Rating: 
Summary: Pearson is right on track!
Review: Every time a train derails, images fill the TVs with sound-bytes from the railroad companies offering reasons behind these accidents: "Driver error," "mechanical failure," & "a failed signal." Are they are hiding the truth? Umberto Alvarez lost his wife & twins in a fatal railroad accident. The lights & barriers where the family van was stuck didn't work. Alvarez blames Northern Union Railroad for the crossing-guard collision - he believes there's been a massive cover-up. Northern Union Railroad claims everything was working fine & Alvarez's wife was negligent. With the disappearance of the 911 tape of Alvarez's call things were not looking good, then his attorney turns up murdered & now Alvarez is on the run & out for revenge. Peter Tyler, an ex-homicide detective with a debilitating dislike for confined spaces, is an investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, where he uses his cop's intuition to investigate a bloody boxcar mystery. How is that boxcar, Alvarez, Northern Union Railroad & Tyler all connected? Grab this one & follow the bloody tracks! Pearson keeps the pages turning with the adrenaline rush of the chase. He keeps you guessing as to who are the good guys & who are the bad. I couldn't put it down!
Rating: 
Summary: Take the A train
Review: What would you do if your world were torn apart? If everything that had meaning were lost? These are questions dealt with by two very different characters in Ridley Pearson's Parallel Lies. Umberto Alvarez lost his family. His wife and twins were killed when a train hit their van at a crossing. Peter Tyler lost his job. He lost control and beat a suspect he saw severely abusing a baby. As a free-lance investigator for the NTSB, ex-cop Tyler finds himself chasing Alvarez to solve what he believes is a murder. In the course of the chase Tyler discovers a cover-up by the railroads, leading him to an understanding of Alvarez's desperation. Is Alvarez the 'bad guy' or a victim? Will Tyler become a victim again? As suspense builds towards the trial run of a new high-speed train, F-A-S-T Track all of the players come together for a heart stopping race against time across the tracks. It's a stand alone story with real characters that are neither all good nor all bad. If you haven't read Pearson's other books this is a good place to start. If you have read him then you know that you're in for an exciting read. A great book to read if you're flying, but you might not want to take the train for a while!
Rating: 
Summary: Riding the rails with Parallel Lies by Ridley Pearson
Review: In this recent novel, Ridley Pearson deals with the American railroad system and a search for vengeance. Umberto Alvarez lost his family to death when a train crushed their car at a gated crossing. He knows the Northern Union Railroad is covering up the truth and he wants a public apology for the deaths they caused. Systematically, he has managed to derail freight trains of Northern Union's every six weeks or so as he works to the ultimate destruction of a test of a high-speed passenger carrying train. Peter Tyler is the investigator for the National Transportation Board and has his own inner demons to deal with. After a long and distinguished police career, Peter met up with a child molester as the creep was bashing the bay's head against the wall. Something snapped deep inside him and Peter began to beat the molester's head against the wall, just like he had done to the baby. While understandable, Peter's actions became part of a media firestorm since the molester was black and Peter was white. In the aftermath, Peter with his reputation savaged in the media, lost his job, his career, his family and is days away from eviction. So, when tossed temporary work to investigate a current derailment, he leaps at the chance and he has to make it work. The trail will lead him cross country as he discovers the clash between corporate greed, politics and the quest of one man to find vengeance from those who have wronged him. While these are fairly stock characters and Mr. Pearson does not plow new ground that has not been covered better in his other novels, this is still a fairly good read. The action is fast paced and the premise is all too plausible today. For more information on this book as well as his many other books visit his website at www.ridleypearson.com.
Rating:
Summary: Pearson is right on track!
