Reads like a movie novel...
927499
not the best Dark Wood story, in my opinion. But if you enjoyed Blue Moon Rising and Blood and Honor, you will still enjoy Down Among the Dead Men. Its just an interesting little side story in the Dark Wood series. be forewarned, its pretty gritty and gory...
4189727
The first few chapters of "The Kill Call" reminded me of the movie "Pulp Fiction". Points of view jumped through decades of time and various narrators. That, coupled with the fact that the book is set in England, with the different terms for things than we have in the US, made the read start a teensy bit slow for me. Then I remembered to turn my Anglophile switch to the 'on' position, and I felt like Dorothy when she landed in Oz...the colors turned on!

But, imagine if you will, dipping your toe in to test the waters instead of diving right in. It takes a little while to get your whole body in, but once you do, the water is quite enjoyable.

For me, the most enjoyable thing about the book was Mr. Booth's use of, and obvious skill with, descriptive language. When he talks of underground bunkers, and the damp, dank atmosphere, all my senses were engaged. I could see, hear, feel, smell and taste the setting.

Another of Booth's strengths is the ability to bring seemingly unrelated strands of many stories and weave them together into a coherent whole.

The worst thing about the book is that it is part of a series of novels involving the same detectives, Cooper and Fry, and that by crossing "The Kill Call" off my TBR (to be read) list, I now have to add the other 11 books of the series, because I want to read them all. We should all have such bad luck, right?

(Disclaimer:  I received an e-copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.)
4710182
This was a fun book to read.  But not the best writing.  It read like a screen play with sort of flat characters that don't develop alot.  But the story and plot is good and I found myself thinking many times that the movie version will be better than the book (usually not the case right?).  But this as a movie promises alot of neat visuals that would improve on the experience of reading the book.
509775
This book is a really fast read, partly because many of its plot twists are expected--you can see them coming pages ahead of actually reading them.  The book is filled with close, exacting descriptions of torture; at first, these make for horrifying reading.  After a while, however, they feel gratuitous and have virtually no impact, except to make this reader feel like the book has turned into one of those superhero films where some Hollywood megastar survives astoundingly awful beatings, shootings, falls, and... oh, wait.  The writer is a screenwriter.  That explains it!

The best thing that Mr. Wallner achieves here is his initial portrait of Corporal Roth.  Defying expectations that a Third Reich soldier would be a monster, Corporal Roth is just a guy.  He likes French culture and doesn't want to be sent to the front, and I found myself worrying about him as he went on his nighttime adventures.  I wanted him to play it safe and just get by.  He doesn't do so--he has more courage than that.

Unfortunately, the last third or so of the book is the part that reads like a "Diehard" movie, except that it's got a quasi-romance plot along with the violence.  Maybe Mr. Wallner wrote the book quickly; if he'd put more thought into it, he might have been able to write a story that didn't have to rely on predictable plot twists and implausible events to wind itself up.
1048452
This read like a movie! It was very interesting to read, and I really felt as if I was watching this take place rather than read it. I wish that some things in the story had been explored more, explained more, and the ending was rather abrupt. Overall though, this was a really great read.
4814465
Yes, that's the way to read this book. The first 200 pages are terrific, but from 200 to 560, it's all "plot driven."  What I mean is that someone reads an old manuscript and then someone walks by and says, "Hey! I was just reading that!" And the second person joins the hunt, they travel to another library or crypt and meet someone else who says, "Hey! I was just visiting that library/church/crypt!"

And so on. And on. And on. And on. Yep, it's an easy book to skim and skim and skim. But about page 560, the "real story" kicks back in -- the search for the missing father -- and then it glides along to a nice conclusion.

One problem (SPOILER HERE) is that when Dracula is killed, it happens in about a paragraph. And he doesn't even really show up until about page 550. And in a 640 page novel, that's a problem. When you have an "evil person" in a book -- supernatual or not -- it's really a let-down when he/she/it is killed off so quickly. And I think that's why this book is, ultimatley, such a disappointment.

It's much too long. Heavily padded. Very repetitive. I decided to read/skim a 100 pages a day so I can say I enjoyed it, but it wasn't the page-turned I had hoped for.

I also skimmed DA VINCI code--this was better written, but the same silly plot-driven components.

