Customer Reviews

Third Degree

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(24)
2 star:		(28)
1 star:		(35)

 

 

Greg Iles latest novel, THIRD DEGREE, is a harrowing thriller that takes place over the course of an afternoon. Lauren Shields teaches a developmentally disabled class at the elementary school. Her husband Warren is a doctor. One morning she wakes up and finds Warren frantically searching the house for something. In fact, he's been searching all night. He says it has something to do with an IRS audit of his business. Lauren has problems of her own. She's pregnant, and the baby probably isn't Warren's. For the past several months, She's been having an affair with Danny McDavvitt, a war hero and a kind man who has marriage problems of his own. Danny wants to leave his wife for Lauren, but can't for fear that his wife will get custody of his autistic son. Warren's office is also under investigation for Medicare fraud, and Warren's partner, Kyle Auster is devious and amoral.

You throw the above beginnings of a plot into a a 12 hour period, and you get this novel. I glanced at a few reviews, and many negative reviewers seemed to dislike the story as not a traditional Iles novel. Iles is a great novelist and one of the few out there that constantly change genres. He started out with World War II novels, then moved onto standard thrillers. He wasn't afraid to try new things, like Footprints of God (a sci-fi look at the nature of religion) or Dead Sleep (a novel all Steven King fans would love). Iles has tried this before. His 24 Hours spanned a day. He's trying it again in this character driven thriller. If the entire novel is compressed into a day, then what keeps the pages turning? Iles introduces a desperate man in Warren and a confused wife in Lauren, thows in a couple of kids and then keeps adding characters who have parts to play in the drama. We miss out on character development, although Iles does add just enough backstory to let us know what is going on.

I liked this book because I like Iles, and I trust that he knows what he is doing even as he tries to tell a different type of story. The book has some weaknesses as well. Telling a story over a 12 hour period means you lose a lot of characterization. The decision to cheat on your spouse and potentially destroy a marriage is not one entered into lightly, yet the relationship between Lauren and Warren gets neglected in the format of the novel. Why did she cheat? Why did she feel the need to cheat. What did she ever see in Warren in the first place.

Don't worry, by the end of the novel, Iles has resolved most plot threads and even offered and explanation for Warren's sudden erratic behavior. He also tries to explore some themes such as marriage, family and forgiveness, but never really offers any answers. By reading the reviews, it is obvious some fans were disappointed in Iles' latest effort. Not me. I found it quick and easy to read, and highly suspensful. The only negative is that there weren't really any sympathetic characters to root for. They weren't all truly evil, but when your heroine is an adulterer who refuses to tell her husband who she is sleeping with, there isn't much room for sympathy. Overall, I recommend to all Iles and thriller fans. Just know you are getting something different, and be thankful that Iles is one of the best authors around and very capable of pulling it off.

This effort by Iles is one-part Lifetime Movie of the Week, and one-part Robert Crais-like thrill ride. The Lifetime sections can be long and overwrought, but the thriller sections are taut with anxiety. The problem is that there are too many parts reminiscent of Lifetime movies, compared to the parts that we thriller fans are looking for.

Iles is a skilled writer, but because he doesn't stick to a tried-and-true formula, he's a box-of-chocolates kind of author; we never know quite what we're going to get until we've bitten into the offering.

If you skim wisely, you'll be holding a page-turner. If you read every word, you might doze off.

I'm a big fan of Greg Isles but this novel was pretty awful. I had to muddle through this one, it was torture. Where's the quality that was in "The Quiet Game" and his other novels. It's as if he wrote it over the weekend. His prose, especially when he describes the characters sex life, reads like a 15 year old boy wrote it. I always buy his books as soon as they come out but I may be waiting for the paperback on his next book.

Not up to Iles standards..really really disliked this book and all it was about.
Did anyone else find the ending inane? Worried about what a child is going to think about his dead father if he committed suicide - as opposed to watching that father kill several people in front of him and beating on his mother. Felt like I was being asked to forgive the wife and lover their lack of morals but to accept the deaths of others easily because of their lack of same?? Whole thing was just tawdry.