Review: Every time a train derails, images fill the TVs with sound-bytes from the railroad companies offering reasons behind these accidents: "Driver error," "mechanical failure," & "a failed signal." Are they are hiding the truth? Umberto Alvarez lost his wife & twins in a fatal railroad accident. The lights & barriers where the family van was stuck didn't work. Alvarez blames Northern Union Railroad for the crossing-guard collision - he believes there's been a massive cover-up. Northern Union Railroad claims everything was working fine & Alvarez's wife was negligent. With the disappearance of the 911 tape of Alvarez's call things were not looking good, then his attorney turns up murdered & now Alvarez is on the run & out for revenge. Peter Tyler, an ex-homicide detective with a debilitating dislike for confined spaces, is an investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, where he uses his cop's intuition to investigate a bloody boxcar mystery. How is that boxcar, Alvarez, Northern Union Railroad & Tyler all connected? Grab this one & follow the bloody tracks! Pearson keeps the pages turning with the adrenaline rush of the chase. He keeps you guessing as to who are the good guys & who are the bad. I couldn't put it down!
Rating:
Summary: Parallel Lies
Review: I dont read very many books. In fact I could say none at all, but once I read Parallel Lies, I could not put the book down. The suspense in this book kept me reading. I really enjoyed reading this book and recommend this to everyone to read.
Rating:
Summary: Above average
Review: Some places in the story are slow to read, otherwise it was a good read overall. Makes you feel for the guy who did the derailments because the railroad company killed his family with a major cover-up. This story could be made into a good movie.
Rating:
Summary: fun ride
Review: This novel was fun, the technical info on trains was fun; the story was high octane. The love interest was embarassing. Read it anyway if you think trains are interesting. Its a good summer read.
Rating:
Summary: Some goofiness, some originality: harmless
Review: This book has a couple of things to commend it: The good guys and bad guys are a bit less black-and-white than genre fiction's usual, and the quality of prose is often much better than genre writers usually bother with. But the "love interest" is just silly--why anyone would fall in love with the often-insulting, deceptive female lead, whose loyalties change as often as her clothes, is beyond me, and the dialog between the "lovers" is stilted and has no basis in the characterizations. And the technical details strain credulity--the least of it being, as another reviewer noted, the laptop that never loses battery power (or fails to get an internet connection). It's an easy read, and not offensive, but noting to write home about.
Rating:
Summary: Derailed
Review: Ridley Pearson, as always, gives us a fast ride. I had become a bit tired of Lou Boldt and Daphne's clenched teeth platonic relationship, and looked forward to some new characters. I looked in the wrong direction. The plot and the modern day railroad lore are excellent, if a bit too technical at times. The characters are preposterous. Peter Tyler is a down and out ex-homicide cop with an anxiety disorder that presents as acute claustrophobia. He is fired, in disgrace and facing a civil suit for excessive force against a black child beater. Somehow these qualifications get him temporary employment with the National Transportation Board to investigate a possible homicide involving a major railroad line. In a side-by-side story line, Umberto Alverez is seeking revenge against the railroad company for what he sees as negligence and cover-up in the crossing deaths of his wife and twin daughters. The chase and the chased gradually draw closer and closer together until Tyler and Alverez have a symbiotic relationship. Reading about the trains was excellent stuff, interesting (hobos aren't "hobos" anymore, they are "riders") and informative. The action was fast paced. But the character's actions and motivations were like a James Bond movie gone bad. A beautiful, ambitious female executive becomes an informer on her own company because she may or may not have an itch for a scruffy, delusional ex-cop. Another fast living cocktail waitress who had a crush on Umberto when she was twelve behaves like a combination of Joan of Arc and whistle blower to save Umberto from --- what? An intelligent, highly placed government administrator misuses government authority against the railroad company because--he is in a pout? There is a lot to like about "Parallel Lies" if you can just shut your eyes to why anyone is doing anything. The author has clearly done a lot of research on railroads, and the writing is vivid and clear. The enjoyment outweighs the frustration, but not by much.
Rating:
Summary: a ridley-iculous tale of fast trains
Review: This book was written to attract the attention of Hollywood producers. It gives the story of a widower, seeking revenge on the evil train company who refuses to admit fault in the deaths of his wife and children. The story is fast paced and easy to read, though difficult to believe. Take it with a grain of salt.
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