I think the movie should be a lot of fun!
3757850
This book was very much like a summer blockbuster action movie, both for the good and for the bad.

There was very little character development, pretty much everybody seemed the same to me. I got kind of tired of the bullets flying right next to our heros without hitting them, or them jumping off the boat just as it explodes. Just like an action movie, this type of thing happens over and over.

There seemed to be a lot of things just thrown into the plot just for random coolness value. For example, an antigravity train appears for one chapter, bringing our hero to safety and shielding him from bullets with its antigravity field. Then we never hear from the train again. Huh? I sort of expect that something that fundamentally breaks the laws of physics to play a more significant role and have some kind of backstory. There were other things like this but this was the worst.

On the other hand, the action was pretty exciting and the plot was fast-moving. I got it for a long airplane ride, and it was perfect for that situation. When I got home, I finished the last few chapters. Reading it at home, where I'm less demanding of action and demand higher quality, the book felt pretty silly.
937265
My dominating thought after the first few pages: does Jurjeviks have a movie contract yet? This book is made for Hollywood: there will be amazing special effects, spectacular violence and exotic scenery with the obligatory, and conventional, sex scenes between two mismatched superstars: ""She touched his hairless chest and he touched her back, heart racing. She smiled, enjoying the effect she was having, and his effect on her." etc. etc. Typical of the impoverished emotional tone of the novel throughout.

 The cast of characters at the Arctic station is suitably diverse: many nationalities with various sexual and political proclivities...mostly liberal, including an Inuit lover for Dr. Hanley. The obligatory condemnation of America for fouling the Arctic environment is not missing (though not pervasive), The Russians  now form a post-modern, ambiguous element:  two good guys, one left-over Secret Police type.

 The denouement seems a bit overdone: drawn out and so almost anti-climactic. Handley's "sentencing" of Director Mackenzie did not ring true to her otherwise compassionate character.

 But you really can overlook all this for the original plotting and the exciting (and, I think, accurate) Arctic science and research/detective work. This is more a novel of suspense and technology than of people. I was reminded constantly of Michael Crichton's Andromeda Strain from 35 years ago.  In sum, the Trudeau Vector is a fun read and I learned a lot.
4675867
As the story begins the reader is re-introduced to numerous characters from earlier Wambaugh novels such as cops "Hollywood Nate"... surfer dude/cops "Flotsam and Jetsam"... and the late great "Oracle" who was a legend in his own time... and who is still revered by current cops... who superstitiously touch his framed photo as they leave the precinct to go out on duty. The "Oracle" in days gone by had termed a full moon... a "HOLLYWOOD MOON"... the night when the craziest arrests would be made. In loving memory... there is normally a free extra large pizza with the works presented to the team that comes in with the craziest arrest on a "HOLLYWOOD-MOON-NIGHT". It's normally a closely competed contest... since as they say in the Hollywood precinct... HEY! THIS IS FREAKIN HOLLYWOOD!

As the reader is bedazzled with the normal daily chit-chat and insanity that the cops take as common sense and logic... simultaneously multiple criminal characters are developed and the author deftly shifts the characters and the cops from foreground to background... and then with a literary synergy they all... good guys and bad guys... merge and overlap like rivers heading to the sea. There is Ruben Malcolm Rojas (aka Clark) a nineteen-year-old who lives with his drunken Mother... has eyes on a fourteen-year-old girl... gets upset and boils when his Mother pets his hair... and one of the ways he "relieves" himself is to attempt rapes on older women. He has a job in a store where he has become handy with a box cutter as he unpacks boxes all day. Then we have Dewey Gleason (aka Jakob Kessler aka Ambrose Willis aka Bernie Graham) who runs multiple crews of lowlifes heavily populated by "tweakers" and minorities... that specialize in stealing mail... forging checks... counterfeiting checks... phony real estate deals... and bogus ordering of products through multiple channels. Dewey's (aka see all aliases above) wife of nine-years Eunice (aka Ethel ) who believes she is the brains behind the operation (Dewey thinks he is) as she operates multiple computers... all for illegal criminal gain out of their apartment... while simultaneously smoking four packs of cigarettes a day. Since Eunice alone knows where their $500,000.00 - $1,000,000.00+ illicitly gained retirement nest egg is hidden... it adds another level of intrigue as their hate for each other grows... and Dewey dreams of killing her... but he is stuck with the enigma of how to find "his" money before he "offs" her.

