Customer Reviews

Wind-Chill Factor

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

1972: Drat! We have Nixon AND resurgent Nazi sleeper cells here and around the globe? John Cooper is recently divorced and eking out an AA-assisted writer's existence in Cambridge, MA when he receives a cryptic telegram from his elder brother, who is inexplicably in Buenos Aires:

"URGENT YOU MEET ME COOPER'S FALLS 20 JANUARY. DROP EVERYTHING. FAMILY TREE NEEDS ATTENTION. CHEERS OLD BOY. CYRIL."

So home to the family namesake Cooper's Falls, Mn goes John Cooper. This Ludlum-esque page-turner had me as soon as John Cooper's Lincoln swung northward in Chicago and headed on the long ago familiar Illinois Tollroad trip towards home in Minnesota - with a stop at "one of the Fred Harvey emporiums." Almost run off the road near Madison in a blizzard, John goes home to revisit old family secrets. Then round and round the globe he goes, where it stops only author Thomas Gifford knows. I was up all night following the intrigue!

The Wind Chill Factor isn't necessarily an easy book to read. The plot is complex and if you don't keep up with the different twists, it would be easy to get lost in the details. However, this is absolutely one of the most richly written books I've ever read. The sensations the lead character experience become the reader's sensations; his thoughts, your thoughts. Once you commit your energy to the story, you'll be hard pressed to put the book down until you are finished.

I can't believe anyone could not like this book. It grabs you from the first page and doesn't let go. I'm sorry the author has never been able to follow up.I'm going to buy it and read it again.

I'm only two chapters into this novel and already enjoying the author's vocabulary, command of the English language and powers of description. Those who're vocabulary challenged won't like it that much. What can I tell ya'? I also enjoy reading Shakespeare. I know not where this plot is going, except for an early hint of Nazi Germany. I'm ready to be entertained.

I am amazed and shocked at the vitriol and venom expressed against Gifford in some of these reviews! It's a sign that Gifford is a challenging writer.

It also surprised me, in 1972, that this book was never made into a movie. "Soon to be a major motion picture" said the cover. It never happened.

To the naysaying and nitpicking reviewers, I say, "Grow up." Gifford has captured something ugly and important here in this book. I used to audit county courts and county governments. Later I worked for a chief financial officer who lied under oath to a congressional committee and was fired by the organization's board. I've seen a lot of ruthless, petty, dishonest people.

And this book is a masterpiece in collecting such personalities. It ranks with Robert Towne's immortal screenplay for "Chinatown." And it is almost a screenplay itself. The main character is a literate but down-on-his-luck divorced movie buff, John Cooper, who makes innumerable references to classic motion pictures. He becomes a friend of the local police chief, a boy wonder who got away from the big city force by marrying a rich woman, like Dashell Hammit's Nick Charles.

The tale boomerangs through three continents. These things happen. There are villians like this out there.

If you like this book, you will also like the sequel, "The First Sacrifice" and a triumphant nail-biter about counterfeiting, "The Man from Lisbon," which I think is Gifford's best book ever.

Book arrived in timely manner, well packaged & in very good condition - actually better than I expected from its listing. My first experience ordering used book from this source. Would definitely do it again.

I have read the Assassini, and it was fantastic. However, I went back and read this, and was sorely disappointed. I think maybe Gifford just didn't have the maturity yet, as this is a young, angry novel, and leaves you saying so what. Assassinations, killing and Nazi intrigue aplenty, but unless you want it served up with incest, alcoholism, and other foolishness, read something else.

This is a dreadful book. It isn't even because it covers the same old, neo-Nazi (and old-Nazi for that matter) plots put to much better use by other authors. It is the author's choice of words. No one uses the stilted language of either the author in his narrative or of the dialogue between characters. The language makes this novel tedious reading. Making matters worse is the usual nonsense of an everyday person surviving attacks by professional killers and even dispatching some of them with little trouble. Gifford is clearly no Ludlum, and his heroes are no more likeable than his villians.

Actually, Gifford wrote a sequel to this book a number of years later. He brought back Cooper and his long lost sister, etal. Trying to be fair and allowing for the fact that "The Wind Chill Factor" was an early novel, I started reading it. Unbelievably, it was worse than the original. Even though I make it a practice to finish any book I start, I gave up after the first 100 pages.