Customer Reviews

Storm Runners

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

t. jefferson parker is a wonderful writer but doesn't perform in this thriller. the plot line is ridiculous, and the characters are so undeveloped you really don't care much about what happens to them. i never figured out what made hallie so wonderful, and even love interest frankie didn't get under my skin. the hero, stromsoe, is an interesting character and would have been better served with a storyline that made more sense than "rain makers". Cedros was well drawn and i think combined with stromsoe and a better plot could have been a killer of a book. this one is just boring.

Parker's new novel is up to his usual high standards. The premise is a bit strange, with the rainmaking subplot, and one can imagine a producer's mouth dropping open during a pitch, but the seemingly farfetched concept works because of the narrative skills of the author and his knowledge of the subject. And there really was a Charlie Hatfield, of course, so there are nonfiction/novel elements at work here. The characters are very well drawn. The Cain/Abel antagonists are not quite epic in their dimensions, but they are interesting and engaging and the conflicts between them are effectively realized. These larger patterns do take their inspiration from the epic origins of the novel as a literary form and give the narrative a level of gravitas that is not always encountered in genre fiction. The result is a wonderful read that moves briskly but also conveys a sense of weight and seriousness. This is no mean feat given the fact that the subplot subject--rainmaking--is usually the object of skepticism if not explicit scorn.

I would actually give the novel four and a half stars. I like a little more blood and gore in my endings and while the ending here is just and satisfying it was not quite up to my expectations (which, for Parker, are always high).

I normally love T. Jefferson Parker's books, but not this one. STORM RUNNERS struck me as a novel written in a hurry. It's mostly dialogue, which is not Parker's strong point. An unrealistic, clunky plot and underdeveloped characters made this book a major disappointment. Parker can do much better than this.

My advice is to read some of Parker's more recent books, like THE FALLEN (superb), and SILENT JOE and CALIFORNIA GIRL (both winners of the Edgar award for best crime novel).

Parker has always been a writer who works well as an understated artist. His characters and plots have always been at the very least somewhat probable. His prose has been minimal and concise. For some reason Parker takes a left turn here with Storm Runners and its a disaster. I felt like I was reading one of James Patterson's more outlandish thrillers.

First of all, the premise of this story hinges on two very... very very unbelievable plot lines. The worst is that this lady, Frankie, is a weather guru who has found out how to get rain to fall in enormous amounts by mixing together a couple of cans of something. She is a rainmaker. Silly. The second is this triangle where Matt Stromsoe and Mike Tavarez are mortal enemies. They grew up together as childhood friends, dated the same woman. Matt marries this gal, Mike kills her. Mike is a leader of a mexican mafia. He also went to Harvard.

I wont go heavily into the plot. Its just insane, stupid, and way beneath Parker's better efforts. I just hope that this doesn't turn into a series of books. It sort of ends on a note that says this is just the first installment. Infact it kind of reads as an introduction rather than a story unto itself.

This is not at all on par with Parkers other books. Stay away.

I find myself in the odd position of writing a good review for a book that left me absolutely cold by page 152.

Parker is an excellent writer. He begins by painting vivid portraits of Matt Stromsoe and Mike Tavarez. They meet as freshmen in high school. Stromshoe goes on to become a cop. Tavarez goes on to Harvard and a criminal career.

We learn in the first few pages that much ties the two men together. A high school friendship. A competition for the same woman, who becomes Tavarez's girlfriend and later Stromsoe's wife and the mother of his son.

Tavarez goes on to murder Stromsoe's wife and son.

Strong, compelling characters. Totally solid writing that has you flipping pages at a blistering pace.

Parker builds his story from the murder to Stromsoe's excursion into a personal hell from which another friend rescues him.

Stromsoe is given a job to protect a San Diego television weatherperson from a stalker.

At this point - for me, at least - the novel falls apart and I simply cannot continue to read it. The attractive woman weatherforecaster is developing a method to make rain. Uh huh. Some people might enjoy this very bizarre plot twist. It leaves me cold. Worse in my opinion, the stalker turns out to be an industrial spy - one who is uniquely unqualified for his assignment. But he is also a very distant relative of the aforementioned Miker Taverez.

At this point, the plot is so far-fetched that I would find watching paint dry to be more entertaining than finishing this novel.