If you're a Wambaugh fan you will be fed your usual non-stop diet of politically incorrect slurs as well as an absolutely hilarious conversation between Flotsam and Jetsam regarding Jetsam's surf date with a "hot" IHOP waitress that went awry... when it turns out every part of her body was artificially enhanced. Without giving this classic scene away... I'll just share with you Jetsam's summary to his partner: "MAYBE YOU JUST SHOULDN'T TRUST SOMEONE WHO WEARS RINGS ON HER INDEX FINGERS."

In the end... Wambaugh is able to compellingly bring all these diverse characters together in an entertaining crescendo... but HEY!... THIS IS FREAKIN HOLLYWOOD!
3191587
I hope the movie is better than the book. The book is not readable because of the overuse of adverbs. It just isn't well written. Quickly and quietly..., swiftly and quietly, etc.
1875181
This book starts off with a bang, and grabbed my attention right away. But when it shifted from the opening cataclysmic event to physical descriptions of the main characters I started to lose interest. The premise is fascinating, and it's nice that the technology is relatable to what's actually going on in the 2010 decade. But this book reads like it was made to be sold as a movie; all the women are either really gorgeous or really ugly, but they are all very very smart. I was surprised they didn't bust out some ninja skills and start chick fighting. All the men are incredibly wealthy with great homes and cool cars, and having to sit through description after description of these things got old fast. I tried to stick with it because of the technology aspect of the story but had to lay off about a third through the book. I skipped forward and read the last 50 or so pages of the book, again it read like a mission impossible movie. It's not a difficult read, and in a lot of ways I think this author is an excellent writer. Maybe it's just not the book for me. I think people who like Tom Clancy type writers would probably enjoy PJ Manning's work.
4543655
This is an easy to read, catchy book. I didn't like that it is evident that the author had to hurry to finish it, so the development of the ending feels unnatural. By the end, you really can tell the author thought, -Boy! I need to get this over with...so suddenly we have the ending. I think there are a few beautiful metaphors, some potential for going deep into the character, but the author does not explore this, so at the end it becomes a shallow thriller. It does catch the attention and it is a really easy read. I read this while flying all day, and I had not slept that night, but I could follow the narrative without any problems. I have to say after reading the book, I just knew the movie was not going to be good, with Nichole Kidman and all!
But I think this is the first novel of this author so over all, I think she did a fine job. It could have been better though.
3018294
I won't reveal any of the story, but this book was terrible.  The writing style was simplistic and character development was nil.  Even though it was a terrible read, I would imagine this would make a great movie.  Maybe I say that because the writing style was like a movie script.  All conversation (quotes) with barely any description.  The only good thing was it was a quick read.
1707825
This sounds and reads a lot like a movie script I read once called "Thy Will Be Done." I only read the the chapters provided on line but some scenes were very similar. I just ordered the book and look forward to reading it.
I am not rating this book... if there is any star attached to this post it is not by me as I stated I have not read the complete book but I did order it and look forward to reading it. These are only my comments on the material that was available to me and that I read.
Edited from previous post.
1069870
This would be a three or four star work if it were marketed honestly - As a work of fiction. As I read this book, and its sibling, Tiger Tracks, I slowly started to smell a rat. The author's gods eye view of the action, and knack for always being right in the middle of it, coupled with hollywood-like pacing and almost choreographed action scenes, all seemed too good to be true. A bit of research on the  Internet revealed a number of inconsistencies - Geographical, factual, and also some terminology errors (which could be blamed on the translator, rather than the author). This book is an action packed read, based loosely on a true story and written by someone with a good feel for the material, but steer clear if you are looking for a factual account.
1498929
This is a thriller. It felt like a movie script. I think this story would be better on the big screen. The story was good, but the character definition was a bit thin. It was basically a long chase scene. There were some very suspenseful parts.
865581
I actually purchased this book because I was intrigued by the movie trailer.  The book was like a roller coaster, it had a very slow ramp-up and then a very, very fast twists, turns, jumps/leaps and descent.  The characters weren't entirely likable and I didn't get engrossed in the story line.