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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good Book - Worth Reading!!, June 25, 1998
By A Customer
I enjoyed it quite a bit. The main character has a funny, dry sense of humor. Cracked me up a few times and the plot kept me interested till the end.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good Beginning, May 29, 1998
This review is from: This Far, No Further (Paperback)
This Far, No Further is,I understand from the Acknowledgments, Wessel's first published novel. It's a good start; his main character, Harding, is complex and smart. I really didn't like this book at first, because I HATED his client, Elenya Rosenberg, whose husband, Harding is following. I hated her worse than the husband; and Harding is always talking about how he has to protect Elenya. But hating the client is nothing new, I'd never read another Spenser, if I let that bother me. Harding really won me over when he is told by someone that that person had been on hold so long, he had to listen to the whole soundtract of South Pacific and Harding asks " Broadway cast or Movie version?" Since, that's something I would ask and since we both like old monster movies, I want to read more books about this character.
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3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A STARK, EXCITING DEBUT INTO THE P.I. GENRE!, August 23, 2000
This review is from: This Far, No Further (Paperback)
Ten years ago, Harding failed to protect a young girl from her sexually abusive father. He went after the man and revenge ended up costing him one-and-a-half years in prison, not to mention his private investigator's license. Nowadays, he does work on the side for his old friend, Donnie Wilson. The case Harding is presently working on consists of getting the goods on one Dr. Stephen Rosenberg, whose wife, Elenya, is looking for a divorce and possibly access to the supposedly two million dollars hidden in a Swiss Bank account. Dr. Rosenberg is an adulterer to the tenth degree. He not only cheats on his wife with other women, but with men as well, getting heavily into S&M and other forms of kinky sex. It doesn't take Harding long to get the pictures that will insure Elenya an easy divorce and a nice settlement. The only problem is that someone else is after the good doctor...someone so despicably evil that he makes the Rosenberg's escapades look like a day at a church picnic. This monster, for want of a better word, calls himself Gaelen, and he is gruesomely killing everyone Rosenberg has been sexually involved with in an effort to set the doctor up for murder. When Harding starts getting too close to what is going on, Gaelen comes after him and his tough kickboxing partner, Alison. After a couple of encounters with this creature, one of which puts Alison in the hospital, Harding, who isn't an easy man to scare, knows that he is going to have to put this demon from Hell down the hard way, even if he has to drive a stake through his heart. Harding will also have to figure out why Gaelen is so interested Dr. Rosenberg and his wife, Elenya, and what the hidden agendas are. THIS FAR, NO FURTHER by John Wessel demonstrates what top quality writing is about. The reader is not a bystander on this journey through the gritty side of Chicago and into the heart of unthinkable evil, but rather a participant. You will literally feel the depraved evil of Gaelen and understand why the fear it generates in our hero makes Harding a more dangerous adversary. Mr. Wessel lets us know that a person never entirely escapes their past, and for Harding, it must come full circle. As he attempts to keep himself, Alison, and the Rosenbergs alive, Harding has to eventually face the results of a passed action, and in doing so, perhaps find redemption for his failure to live up to his own expectations. Few authors are able to write such a compelling novel on their first try out, but John Wessel succeeds wonderfully in THIS FAR, NO FURTHER. Its darkness will remind you of the earlier "Burke" novels by Andrew Vachss and the later "Matthew Scudder" books by Lawrence Block. Buy this book, read it, and then pick up the second novel in the "Harding" series, PRETTY BALLERINA. After that, you going to have pray like I'm doing, that John Wessel will to write more books.
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