Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #462044 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-19
• Released on: 2008-08-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780765321701
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

From Publishers Weekly
In this uneven thriller from bestseller Lustbader (The Bourne Legacy), Alli Carson, the 19-year-old daughter of the U.S. president-elect, moderate Republican Edward Carson, is abducted a month before her father's inauguration to be programmed to do something truly terrible at the inauguration ceremony. ATF agent Jack McClure is chosen to lead the search for Alli, primarily because she was the boarding-school roommate of his now-deceased daughter, Emma. Jack faces many difficulties, chief among them his own severe dyslexia. The unnamed current president, who makes religion the basis for all his decisions, wants to use the search as an excuse for all-out war on his enemies, the First American Secular Revivalists and their secret partners, the E-Two terrorist group. Lustbader does a fine job depicting the search for Alli and reconstructing Jack's past, but the confusing political message will leave many readers wondering what the book was really about. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Jack McClure’s marriage has fallen apart after the death of his college-age daughter. Working for the ATF keeps him going, and when he receives a call from the incoming president of the U.S., Jack is on the case. The President-elect’s daughter, who was a roommate of Jack’s own deceased daughter, has been kidnapped, and the soon-to-be chief executive wants Jack to take charge of the investigation. But it’s unclear if he truly wants Jack to solve the case. If so, why does he seem to be putting people and obstacles in Jack’s path? Jack, who suffers from dyslexia, sees this case as his chance to redeem himself and put his life back on track, and his struggle to succeed keeps the reader involved. Unfortunately, Lustbader, a genre veteran, has never been known as a stylist, and here he has a tendency to stop the narrative to deliver distracting author’s messages on the problems of organized religion. Still, the engaging premise and the straight-ahead action will satisfy the author’s fans. --Jeff Ayers

Review

Customer Reviews

A great plot wasted
The opening pages have all the indications of a great mass market thriller -- the the President-elect's daughter is about to make a terrorist attack at the inauguration. Just as she's about to open a vial of anthrax, the book flashes back two months to her kidnapping and the selection of Jack McClure, an ATF with dyslexia, to rescue her. Cool.

The book quickly falls flat though, a victim of stilted dialogue, inaccuracies of forensic science, a complete lack of understanding about the ways that DHS, the White House, and the Secret Service work, and a completely weird and unbelievable plot about a war between religious fundamentalists and secular reformer/protest/terroists....something or the other. Frankly, the sections of the book that discuss relgion and secularism are babbling nonsense.

This book should never have made it past the first level of editing, much less the final publishing process. In my experience, if I enjoy a book by an author, I can find something new by looking for other books by the same publisher -- good editors make great authors. I won't be buying anything from Forge Publishing any time soon.

A Potentially Good Story Overshadowed By The Author's Personal Agenda
This story had a lot of potential. Unfortunately, it was never realized.

Although the author could have made this a great novel, he failed to deliver. Instead of focusing on the main plot, Van Lustbader pursued an agenda of anti-religious bigotry. Much of the action is implausible. Some of these are not just the run of the mill farfetched events in a novel, they are too over the top to have any credibility. The editing is also substandard.

The main idea of the story is that ATF agent Jack McClure is recruited by the president-elect to find his recently kidnapped daughter. The McClure character could have been a great one, but was not well developed. Also, the author tried to turn McClure's dyslexia into some sort of mystical super gift that gives him the ability to 'see' things that no one else can in multiple dimensions. This silly plot device was never expanded to the point that it would make any sense.

Mr. Van Lustbader did his best to portray any people of faith as moronic and phony. One example is this: 'But Father Larrigan wasn't full of grace, nor was any priest.' This is just one example of many.

The errors included ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) listed as AFT in at least two places.

There are a lot better action novels out there. I'd suggest anything by Brad Thor, Vince Flynn, or many others before this. I'd recommend skipping this one.

Too much preaching (how ironic!) for my taste
There were many things I liked about this book and quite a few that I disliked. It took me about 100 pages to really get interested in the plot and characters (the book is about 400 pages total), but after that I was more or less hooked. I particularly liked the development of the main character, Jack McClure, and wondered if the description of his dyslexia as a type of disability accompanied by extreme giftedness is accurate or rare. I just finished the book tonight, so I'm looking forward to researching that.

For me, Jack's backstory was even more interesting that the main plot. I thought the author did an excellent job of creating a sympathetic character with texture and depth and really liked the Gus character as well. The rest of the characters weren't nearly as well developed, and some were merely caricatures.

This leads right into what I liked least about the story. The debate over whether or not organized religion is a good thing or bad thing began early in the book and continued through to the end. While the outgoing U.S. President was presented early on as a stark raving mad religious zealot, there were also evil characters on the godless side. It appeared for at least half of the book that the author was trying to portray both arguments from a somewhat neutral position. This changed in the latter part of the book, however, to relentless diatribes about the evils of religion and the idiocy of those that choose to believe in God and any form of afterlife. I felt I was being preached at during many parts in the second half, and that's just annoying.

Instead of being a suspense novel with some bits thrown in about religion, this almost felt like an editorial about what's wrong with religion and why we should all be atheists encased in popular fiction to make it more palatable. Based on that and my opinion that the actual writing was pretty good but not great, I just can't recommend this book and don't plan to read other books by this author.