors lead you through 300 pages, while you try to figure out who the killer is, only to be disappointed in the end. Since you already know who the killer is here, you'll read on just to find out if Prescott's pursuit is successful. I guarantee you it's one of the best cat and mouse chases you'll read with Prescott coming up with some ingenious plots to capture the very elusive Varney.

Towards the end of this book, you'll be forcing yourself to avert your eyes from the next page, the next paragraph, the next sentence dragging out the inevitable climax just a little bit longer. You'll want to read ahead as quickly as possible because, by this time, you'll know that Varney cannot be allowed to live.

Roy Prescott is just the type of guy you'd want to hire if you were seeking revenge. A dream book for me would be to see Roy Prescott teamed up with Perry's other recurring character, Jane Whitefield....also someone who enjoys working outside the law. Well, one can only dream.

This author is very original. A good thing. If you like Harlan Coben and Robert Crais, as you should, they are both great. Then check out Thomas Perry, any novel, especially Jane Whitefield novels-they are great.