Product Description

Arizona's Meza Azul penitentiary is a technological wonder built to hold the worst of the worst. But somehow a prisoner has breached the foolproof security, opened the cells, and now holds more than one hundred guards and workers hostage. Cold, brilliant, and crazy, Navy sub commander-turned-double murderer Timothy Driver is in control. And one hostage will die every six hours until he gets what he wants: rogue journalist Frank Corso.

But Captain Driver wants a lot more than the ear of a once sympathetic writer who penned a bestselling book about Driver and his crimes. Joined by a cold-blooded hayseed murder machine named "Cutter" Kehoe, Driver's got a surprise or two in store: an ingenious undetected escape right under the noses of the storming government troops, followed by a maniacal cross-country killing spree . . . with Frank Corso along for the ride until the savage, bloody end.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #683272 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-01
• Released on: 2006-06-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 384 pages

From Publishers Weekly
When Timothy Driver, who's serving life without parole in Meza Azul, America's most escape-proof prison, seizes control of the place and demands that Seattle true-crime writer Frank Corso come to Arizona to negotiate for the lives of 163 hostages, most sensible people would see it as an offer they can refuse—but not Corso, who's written a book about Driver. Ford seems so intent on separating his suspense novels about Corso (this is the fifth, after 2004's Red Tide) from his lighter series about Seattle PI Leo Waterman that he darkens the environment and ups the danger ante to a grippingly readable but somewhat less-than-reasonable level. True, Corso does make a point of reassuring a doubtful Coast Guard officer sent to tell him about the demand, "Driver doesn't want to kill me. He wants to make sure his story gets told," but the officer (and the reader) don't believe that for a minute—especially when we know that Driver's accomplice in the takeover is a brutal biker, Cutter Kehoe. Driver and Kehoe are frighteningly fascinating in their actions and thoughts, and there's also a touchingly believable reality-show TV star, Melanie Harris, who sees the story as a way to boost her sagging ratings.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

G.M. Ford is the author of six widely praised Frank Corso novels, Fury, Black River, A Blind Eye, Red Tide, No Man's Land, and Blown Away, as well as six highly acclaimed mysteries featuring Seattle private investigator Leo Waterman. A former creative writing teacher in western Washington, Ford lives in Oregon and is currently working on his next novel.

Customer Reviews

Like life itself, unpredictable. A solid thriller.
Timothy Driver was once a Navy SEAL and the Captain of a Trident missile submarine. He came home unexpectedly and found his wife in bed with another man. Capt. Driver dispatched both wife and her lover to the great beyond. As a result (and somewhat unbelievably as the result of a crime of passion), Driver is sentenced to life in prison without parole. Anything but a model prisoner, Driver causes a major optical problem (blindness by puncture wounds) for another prisoner to whom he had been "sold" as a sex slave.

Driver becomes a a guest of the Meza Azul prison in Arizona, which is run by a private corporation. Within short order, Driver compromises the high-tech facility and takes over the prison. He promise to execute one guard every six hours unless Frank Corso, who wrote a book about Driver, is delivered to the prison.

Uh huh, Ford's plot and character development would, under normal circumstances, leave a lot to be desired. But happily Ford's idea of plot is a hyper-kinetic, utterly unpredictable series of events that would serve as a model for chaos theory. One by one, seemingly unrelated events come together to produce unintended and unexpected consequences, much to the delight of the reader.

Corso is actually a near-minor player in the novel, which is a plus. He's just sort of there, sometimes the victim of events, sometimes the beneficiary. Driver is a man on a mission who, incidentally, is a cunning operator. Corso is important to him for reasons that are not clear until well into the book.

Overall, a delightful read and a fine thriller. Thin plot, thin characters, but in Ford's hands, neither is a consideration. The man simply knows how to tell a hold-on-to-your-seat story.

Jerry

The best Frank Corso so far
We need to know a little more about Frank and Mr. Ford accomodates us novel by novel bringing more of him out in the daylight. Like Spenser, his past is revealed in snippits of conversation with or about third parties, or in mental meanderings solo voce.

