Customer Reviews

The Dark Tide

5 star:		(68)
4 star:		(51)
3 star:		(37)
2 star:		(24)
1 star:		(26)

 

 

I have now read both of Andrew Gross's books, The Blue Zone and The Dark Tide. I am convinced he is here to stay among today's top authors of suspense fiction that has just enough facts to keep your brain thinking and wanting more. His characters and locations are very well described and the stories well scripted.

Karen Friedman has a happy family consisting of her loving (or so she thought), husband, two children, Samantha and Alex, and family pet dog Tobey. Husband Charles is a highly successful investment banker who was thought of also being so by his associates in his business, and in giving his family a very nice life. The kids were into sports and Karen was always there with her support and Charles when he could make it. The neighbors of their upscale neighborhood thought very highly of the entire family

All of the above was true for many years of their marriage until Charles was in a commuter train bombing in Grand Central Station. This threw the family, the company Charles worked for, and their friends into deep sorrow. That is except for the ones involved in the money laundering schemes that Charles had been performing for many years, all of which his family knew nothing about. Many felt they had been swindled through Charles' actions and they wanted their securities and money back!

Lieutenant Ty Hauck of the Greenwich Police Department was a local hero from high school and college and had worked his way up in the department. He was highly thought of and worked on some tough cases. Ty became involved in the death of Charles Friedman when it became apparent that the hit and run of a young man was somehow tied into Charles disappearance. At first Karen's worry was that Charles was buried in the rubble of one of the still burning train cars. Her mind wondered all over the place until some identification was found that led the authorities to believe that Charles had been in the destruction and was dead.

Time went on without any sign of Charles body and no word from him to anyone. Karen and the remaining family went through hard times trying to invent a new life. Eventually a detective came to the Friedman's house to ask Karen some questions unrelated to the bombing. The detective happened to be Ty Hauck and the purpose of his visit was to see if the family knew the man that had been killed in the hit and run that had taken place at about the same time and near where the bombing occurred. The family did not know of the man but Karen and Hauck seemed to hit it off personally noticing each other from the beginning. The killings increased, some seemingly related and some not, so more authorities became involved.

One part of the investigation led to another until Hauck was delving too deep for some apparently involved in the deep-rooted problems Charles had created. Hauck was led to other parts of the world and back again as he continued to find clues to the work and people that Charles had worked for and against. One of the men Charles had worked with and had been a good friend of Karen's, Saul Lennick, was in contact with Karen telling her that he would do all he could to assist her and also he pumped information out of Karen regarding all the things she has researched.

Going any farther would give too much of the authors many great plots and storylines away. The Dark Tide was extremely hard to put down. You must read this book. Take my word that it is a non-stop action filled story with lots of adventure, shrewd dealings, love and sex, trips to tropical islands, and much more. As I said at the beginning of this review, I truly hope Andrew Gross continues for many years to give us great stories such as his first two have been.

I got this book free for my kindle and it was worth it. Karen is a woman with caramel, honey, auburn hair and hardened ,sharp brown, hazel eyes who lives in a fancy Greenwich house with two teen-age kids who fight over a shared bathroom. When her husband is supposedly killed in a bomb blast ,and nothing is found but his briefcase handle, she has no problem getting a death certificate and collecting 4 million dollars. When she meets detective Houck he has his 10 year old daughter on his shoulders. Two months later the daughter is thirteen and too stupid to flip a burning pancake.Houck falls asleep watching a house and when he wakes it's light so he gets his flashlight to do some B & E. The suspect is an ex-cop and professional security alarm installer but Houck has no trouble finding the breaker on a bush. Fortunately there is no battery back-up on the alarm system and he has no trouble running the computer and printer without electricity. And LORDY! all the physical side effects of the emotions! Eyes screw, drill, snap to the page like a magnet (shades of wiley coyote). Heads explode. hearts crash, blood explodes out of the veins, legs turn to jelly. guts feel like they've had a wire dragged through them, arm hairs tingle and stand on edge. One more "wink" from either a bad guy or good guy and I would have bounced the kindle off the wall. Any high school kid, with a proper outline and time-line, could have done a better job.