Desperate for reading material whilst on vacation, I picked this off the rack at the drug store, nestled in with numerous other pieces of pulp. My question is: Is this really the same Greg Iles who wrote Spandau Phoenix, one of the great trashy reads of its kind? This latest item scans like a script from one of those "movies" that one skips past on the My Husband Wants to Kill Me Channel in the upper reaches of the cable spectrum. I'll spare you all any samples of the laughable cliched writing to be found herein. If you are of the male persuasion, your gonads will shrink by the minute. My strong advice to you all, regardless of gender, is to avoid being bearded out of ten hard earned dollars and get yourself a copy of Wolves Eat Dogs by Martin Cruz Smith and revel in the mastery of the English language and the thrill of true literary excitement, the sort that isn't spooled out by the yard. It takes hard work and courage to write well, as well as respect for the reader's intelligence, ethics that have deserted Mr. Iles.

SUMMARY: Laurel Shields, an unfaithful doctor's wife, wakes up one morning to her worst fear confirmed: she's pregnant and is unsure as to the father. Meanwhile, her husband Warren is undergoing his own dramatic trauma as his medical practice is the subject of intense scrutiny by the Attorney General's office. As Laurel watches as both her marriage and her husband's mental stability deteriorate, Warren takes drastic action to assert some control over his life.

WHY YOU'LL LIKE IT: Iles is a master of writing taut action scenes fraught with psychological suspense. That the book unfolds over the course of one day is ambitious, and he pulls it off. This feat is the only thing which saves this work. Iles manages to touch on some very topical and compelling issues (the dissolution of a marriage; the dissatisfaction with American healthcare; modern racism which is more subversive and, therefore, potentially more dangerous), albeit infrequently.

WHY YOU WON'T: As other reviewers have noted, the style of this book shifts drastically from Iles' norm. The plot has the potential to be intriguing, but falls flat as it is subsumed by melodrama typical of Lifetime movies. The characterization is spurious: Laurel is intended to be the heart (or heroine) of the book, but there's very little to like about her, save her desire to protect her children; that she actively opposes events and tries to avert them are points in her favor, but otherwise she's a shallow, vain woman with nearly no redeemable characteristics. She has no rooting value, but is too banal to be an anti-heroine. The supporting characters are stereotypes, and caricatures of them at that.

BOTTOM LINE: Iles is known for authoring complex psychological tales with multifaceted characters who have depth; this novel is an exception. Some parts were so pedestrian, I had to skim over them entirely, and found - rather depressingly - I missed nothing relevant to the overall story. This novel is still above much of what's currently released in the genre, but true fans of Iles would do better to avoid this, nor should new readers use this as a platform into exploring the author's (far better) offerings.

I found myself totally rooting against the "heroine" of this novel. Laurel was a totally, self-absorbed, remorseless hypocrite. I have read every Gregg Iles book I can get my hands on and this is the first one that was totally disappointing.

I am NOT a fan of Greg Iles but did enjoy "Mortal Fear". This one, however, was not as good. It felt as if, not only was the plot set in 24 hours but also that the book had also been written in 24 hours (ouch!). The storyline itself was too clichéd... two people, married to each other, each being unfaithful, the woman pregnant... not knowing who the father is. Sorry this did nothing for me.

I had a hard time putting this down and read it quickly. It'a a page turner, but not up to Iles usual fare. It's more like a quick chick flick that his usual breathless thrill ride. The momentum is there, but there is no depth to any of his characters and you find yourself looking in on these strangers' lives instead of really getting inside their heads as in most of his other novels. I did not really relate with any of them. I did not hate them, I just wanted to know them better. I was very surprised by this as Iles is much better than this. I also thought the ending contrived and it left me feeling unsatisfied.

Greg Iles is one of my favorite authors and has written many exciting thrillers, but this book about a psychotically jealous husband is a big fat strike out. None of it rang true to me and -- worse -- it wasn't exciting at all. I kept waiting for it to start reading like a real Iles book but ... no. It never did. Man, I hope this book is just an aberration and Iles returns to his usual top form soon. I would hate to see him pull a Harlan Coben on us -- i.e., start out strong and then start putting out subpar material once he's got an audience.