Customer Reviews

Sprinter

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

 

 

My father-in-law gave SPRINTER to my husband for Christmas, but I got to it first. Now my husband and sister have already read it and my father-in-law is standing in line.

It's about Jeni, a woman whose lost everything in life that mattered to her: her job, her husband, and her little daughter. Then a crazed (and very well-drawn) mad bomber selects her to play a curious form of Russian Roulette using bombs instead of guns.

All I can say is, this book kept me guessing, and turning pages like crazy. Bruce Jones really knows how to fill up a thriller with wonderful characters who think and act like the rest of us, even if they are FBI or CIA or mad bombers! I loved this book, and highly recommend it!

Jeni Starbuck, the heroine of SPRINTER, could be the girl next door with an insatiable sense of curiosity and an even stronger sense of justice. She is one of the most well-rounded female protagonists in books today, and when a mad bomber fixes his sites on her, you know that he's picked a formidable opponent.

I've read MAXIMUM VELOCITY and GAME RUNNING, both by Jones, and all three books are breathtaking thrillers with amazing depth of character. Jones has a predilection for getting under the skin of his heroes and taking us with him. Highly recommended.

SPRINTER is the kind of novel you always hoped would come along--a thriller that Alfred Hitchcock (or even Brian DePalma, that Hitchock wannabe) would have really sunk his teeth into. The people have exotic professions but real personal lives--men and woman in the CIA, FBI, or whathaveyou have to marry, divorce, love, hate and pursue happiness as well as international terrorists.

Jeni is the protagonist, a former government agent who, after being fired and losing her only child, is divorced from her husband and vents her frustrations in running races and focusing on kids dying of AIDS. When a mad bomber threatens San Diego through the use of a computer called the Sprinter 9000, Jeni is called up again. What follows is a swift course in Saving Your Own Life.

The villian is formidable, a brainiac psychotic genius with geniuine feelings and a passion for art. Jeni is sexy, vulnerable, dynamic, the girl next door to the nth degree, and the ending is unbeatable, a real! ! boon for women everywhere who are sick of the Woman-as-victim motif.

Sprinter almost screams "movie", but it is not because the writer doesn't understand books. On the contrary, Sprinter is classic in its approach to plot and character, painting beautifully time and place and most interestingly the inner thoughts of the protagonist, Jeni, a former agent who now runs an AIDS hospice for children. Her nemesis, Dr. Handle, is also known as the Unibomber, but his agenda is far more complicated than the ordinary terrorist's, and he has selected Jeni, for his own reasons, to be the intermediary for his negociations. Handle is a notch above Dr. Lecter, villian-wise, in that his own ego does not necessarily dictate his routes. He and Jeni are the perfect match, even is she doesn't know it. Or him. All she knows is that she's recently lost her beloved child and her husband has left her to marry again. And she's a world-class running--which she does not only to make money for the hospice, but to prove to herself she's still alive. From the first page the action starts and it never lets up, sweeping Jeni into the apex of a paranoid fantasy that leaves her wondering if it is she or the Bomber who's mad. As action heroine, you cannot beat Jeni's character, who thinks with both her head and her heart, and has the flexibility to change and the sense to know when she's been had. Mixed into this tasty stew is Jeni's genius ex-husband, for whom she pines, an FBI agent in charge of the Bomber case who pines for her, and enough bombs, computer hacking, beatings and shootings, not to mention some of the best chases ever written, to keep this reader on the edge of his seat! Very, very highly recommended summer reading.

Bruce Jones, author of Maximum Velocity and Game Running, has finally written a thriller with a woman at the center--and what a woman! Jeni Starbuck, a former agent, is smart, beautiful, and no one's fool, with the soft heart of a mother whose lost a child recently and a wife whose husband has left her. Jeni becomes the obsession of a criminal mind, a man who's nickname, the Solobomber, only touches the surface of his schemes--and yet a demented mind which, like Jeni's, can appreciate the finest human feelings without being able to feel them. This strange bond that connects the two is the center of a wild ride in which the action never lets up and the surprises never stop coming! Jones is a master of the action scene, but he never lets the thrills get in the way of his storytelling. And if there was ever a character that needed a sequel, it's Jeni Starbuck! Hope Jones is listening.

The Sprinter 9000 PC is the hottest computer on the market. Everyone seems to want to own one. However, John Handle, dubbed the Solobomber, has other plans for the creators of this marvelous machine. He is simply killing them even as he obtains access to the FBI's criminal information data base. To add excitement to his fun, John targets former ATF agent Jeni Starbuck as his opponent in a game of cat and mouse.

The FBI reluctantly recruits Jeni to be their player in John's game. Jeni agrees because she is at rock bottom, having lost her job, her spouse, and even her daughter. As she uncovers John's diabolical plot, Jeni still wonders why he selected her as his primary opponent?

SPRINTER is a fast-paced, action packed suspense thriller that will both elate and disappoint fans of the sub-genre. The story line is crisp and loaded with incredible SPRINTER speed, leaving readers little time to catch their breath. However, the characters, including Jeni, seem as flat as a saltine as some of their motives fail to come through in the sub-plots. Bruce Jones shows talent in terms of a non-stop excitement thriller, but needs to slow down so that readers can become enchanted by his protagonists.

Harriet Klausner

This book is one of the worst books I've ever read, and I've been forced to read Clive Cussler. It's worse than most of the history survey textbooks I read in college. Jones makes no attempt at plausibility, originality or at basic research. It's a waste of time, don't even pick it up. The biggest positive I can mention about this book is that it's inspired me to write commercially, because if this piece of utter crap can be published, I know I can make some decent money.