I thought the Blue Zone was a fantastic read, and this even surpasses that great effort. His writing has matured. This novel is another incredible page turner. It is impossible to put down. But what's most appealing is how well it holds together. The reader, once again, is satisfied at the end because the entire story holds together flawlessly which makes it very creible. To me, that's the key to a great thriller...it's exciting and believable. I can't wait for his next book.

I have to agree with another reviewer about his overuse of the first names of the main characters. No one in speaks like that in real life. It was extremely irritating and detracted from the story line. His overuse of cliches was also annoying. Some one was always " winking" at another person! It seems as if he needed fill his book with triteness to make it longer. It had good potential but I was very disappointed in the book. He needs to find a new proofreader.

Yikes, I downloaded this title to my Kindle for free. You get what you pay for. This may be one of the few books that are so bad I may not be able to finish it. Other reviewers keep saying there's a good story line in there somewhere. I don't know yet; trying to read this book is strenuous. I keep having to reread sentences to figure out what the author is trying to say. Some reviewers are blaming the proofreader or editor. I blame the publisher; never should have let this one go out the door.

First 30% or so of the book: poor grammar, non existent editing. Publisher must be hoping to sell based on prior affiliation with Patterson rather than by producing a quality product.

If this book weren't free on Kindle I would ask Amazon to give back my money. I will be extremely cautious before purchasing anything from publisher HarperCollins e-books; this book needed quite a bit more work before it was published. Think back to a research paper you wrote in high school or college, one of those papers assigned early in the term that you started writing the night before it was due, and you will have a good sense of the overall quality of this book: A C-, maybe a C.

Details are the hallmark of really good, well written, carefully crafted thriller/mystery fiction. This falls so far short. The writing is careless, inattentive, inconsistent and frequently just plain bad, and affects the overall flow of the story, as well as character and plot development. I gave two stars (rather than one) because I still have 75% to read, but I'm not encouraged. [Note: I've now read another 10-15% or so, and the writing improves a bit and the story moves a little faster.] If you think this will be on par with the best of Patterson writing, you will be disappointed. If you think you want to read this book, borrow it from someone-don't spend your money.

After the first 25% of the book (per Kindle locations)I was so stunned at the poor word choices, bad grammar and inconsistencies that I went back to the beginning and added notes to the most glaring blunders. I've got more than 40. Some examples:

Confusing timeline references: hit and run victim with Florida connections has a 1996 ticket stub to a Florida Seminoles' championship football game in his wallet. Interviewed by the police just hours after the victim is killed, the victim's boss says that the victim has worked for him about 1 year, and that the victim took everyone out for drinks after Florida won the championship game. These facts would indicate that the victim is killed in 1997 or 1998. But the hit and run is the same day as the bomb, and both are sometime after 9-11. Maybe the ticket stub and the championship game the boss refers to are different events, but there is nothing in this scene of the story which suggests this possibility which leaves the timing confusing.

The worst: The cop's tragic back story. We know before starting this paragraph that he is remembering his daughter's death, but know nothing at all about the circumstances of the death. This is so replete with blunders I'm going to quote it:

**** What had he forgotten at the store that made him rush back in? Pudding Snacks. . . [I read this to say he is running back into the store]

Jamming the van hastily into park. How many time had he done that -and it stayed? A thousand? A hundred thousand? [He had already started the van, presumably in the store parking lot, when he realized that he forgot to get Pudding Snacks. If he started the van, the daughter is presumably inside the van]

"Watch out guys. Daddy's got to back out of the garage. . . [what garage? Daddy's at the store, in the van, where he has just remembered he didn't buy Pudding Snacks, isn't he?]

As he headed back to the garage, receipt in hand, wallet in hand, they heard the shriek. Jessie's. [Back to the garage from where? Is there a parking garage at the store? Why does he have a receipt in his hand, but no Pudding Snacks? ]

Beth's frozen eyes-"oh my God, Ty, no"- as through the kitchen window they watched the van roll back. [How is he watching through the kitchen window if he is heading back to the garage? And if he was heading to the garage, why run back to the kitchen rather continuing to the garage? And what happened to rushing into the store?]

