Rating: 
Summary: Best Case Ever
Review: Totally intrigued by page 7. I didn't think John Case could get any better. However, this novel became my favorite of his.
The main character is off to a think tank and leaves without his face. Now mind-control sets in as he becomes a psychiatrist who
delves into the problems of a woman whose sister has died, after
an assassination on her part...an old wheel-chair bound man. Yes, it's bizarre and quite unbelievable, but it makes for an
exciting read. I thouroughly enjoyed it. John Case, give us more.
Rating: 
Summary: Great premise, silly book
Review: Truly a wildly silly tome. It starts off well and rapidly degenerates, not even bothering to prep the reader for the next round of ridiculousness. I love thrillers, and understand about the necessary suspension of belief for almost all of them, but The Syndrome requires far too much from its readers: total brain disengagement. The dialogue is stilted, the characters are cutters, and if you don't laugh out loud when you discover the final nefarious plot, well...Whatever you do, don't spend the money on the hardcover.
Rating: 
Summary: fun
Review: Well, by the end of this book, I felt like I had just eaten cotton candy. Very bulky looking to begin with, but it all sort of evaporated by the end. Having said that, it was a quick and fun read with a clever premise. A secret organization with shadowing ties in the past to urban legend types of mind control research has kept this research alive and is using it to program assassins. Oh this is fun and presented well. I could hardly wait to turn the page and find out what would happen next. Thus, I was able to overlook a few big holes in the plot. Having said that, this was a fun read that I would recommend to anyone who needs something to kill a few vacation or airport hours.
Rating:
Summary: A wishful title
Review: Why did the authors of this flaccid tome append the words "a thriller" to their title? Probably because they realized their readers wouldn't know it without being told. This is a novel lacking in action, either physical or intellectual, and in which the gimmick is revealed in the first chapter, or maybe even before. It has to do with some folks who've been turned into automaton-like hitmen by one of those government research projects gone bad. But do we get to go along on the hits? Not really. There's one brief adventure at the front of the book, and the rest of the time we ride along while the sister of one of the hitmen (this one a girl) tries to find out why her sister committed suicide. She's accompanied by a guy who also underwent this mind-alteration, but who for no clear reason was set up as a psychologist rather than as a killer. He watches a lot of TV, apparently because he was programmed to. Along the way, they have to elude some guys in black, and their apartments are ransacked. But mostly, they talk to people. The science behind all this mind-altering is pretty fuzzy, and the book contains a lot more writing than the plot and characters need. Surely, we can find better ways to spend our reading time.
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