Customer Reviews

A Wild Justice

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By the mid-90's, it seemed that Craig got a little bored with his formula that took Patrick Hyde and Kenneth Aubrey on so many outings. With this book, though, he gave those fellows a rest and brought back just one link from the past in the form of KGB Major Alexei Vorontsyev from his much earlier novel Snow Falcon.

But of course he's not KGB any more since the Soviet Union is no more in this book. An executive of an American company is found murdered in the Siberian town of Novyy Urengoy and Vorontsyev and his team must get to the bottom of what the company is up to, discovering links to the Russian mafia along the way. Meanwhile in America, ex-CIA agent John Lock finds his sister and brother-in-law murdered in their home. Apparently the brother-in-law had connections with the same company whose executive was murdered in Siberia. Lock is determined to get to the truth of his sister's murder and his poking around doesn't make things better for him in the states. He gets enough information to know that his answers lay in Siberia, where he'll have to team up with Vorontsyev and his team to stop the wrong doings that lead to Vietnamese drug smugglers.

It all sounds like a great story for a Craig novel, but something just didn't add up. I'm not sure what, though. I guess I'm just a big fan of oppositre sides of governments as Craig's characters and politics as the plots rather than heroes fighting multi-million dollar corporations. But it's still definately worth a look if you're a fan of Craig's other books. Not bad for a Craig fix.

First off, I want to say how much I love Craig Thomas's writing, and I just know I'll come back "A Wild Justice", but the book has flaws that won't be helped by a second reading.

THE PLOT: Assassins murder the sister of John Lock, an ex-CIA officer. Lock soon learns that the plot was actually aimed at his rich brother in-law, the corporate head of a company doing business in post-Soviet Siberia. Unbeknownst to him, an executive of the company has already been found murdered in the remote Siberian town of Novy Urengoy, triggering an investigation by the local intel services. Independently, both Lock and the Russian chief Vorontsyev link crimes to Turgenev, who heads the Russian end of the company combining with Lock's in-law, and both make the mistake of alerting their target. While Vorontsyev struggles to keep his officers alive, Lock evades various attempts to kill him while he travels to Novy Urengoy. When the two link up, they consider various underpinnings of Turgenev's plan - smuggled drugs or weapons - eventually hitting on a much darker conspiracy.

THE PROBLEMS: Craig Thomas's writing is normally opaque, but that give's his plots greater depth. Unfortunately. The simple plot of "Justice" just seems undefined - we learn quickly who the bad guy is, and that he must be stopped. While the plot hints at the more earthshaking aspects of Turgenev's plans, it never makes them clear enough to be scary. The plot itself doesn't offer much tension because there is no sense of a deadline that must be made (like, stop Turgenev before the Russian Army arrives, or before a laser sattelite targets the space shuttle). Also, Turgenev remains undefined because he's never given any real henchmen or colleagues like the tag-teams of other Thomas novels (Like Babbington and Winterbach of "Lion's Run"; Serov and Rodin of "Winterhawk"; or Kontarsky and his Soviet bosses in "Firefox"). Lock remains an enigma himself, without that checkered past of characters like Priabin and Mitch Gant. While the plot isn't up to Thomas's previous standards, his belief-suspending plot-twists, unfortunately, are true to form. Are we supposed to believe that Lock, already on the run at home, will risk going to Siberia alone? While most Thomas books rely on recurring characters - Aubrey, Hyde and Priabin - "Justice" brings back only one character: the heroically defiant Vorontsyev who single-handedly halted a Red Army coup in the superior "Snow Falcon", but doesn't hint at his tenacity in this later book.

STILL: "Justice" offers a tight plot, likeable characters and Thomas's trademark prose. Given that Thomas hasn't been writing as many novels these, we'll take what we can get, even a novel that seems only exceedingly superior to anything else being written, as opposed to his usual obscenely-better-than standard. In short, a must for Craig Thomas fans.

I have read several of Craig Thomas's books, it is hard to believe that he could have written this book.It seemed as if Lock's sister, was more than just a sister.Mostly it was boring, especially the last part of the book.

It was difficult to hold interest, and I certainly didn't feel I couldn't put it down. I almost forgot to read it for a few days. The story is not bad, but the way it jumps around make for a irritating read. Come back the old Craig Thomas.

The story is interesting and has real possibilities but the author's style gets very tiring because he jumps from one scene to the next and it is difficult to pick up where you left off before you "jumped". His sentence structure, I thought, is incomplete in places and it is difficult to figure out who is talking. All of the effort that goes into trying to figure who is doing what gets very tiring . The story just does not "flow"

I certainly hope not, because the others must be truly (even more) dreadful. The errors in grammar and in content are appalling. For example, NO American would ever use the very British word 'tetchy'. Was the man writing only for the British reader? Worst of all, the continuous use of comparatives becomes tedious following, say, the second page. Tell me, how does a fire 'roar aqueously'?

Perhaps I chanced to pick up the worst of the lot as my introduction to Thomas' novels. In any event, I'm not tempted to explore further.

I was so puzzled with Craig Thomas' "A Wild Justice," after getting halfway through it, that I wanted to check Amazon.com to see what others said about it. Having worked in post-Soviet Russia for six years, I'd say Thomas portrays a depressing reality with accuracy. But the book is a snoozer. It's predictable and it jumps around. Maybe the Washington Post Book World thinks "Thomas writes far better than Ludlam." I don't.