Certainly the most interesting thing about him is just that, he's an interesting guy. Tall, well built, articulate. Earlier novels have gotten across the explanation of why he settled in the Pacific Northwest and a little more about his family and his tortured relationship with his father.

Here we meet Timothy Driver, Trident Submarine Captain and Harvard Graduate School, graduate, coming home from sea duty unexpectedly, finding Mrs. Driver doing some underwater drills of her own with somebody NOT Captain Driver. Captain Driver decides to off the Mrs., Lothario and his career all at once, hence the capital murder sentence, a book by Frank and incarceration in the private prison for the worst of the worst in Arizona.

Melanie Harris is a TV crime reporter who lost her daughter to a pyschopath seven years earlier and now loses her husband to a change of fortunes. So in a way, Harris and Corso are both emotionally exiled to their own Elba when Driver leads a brutal revolt amongst the inmates in the private Arizona prison.

Ford, who often has a political agenda of some sort as an undercurrent, lambasts the prison system and the new "for-profit" privatization move, and the adventure, a little disturbing but mostly hair raising, begins.

Frank is wise, compassionate, arrogant with authority, well heeled, get's shot (what's new?), and is caring. Melanie Harris is hot and confused.

It is difficult to accept the etiology of Captain Driver's descent into hell, and Mr. Ford doesn't help us much with either reviling him or feeling sorry for him. It seems unlikely that a proud extremely educated man who carries the armament to destroy the entire world for a living, would find his wife in coitus with SOD (* some other dude) and react that way. And, if he did, that he would end up in the worst prison in the world outside of Iran. For that required suspension of disbelief, Mr. Ford really deserves a 4 1/2. But the book is a true to life page turner that you can't put down. And Meg Dougherty and her nasty, nasty comments, gratefully are on vacation. Or in therapy. 5 stars. Larry Scantlebury

A psychopath's wild murder spree.
G. M. Ford's new thriller, "No Man's Land," gets off to a rip-roaring start. In Arizona's maximum security Meza Azul penitentiary, a cunning prisoner named Timothy Driver manages to bypass the facility's state-of-the-art security features. He takes over the prison, releases the inmates, and nabs 163 hostages. Driver threatens to shoot one hostage every six hours until Frank Corso arrives at the scene.

Corso is a journalist and a recluse who previously had written a book about Driver. Members of the Coast Guard persuade an extremely reluctant Corso to leaves his boat in Seattle and fly to Mesa Azul. When he arrives at the prison, Corso quickly becomes a pawn in Driver's violent master plan. This psychopathic killer, whose partner is an equally frightening felon named Kehoe, engineers an ingenious escape and Corso is forcibly taken along for the ride.

Meanwhile, an ambitious television journalist named Melanie Harris risks her already shaky marriage when she goes to Arizona to cover the story. The slimy warden who runs Mesa Azul is more worried about his job than he is about the many lives that are lost during the uprising. After Driver and Kehoe make their escape, they meet up with a variety of individuals, both on the right and wrong side of the law. Most of these people are the worse for wear after their encounter with these two cold-blooded killers.

Ford has a no-nonsense writing style that I like very much. His black humor, crisp dialogue, and descriptive passages are all first rate. However, the plot meanders too much once the convicts leave Arizona. The book quickly degenrates into a lengthy spree of mindless violence.

Ford does effectively explore such themes as the predatory nature of the media, the randomness of fate, and the unspeakable conditions in America's prisons. However, the fatal flaw in this thriller is that Frank Corso, who has always been a savvy and tough man when the chips are down, plays too limited a role in capturing the criminals. Although he shows great courage when he confronts the volatile Driver, throughout most of the novel, Frank is little more than a horrified spectator. He also engages in a brief fling with Melanie that feels forced and artificial. There are too many scenes of excessive violence, and the conclusion is chaotic and unfocused. Although Ford is a talented writer whose books I have enjoyed in the past, "No Man's Land" is one of the weaker entries in the Frank Corso series.