Nora never uttered a sound. ***

Really bad things can happen to good parents, so maybe the general premise of the daughter's death isn't impossible, though a detective/cop/ football hero seems unlikely to pass his kids twice playing where they shouldn't be without stopping to watch them move to an acceptable location. But he never rushed into a store, the words don't suggest he rushed into the house, and what he forgot were his wallet and a receipt. Also, if he is walking to the garage, and a shriek comes from the garage, why would he go back to the kitchen to see what the shriek was about?

Internally inconsistent facts, poor word choices and bad grammar: There is no realism in the writing: the characters do not act the way real people do, nor do they act consistent with the characteristics the author ascribes to them or the contextual background facts and descriptions he provides. Events as described suffer the same problem. Word choices used to describe events and characters are ill thought out and careless, often leading to inaccuracy. Some examples:

The eye and hair color of the lead character depend entirely on which chapter you are reading. Eyes might be "never let you go hazel" or could be brown. Hair color is caramel or light brown (arguably the same) or auburn, which is neither caramel or light brown, as anyone who has ever stood in the hair color aisle at the drugstore knows.

The major client of the hedge fund husband ran before his death was Goldman Sachs. Or Morgan Stanley. Again, it all depends on what page you are reading.

The dogs: The family has a dog; it used to have two dogs, but one was run over in the street in front of the house a week ago. But when the still-living dog runs out the open front door, husband makes no effort to get dog back into house and instead leaves for work with wife yelling to let the dog in. This isn't realistic or consistent with the other information the author provided: the family had two dogs (so presumably liked dogs), one dog was killed a week earlier in the street, and "[e]veryone was still upset" over the loss. If we believe this later information, then it isn't believable that Dad went to work and left the remaining dog to run loose through the neighborhood only a week after the other family dog was killed doing exactly the same thing.

The typical morning: Husband wakes up and the first thing he does is let the dog out then he heads to kitchen for coffee, which is "how every day began;" but, read on another chapter or two and the author tells us that the dog going outside presented husband with an "unexpected opportunity" (missed) for "rolling over to [his wife] back in bed." If every day began with letting the dog outside first thing after getting out of bed, then the dog being outside right after they wake up doesn't present an unexpected opportunity--the opportunity is present every day.

Dropping off the car: Husband remembers while dressing that he must drop off the car for repairs and take the train and is frustrated because "[i]t would set him back a bit." But read on to the next paragraph: once dressed, he was "usually in rush mode" but "[t]his morning, thanks to the car, he had a moment to sip his coffee."

The lost child: Both kids are old enough to drive. Mom starts thinking about how, "a few years ago" she was in a department store and for a while one of the kids was missing. At the time the child was four or five. A decade (or longer) is more than "a few years."

The cop: Cop was a rising star in big city; following personal tragedy, he becomes detective in smaller city/suburb. Up to this point, cop seems honest, conscientious, good leader, smart, etc. etc. In short, all of the good qualities you would like to see in a detective heading violent crimes. But then: Vacationing cop breaks into bad guy house (burglary) with a loaded gun (armed burglary). Before smashing window to get into house, he goes to the "condenser box" in the yard and pulls out the phone and alarm wires. After getting into house, he waits to see if alarm is sounding. [Didn't he pull the alarm wire just minutes before?] Muses that homeowner alarm probably wasn't connected to local security because homeowner wouldn't want outside interference. [But, again, he pulled the alarm. He also pulled the phone wire. If there is remote security monitoring, they would presumably be alerted to a sudden disconnection of the alarm and the phone but those alarms are going off at the security firm, not at the house.] Bad guy's computer is on and using browsing history (which is conveniently intact) cop finds important information about the crime/s he is investigating. Cop also searches, copies and leaves with papers on desk, which also contain important information. [Taking items from the house elevates the cop's crime to an armed robbery. Oh, and since the cop entered illegally, none of the important information he collected can be used to convict bad guy unless cop can find another source of the information; even if he doesn't go to jail, he probably blew the case against the bad guy.] Before cop leaves, visitor arrives and enters the house using a key. Following a struggle, cop shoots (and injures) visitor. [If visitor dies from injury cop has committed felony murder.] Nothing in the story line explains why cop suddenly lost his senses and became a felon, particularly when there were options to enter the house legally.

