Customer Reviews

Runner (Thorndike Core)

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I've read just about everything by Thomas Perry, and the Jane Whitefield books are my favorites. The brilliant Native American woman who takes people "out of the world" is back with an exciting new case. It's been a few years, and Jane must adjust to new realities (post-9/11 security systems, new Internet tracking capabilities, etc.) to help an abused, pregnant woman disappear from the ruthless people who are looking for her.

Perry knows Jane Whitefield inside and out, and everything she does in these adventures just rings true. Every new book is like a visit with an old friend, which is how I think of her. She uses her common sense while avoiding the thousands of mistakes most of us would make (phones, email, GPS, Internet, etc.) in making other people vanish without a trace. Of course, the modern world makes vanishing increasingly difficult, and Jane has to strive to keep ahead of all the latest technology that is her profession's enemy. This makes her a bit of an old-fashioned throwback--but it also enables her to get the job done. RUNNER is a fascinating addition to this wonderful series. Recommended.

I am a big fan of Jane Whitefield, and the worst Jane Whitefield book (which I think this is) is still a whole lot better than an awful lot of mystery/suspense books out there.

That said, this one isn't carried through with Perry's usual precision. Without giving away the ending, I'd just like to say that he uses a change of point of view at the end to avoid detailing a rescue that he apparently had lost interest in, or invention for. One of the things I like about this series is that Jane usually uses her ingenuity to avoid bloodshed, but this time she kills 6 people with no apparent repercussions, even though there are people who know of her existence, if not her name. And yet the police are willing to leave that last element unprotected for the rescue I mention above....

Also, the admittedly poignant infertility plot seems weird to me--Carey's a doctor, for god's sake, and the two of them have more money than I can even imagine (I liked when she put the $40,000 charge on her card--billable to another identity, no less)so why not try an IVF cycle, people? I don't think Perry did his research on this one, and he seems to have rushed through the ending. It's still a good read, just not as perfectly plotted as the rest of this series.

I came late to the Jane Whitefield series, reading them all last spring, then waiting with bated breath for this newest installment. If I had started with RUNNER, I'm sure I would have liked it better, but it does seem pale in comparison with the earlier novels.

Jane Whitefield has a calling: she guides people out of the world. If your rich and abusive husband is going to kill you if you leave him, Jane will help you vanish. If the Mafia is on your trail and the Witness Protection Program isn't enough, Jane will give you a new life. Through a combination of physical courage that borders on derring-do and hyper-vigilance, Jane guides the runner through the stages of a vanishing act: new identity and location for transition, another set of realities for the long haul. To make this possible, Jane consults the stars of the underground identity culture - forgers, photographers, bent math whizzes --and she grows identities of her own through a variety of clever strategies.

The well-worn birth-certificate-of-a-dead-kid ploy is way too elementary for Jane Whitefield. If you like heist stories, the prep work she puts into identity-growing will fascinate you. And the real pay-off is this: she does it for good, not for money. Jane doesn't charge her runners. If they have money, she will use it to help them. If they later access money, they often send her a thank-you check. But it's all for the calling, nothing for personal gain. She says she does the work because 1) she is able to do it and 2) it needs to be done.

This very moral stance is somewhat under-cut by the increasing physical violence of the series. Jane racks up a high body count. The implicit rationale for this is that Seneca warriors protect their families. But Jane never says "no" to a runner, so this very elastic definition of family seems a bit facile. But most ethical male heroes slay their tens of thousands - Spenser comes immediately to mind - so I'm not losing sleep over Jane's corpses. They are all bad people doing things they shouldn't be doing. And - unlike many male heroes - Jane never overlooks her failures. We hear again and again about the mistakes she has made and the lives she has lost and this keeps things real. Perry realizes that the possibility of failure raises the level of tension 1000 per cent.

Perry's ability to write a convincing woman hero is very impressive. He ignores all the little things that trip men up - everyday grooming unrelated to disguises, for example - and pays shrewd attention to the way the world assesses women. (Nor is this a one-off feat. Read Nightlife for two amazing women, serial killer and detective.)

