9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
I'm a little hazy... was there a gun?, July 21, 2008
This review is from: Reconstruction (Hardcover)
How bad does a book have to be for it to be painful to admit there was anything you liked about it? About this bad, I'll say. Because there was one little bit, buried about page 325-ish, that made it interesting. The character of Ben was good. The rest... the rest was bad. A nightmarish tangle of confusing sentences, weird word choices, flash backs, flash sideways, and stilted dialogue that was a chore to slog through.
The first thing I noticed is that, for some reason, the first two chunks of story are written in present tense. Then it switches to past tense for the rest of the book. I don't know if that was supposed to be some sort of artsy thing, but it was jarring.
Then I started noticing the dashes. Lots and lots of dashes. I'm not sure there's a single page in the book that doesn't have at least one dash. They're used instead of semi-colons, commas, and parenthesis. Seriously, if the author writes another novel might I respectfully suggest someone rips that key off his keyboard? Because dashes - as they are - really tend to interrupt the flow of a story - and that can be annoying. Really, really - I'm not kidding - annoying.
Next, I came to my pet peeve of bad grammar:
"The gates were five foot high or so..." (pg 30)
Feet. The plural is feet. Really, it's not that hard. They are five foot tall gates, which are five *feet* tall. It's not rocket science. I honestly almost stopped reading there. Probably should have, but I soldiered on.
Then the story just bogged down in a confusing muddle of "I'm not exactly sure that was the word you meant to use" and "Could you make that sentence more convoluted?" For example:
"Probably sixty, but Ben guessed he'd been that for awhile, and would remain so for ditto." (pg 97)
"...his hand shaking so hard, Ben would have had to be fibrillating hard to be in its way." (pg 198)
...reading like a grade-schooler had decided to beef up a paper by whipping out a thesaurus, only, they didn't check to see if the word really fit the sentence.
"Politics was nowhere Ben was about to wander." (pg 136)
...passive voice! What a way to turn off readers. Why not "Ben wasn't about to wander into a political discussion"? So crisp, so simple, so easy to read.
"Though it wasn't like there was enough space in this room to confuse a bullet." (pg 149)
...and finally, an example of trying to be clever and just being weird. I know what the author is trying to say, I just don't like the way it's phrased.
Finally, the overall theme of "Oh my goodness, he has a Gun!" (yes, occasionally capitalized for no apparent reason) was very wearing. Okay, we get it. He has a gun. Get over it. I realize that might be a cultural issue, since the novel is British... but still, beating the point to death was annoying. Would anyone really be that shocked and amazed that someone holding hostages has a gun? What is he supposed to threaten them with, a rutabaga?
Like I said, there's one small, interesting tidbit in the novel, but it's really not worth reading the rest of it to get to it. Between the writing style, the sharp jumps between characters and times, and the lackluster ending, there's not much to recommend this book. There are far, far, far better conspiracy/thrillers out there, and I would suggest giving this one a miss.
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12 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
great one sitting suspense, April 2, 2008
This review is from: Reconstruction (Hardcover)
A desperate Jaime Segura holds a gun on several hostages at the South Oxford Nursery School. One of them teacher Louise Kenney thinks he looks no more than nineteen even with the weapon as she realizes her earlier Incident seems so minor. A parent Eliot Pedlar tries to calm down his three-year-old twins weeping Timmy and Gordon, but with little success as the "Gun" seems so menacing. Then there is the cleaner to round out the prisoners.
However Jaime may be a foreigner, but he is not a terrorist. In fact he is as frightened if not more so than those he retains. His lover Miro has vanished along with 250 million pounds stolen from the Secret Service; money intended for Iraq. Meanwhile two agents tried to kidnap Jaime; all he could think of was to escape before rendition. The police surround the school asking Jaime for his demands and to free the innocent. Jaime surprises everyone insisting he will talk only with M16 accountant Ben Whistler who worked with Miro in the office. Louise knows this will end badly for everyone inside the nursery school, but she assumes Jaime is the cause instead of those outside waiting to silence all those inside to insure there are no witnesses especially the teen with the gun.
This is a great one sitting suspense tale filled with plausible yet stunning twists as nothing proves to be like it seems. Readers will feel they are claustrophobically locked inside with the hostages and the Gun while wondering who outside wants this to end tragically. Mick Herron provides an exhilarating taut thriller that will land on most short lists for one of the best of the year.
Harriet Klausner
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