We Know [Paperback]

Gregg Hurwitz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 26, 2008

A good job, a decent flat in Los Angeles, a quiet life - Nick Horrigan has finally put his traumatic past behind him. Or so it seems, until a SWAT team smashes into his place in the middle of the night. Still in pajamas, he's dragged outside to a waiting helicopter. He's told that a terrorist has seized control of a nuclear power plant and is threatening to blow it up...unless he can talk to Nick. Flown into a deadly intrigue, Nick is charged with a dangerous secret, one that will take him from the dark alleys of the city to behind the scenes of a Presidential race. As he rockets toward the truth, peeling back layer after layer of lies and deception, only one thing is certain: the long-buried secret, tied to the traumas of his own past, threatens his life at every turn.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Gregg Hurwitz has written screenplays for film and TV, and reinvented a comic character for Marvel. In the name of research he has swum with sharks and sneaked onto demolition ranges. He now lives in LA where he is a keen soccer player. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Sphere (August 26, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 1847441203
• ISBN-13: 978-1847441201
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,080,464 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Gregg Hurwitz is the critically acclaimed, internationally bestselling author of The Tower, Minutes to Burn, Do No Harm, The Kill Clause, The Program, Troubleshooter, Last Shot, The Crime Writer, Trust No One, They're Watching, and coming soon, You're Next. His books have been nominated for numerous awards, shortlisted for best novel of the year by International Thriller Writers, nominated for CWA's Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, chosen as feature selections for all four major literary book clubs, honored as Book Sense Picks, and translated into twenty languages.

Currently a consulting producer on ABC's "V," he has written screenplays for or sold spec scripts to Warner Bros., Paramount, MGM, Jerry Bruckheimer Films, and ESPN, developed TV series for Warner Bros. and Lakeshore, written Wolverine, Punisher, and others for Marvel, and published numerous academic articles on Shakespeare. He has taught fiction writing in the USC English Department, and guest lectured for UCLA, and for Harvard in the United States and around the world. In the course of researching his thrillers, he has sneaked onto demolition ranges with Navy SEALs, swam with sharks in the Galápagos, and gone undercover into mind-control cults.

Hurwitz grew up in the Bay Area. While completing a BA from Harvard ('95) and a master's from Trinity College, Oxford in Shakespearean tragedy ('96), he wrote his first novel. He was the undergraduate scholar-athlete of the year at Harvard for his pole-vaulting exploits, and played college soccer in England, where he was a Knox fellow. He now lives in L.A. where he continues to play soccer, frequently injuring himself. Feel free to email him at [e-mail]

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fast paced, but terribly far fetched, May 6, 2011

By 

Julia Flyte - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: We Know (Paperback)

Nick Horrigan was 18 when something happened that changed the course of his life forever. He was forced onto the run, and it is only now, many years later, that he is starting to find some peace of mind. Then abruptly one night a SWAT team descends on his apartment and it's clear that he is unable to escape the events that have shaped his life. As everyone from the President of the US down seems to have a vested interest in him, it becomes increasingly difficult for him to know who he can trust.

The book kicks off with a hiss and a roar and the early chapters keep the tension high. However as the plot develops, it all starts to get so far-fetched that I struggled to suspend my belief. There are also some glaring plotholes which severely detracted from the story. For example, the way that Nick was forced onto the run makes little sense, and the fact that he has never told anyone about what happened but suddenly starts confiding in people now when the stakes are higher than they have ever been.

I like the way Hurwitz writes and this is a decent enough holiday thriller, but it pales in comparison to similar writers such as Harlan Coben or Linwood Barclay.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I Know of a Lot of Similar Novels Which are Better!, April 4, 2009

By 

James N Simpson (Gold Coast, QLD Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: We Know (Paperback)

We Know, is a sort of Harlan Coben style storyline where Nick Horrigan, a 17 year old sneaks out of his paranoid about security step father Frank's house to get laid for the first time, and upon return finds his bullet ridden step father in the final seconds of life pointing at the deadbolts trying to get out what sounds like "why" on his dying breath. Since his step father had bent over backwards to make Nick feel comfortable with his dating of his mother, Nick's guilt builds. His mother also finds it hard to look at him now and when Nick notices a car watching the house Nick tries to tell her Nick's paranoia was right and it wasn't a junkie who killed Frank. However those same men he saw in the car phone Nick, they tell him where his mother is seated in a restaurant she went with her friend and he'd better come outside. Nick doesn't want to be responsible for his mother's death as well so walks out the door. The men tell him to leave a message on his mother's voicemail, get on a plane and never come back or they'll frame him for Frank's murder. So he does.

Now ten years or so later Nick has returned to his home city but hasn't contacted his mother. He can relate to the homeless on the streets so has landed a pretty good job in an organisation that helps them. However suffering from the same paranoid habits of his step father all this time one night he notices a black rope fall down upon his balcony. Seconds later a SWAT team enter and drag him with them to a nuclear power plant where they say a terrorist is asking for him. The terrorist tells him he is the only one he trusts, well his step father was and since he was his son he's the next best thing but events stop Nick learning more. The aftermath will force in Nick's mind the decision to find out exactly what happened that night which puts himself and those around him in severe danger.

The problem with this story is you don't really feel any empathy or anything else for Nick or the other characters who aren't too realistic and don't really care if he survives or what was behind what happened on the night Frank died. There's no must turn the page factor that the great writers like Harlan Coben, Linwood Barclay, James Siegel, Charlie Huston, Joseph Finder and others have. Plus you've got the why didn't they just kill him instead of going through an elaborate plan of telling him to relocate when he was 17 when they obviously have no hangup with murder line going through your head the whole time you turn the pages.