And the Seneca material is pure gold.

My favorite thing to find in mystery novels is a new world - art, national parks, Wall Street, computer security, archeology, obscure corners of the academy. Perry gives his readers fabulous chunks of Seneca history and culture, from big-picture contexts to the details of fingernail clippings. The Seneca traditions and culture add a huge dimension to the series and much of the raison d'ętre for Jane's actions. We meet other Seneca women and men, visit reservations, learn about tribal traditions which make Jane's choices not only believable, but virtually inevitable. And the author's sense of setting is phenomenal. In the first novel, I tracked Jane through the Adirondacks on Google Earth using Perry's vivid (and accurate) descriptions of place. This is an A+ series on almost every level. I just wish there were more novels.

That said, Runner was a disappointment. The post-9/11 security requirements pose a huge problem for Perry, who has Jane jumping on and off planes as if they were London busses in the earlier books. Obviously that has to cease, but it's puzzling that Perry didn't give the Homeland Security topic more play, instead making Jane shy away from airports because so many people are looking for her.

While there's a glam about 10 planes in one day, the book need not have suffered if Perry had given us something else. But we don't get details about Jane's drives, not after the first run with Christine. Similarly, the minutiae of setting up a new life for someone is always fascinating, but here it's merely summarized, not detailed for the reader's enjoyment. The sense of place I loved so much in the first five books has been misplaced here. The Seneca material is only very lightly sketched, as is the character of the runner, and the motivation of the bad guys is barely credible.

Every author has an off day, and this is still a good read. If you are new to the series, comfort yourself that going back to the first five books will be even better.

I read "Runner" by Thomas Perry so fast - What happens next! What happens next! - that the pages started to smolder and smoke. I was forced to read the rest of it wearing fire retardant gloves and with a fire extinguisher within easy reach.

"Runner" hits bookstore shelves on January 14 and, once you've fireproofed your favorite reading chair, you should seriously consider added it to your collection. "Runner" is a marvel, and already in the running for my pick for best suspense novel of 2009.

Thomas Perry has always been an underrated scribe. He came out of the gates strong with his first novel "The Butcher's Boy," which won the 1983 Edgar Award for best first mystery novel.

But Perry really didn't hit his stride until he created Jane Whitefield - a Native American woman who helps desperate people "disappear" - guiding them to new lives while helping them escape their pasts, usually filled with various nasty people with guns.

Jane is hard as dried leather - and smart. Her character - the detail oriented, obsessive perfectionist with little humor and a demeanor as sullen as funeral - centers the novel. She's a fascinating case study as she plunges the reader into the underground world of forgeries and the act of "vanishing" without a trace.

Jane made her first appearance in "Vanishing Act" in 1995 and appeared in four more novels before Perry retired her in 2000. The series, however, has proven so popular, that Perry has dusted off Jane nine years later.

Lucky us. The result is "Runner."

Jane is now married to a surgeon in up-state New York and living under the name Jane McKinnon. The action begins immediately as a pregnant teenager named Christine tries to find Jane at the local hospital - where Jane is attending a fundraiser she organized.

There are five professional criminals trailing Christine - and they bomb a wing of the hospital in order to flush Christine out of the building. Christine, however, is fortunate enough to find Jane first.

The rest of "Runner" is a harrowing race to save Christine and her baby from her former boyfriend, a corrupt real estate mogul who needs Christine and his child back to avoid being written out of the family businesses by his demanding father and mother.

"Runner" is relentless - but never allows itself to get away from the characters. Perry gives readers complex characters in Christine and boyfriend Richard Beale (and his complicated family dynamics with his mother and father). There are no stereotypes or casting call characters here, but dynamic human beings.

There are some questionable logic lapses in "Runner" with the hospital bombing front and center (would career criminals in a covert operation really do something that dramatic?). And the relationship between Richard and his criminal friends, led by the enigmatic Steve Demming, fails to hold up under too much scrutiny (and we never get any insight into Demming and his colleagues motivations).