Poor word choice/bad grammar: all of the above is described as "totally illegal" in the cop's musing. As compared to "partially illegal?" The cop's "totally illegal" presence in the house is compared to the visitor's: the visitor had "access." So did the cop. "Access" isn't the issue or the point. The point is the visitor entered with a key, and thus the visitor's presence is presumably legitimate. The contrast is illegal v. legal, not illegal v. access.

Bad guy homeowner: Bad guy homeowner is in the security business, but has left home with his computer on. Bad guy seems to be working for and helping other bad guys steal hundreds of millions or billions. Bad guy is smart enough to password protect his email, but doesn't clear browsing history from his browser, or password protect his internet access, or turn off his computer and use a BIOS password.

The cop (again): removes evidence (the 1996 ticket stub) from the hit and run crime file (still open and under investigation) and gives it to crime victim's father, all on his own initiative. Victim's father didn't ask for the ticket and there is no hint that he even knew it was part of his victim/son's effects. As with the break-in there is nothing in the story that explains why the cop suddenly decided to toss his job out the window. Worse, the storyline is that the cop has kept this particular murder file on his desk for the past year because he wanted to solve it. The evidence he gave away may or may not be important to solving the case, but even if he solves the crime and catches the criminal, by giving away evidence he has compromised, perhaps irreparably, the case against the murderer. Are we really supposed to believe that this is how a committed cop would act?

If you like the words Charles or Charlie get this book. Why, because the author was obviously in love with these two words when he was writing the book. This author has his whinny character,Karen, use it at least 100 times in the end of the book. As in "why Charlie why?". I almost started counting the words Charlie and Charles, just so I could use the stats when writing this review. As far as the plot goes, I realy expected more of Andrew Gross. The plot is overused. There are no surprizes and the one sex scene is awful. No imagination, no originality what-so-ever. I am tired of spending money and getting boring and unoriginal books. I think the corporate reviewers should be more honest when reviewing books.

I always found James Patterson's novels lacking in depth and dimensionality. He has, like a fish upstream, spawned careers by his many co-authors, and I suspected that their books, too, would lack that spark that ignites a really good read. Nevertheless, HarperCollins, apparently trying to figure out the e-book business (shifting from trying to gouge Kindle readers to offering free samples from selected authors) decided to "sell" Dark Tide for "0.00"; intrigued by the synopsis, I bit. The book is OK, not great, and I suspect that I will not buy another by Andrew Gross.

Why will I not buy another book by Andrew Gross (even if "priced" at 0.00)? Here's why. Dark Tide's plot is pedestrian--an almost write-by-by-the-numbers exercise. How many books are out there where the protagonist has done something horribly negligent to destroy his or her family and is now looking for a "new life." Add Dark Tide to the list. Even with that in the hero's past, however, both he and the reflection/love-interest, whose husband has done something horrible to destroy his family, are one-dimensional.

Why? It seems to me that the really good books of this and related genres (books by Nelson DeMille, William Lashner, "David Stone," Alex Berenson, Josh Bazell, Brian Haig, Vince Flynn, David Chacko, Robert Reuland, Jeffrey Stephens, and the like) have characters who have something to say that is both clever and deep and often witty. Sadly, Gross's characters do not, and that's the difference.

In a dialogue I don't want to hear the persons name 1-2 times within a sentence (OVER KILL!!). 70% through I was ready to quit but really wanted to know how it ended. I started to skip over the names as I was reading it. By the time I hit 86% I was done... I'm extremely disappointed in the editor of this book, if anyone should I have known that using the names "Charles, Charlie or Karen" as many times as they did in this book it should have been them.

The subject pretty much sums up how I felt about this book ....
1. I downloaded this for the kindle and I figured out the plot after reading 10% of the book. The plot has been so worked over in a bunch of movies and other books.
2. Hedge fund guys are easy targets - many of them are sleazy and their behavior too predictable.
3. Kathy the wife is annoying. At some point in the book I actually was rooting for the bad guys to kill her off.

This was a pretty quick read since the author seemed to be targeting a 6th grade reading level. Save your time ... download the book while it is free. It won't be worth the money if you pay for it.