So I will leave it unread. Parker is a powerful writer and I will most certainly sample some of his other work: but this one is just too wacky for me to deal with. Dean Koontz or Steven King might have been able to pull off this plot - Parker can't.

Jerry

Sorry Jeff, but I just couldn't get past the unbelievable plot cornerstone: seeding the sky to make it rain. I found that central point, and the manner in which it is presented, to be quite preposterous. Character development was only passable - - not great. I was actually happy when the book ended, so I could move on to DeMille, Lescroart, Coben, et al.

Aside from pure, unadulterated excellence, you never know what you're going to get when you pick up a book by T. Jefferson Parker. Having reached the stage in his career where he could coast just a bit on his laurels, he delights in pushing himself and his readers into new places. He does this not by ground shifts, but by subtle twists and turns, taking plot devices that we come to accept almost as gospel and giving them a tweak here and there. This practice not only affects what is to come but also keeps the reader on an unconscious edge: if Parker is going to change one element, then he can change anything. And, as STORM RUNNERS demonstrates, indeed he does.

STORM RUNNERS introduces readers to Matt Stromsoe, a sheriff's deputy whose wife and child are killed in an assassination attempt meant for him. Stromsoe is left alive but is irreparably maimed by the act, which was carried out at the behest of Mike Tavarez, the head of a powerful organized crime gang. Ironically enough, Tavarez was one of Stromsoe's best friends in high school and had a relationship at one point with Stromsoe's wife. Their lives cross each other in lines of love, hatred, bitterness and violence that are, if anything, exacerbated by Tavarez's subsequent maximum security imprisonment.

After resigning from the sheriff's department and taking work with a security agency, Stromsoe is assigned to guard a television anchor who is being harassed by a stalker. This simple act gives him a chance to regain his life: as the book unfolds, however, it also gives Tavarez a second shot at Stromsoe.

In STORM RUNNERS, as in life, it is the smaller, seemingly inconsequential elements that sometimes have the greatest effects on events. Dan Birch, who flits on and off the pages intermittently, and John Cedros, who would probably escape your notice on the street, influence events here to a degree that far exceed their apparent importance in the grand scheme of things. There is another character, Susan Doss, who appears only briefly but has so much potential that I hope Parker sees fit to somehow reintroduce her in a future novel.

It is weather --- its unpredictability and our efforts to predict, harness and control it --- that provides the backdrop for STORM RUNNERS and also functions as a metaphor for what takes place. Just as weather is influenced by a multitude of random factors, so too are the events of our lives, where everything from the hem on a pant leg to being a step or two ahead (or behind) someone can make a difference.

Parker ups the ante and sets his own new standard with STORM RUNNERS, an unforgettable work from an author who has written bookshelves full of them.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

This is a not-too-inspiring book. With a story-line that lacks momentum, and with little action and no mystery, this is a forgettable story. For very light airplane reading on a not too long flight, this might be OK. But there are lots of much better choices.

In California, Mike Tavarez, a top gun in the Mexican Mafia La Eme, sets off a bomb intended to kill Orange County detective Matt Stromsoe. Matt is severely injured, but his wife and son die in the blast. As he heals physically, the scars remain mentally although Tavarez, his former high school classmate, is convicted of murder and sentenced to spend life in prison.

Finally able to go back to work, Stromsoe accepts work guarding San Diego meteorologist Frankie Leigh from a stalker. Stromsoe soon realizes that the culprit was hired by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to prevent Leigh, whom they consider a major nuisance, from presenting her research into rainmaking.

This is an exciting suspenseful thriller that has a great opening sentence that sets the stage for the two antagonists. The story line is fast-paced with the audience totally hooked with a High Noon anticipation from T. Jefferson Parker cleverly building up from that first line crescendo. The deep look at La Eme interwoven into the plot is fascinating and Mr. Parker provides a fabulous crime thriller with a touch of weather science to enhance the stormy confrontational expectations as everyone knows what weather is coming.

Harriet Klausner

Nobody writes better thrillers than T Jefferson Parker in Silent Joe, The Fallen, and the MercI
Rayburn novels. I am a fan. I have to report, however, that T Jefferson seems to have dashed this one off to meet his contract demands, failing to have come up with an interesting idea carried by interesting characters caught up in an interesting series of events.What happened to one of my two or three favorite writers in this genre? The downside is, as I did quite a while back with James Lee Burke, I will be hesitant or unable to purchase another book by the author. Too bad.....