However, "Runner" is just too expertly plotted and burns up the pages like a flamethrower to get too caught up in the trivial complaints. The book is just too good for that. Our recommendation is to just guard against third-degree burns and let Jane Whitefield guide you through "Runner." You won't be sorry.

Like literate blather? Then head over to the Dark Party Review.

Thomas Perry is a wonderful writer and his Jane Whitefield series is a delight. However, this one should have been left in the drawer unpublished. The cardboard characterizations of the people (both the boyfriend and his parents) from whom Christine is fleeing are weak and not believable.

First Sentence: The girl kept half-turning in the back seat to stare out the rear window of the cab, as though she were being chased across Buffalo to the hospital.

In the past 10 years, Jane Whitefield no longer helps people in need disappear from their lives. She has married and is living with her husband, Dr. Carey McKinnon in Buffalo New York. Organizing a fund raiser at the hospital, Jane feeling that something is wrong is proved correct when an explosion occurs.

A young, very pregnant, woman tells Jane she is the cause. She is being sought by six people and needs to disappear in order to keep herself, and her baby, safe.

What happened? I used to love the Jane Whitefield books but this was dreadful from the very beginning. ---NOT REALLY A SPOILER since it happens within the first few pages--- Even the initial premise of the bad guys setting off a bomb so the hospital would be evacuated and they could kidnap the girl was absurd. Hello?!? If you want the hospital to be evacuated, you call in a bomb threat, not set one off. And that they set the bomb off in the kitchen the night there just happened to be a fundraiser? No, no, no.

Nothing worked here. It was basically a long road trip without much suspense. The motive behind it all made the book a basic wall-banger for me. I'm afraid, to quote the "Who" song, "Won't get fooled again." Skip this one.

"Runner" features the return of one of the most compelling female heroines in literary history: Jane Whitefield. When Jane last appeared about ten years ago, she was on her 'last case,' and her creator, Thomas Perry, wrote some pretty decent thrillers while he recharged his Whitefield batteries.

This new book is vintage Whitefield. A pregnant woman in trouble shows up and needs Jane's help to escape from some bad people. What ensues is a quick-paced novel showcasing some taut chases, in-depth looks at how one goes about disappearing in a computerized world, and an ending that will leave you breathless.

The biggest problem in this book is that the main villain is a poorly written character, and the motivations for the chase of the pregnant woman never seem totally clear.

Recommended without hesitation.

There are many authors who "write themselves out" and sad to say, Thomas Perry may have joined that crowd.

I enjoyed the previous Jane Whitefield stories, but this one bored me to tears and I couldn't even finish.

Pedestrian prose, unbelievable baddies, dull storyline.

What a disappointment.

Runner is the sixth formulaic Jane Whitefield novel and finds Jane, a Native American guide who helps people assume new identities, living quietly under an assumed name. Pregnant Christine Monahan shows up and the two women wind up fleeing cross-country with bad guys on their trail. Christine is the girlfriend of a sociopathic executive in San Diego obsessed with finding her and their unborn child. By putting $40K on a new credit card for her assumed identify, Janes provides Christine and her baby with new identities and the chase is on. Blending in one dimensional characters, a sloppy plot, tenuous premises, gratuitous violence and Native American mysticism, the book suggests that success has made Perry sloppy or lazy. Don't waste your time.

When I saw that a new Jane Whitefield book was coming out I pre-ordered it then and there. I am a Perry fan in general, but the Jane Whitefield series is his best. She is an incredible heroine, and it is always fascinating to follow her thought processes and observations. Is this the best Jane Whitefield book? Maybe not, but it is hard for me to imagine that Jane Whitefield fans (or new readers, for that matter) wouldn't enjoy it. Like almost any book, it is possible to pick it apart if you try, but it was good enough to keep me reading hours past bedtime. Jane is an original, and the book was fast-paced and entertaining. When I reached the end, I was delighted at the hint of more Jane to come.