Weatherman

Rating:
Summary: A Thriller it is!
Review: It just so happened that I was looking to read a good mystery, I'd been reading "Bluest Eyes", "Poisenwood Bible", and Jane Austen's "Persuasion", that suddenly, I found this need for something truly "Juicy", and I got it when I read this book. I almost couldn't finish it,very scary! Very good Fiction, and truly, Steve Thayer is Great at "Gory".

Rating:
Summary: Powerful.... riveting... and a bit too graphic at the end.
Review: Man...
This is one of the few books that actually lives up to the creativity of its own cover, I believe. The descriptions of the killer, the victim, the newsroom, and the connection between everything, and also the little hints in the descriptions that lead up to the conclusion were all top touch. I was so relieved and grateful that Thayer even concluded by connecting the main plot to the many flashbacks the main character had in the process. He almost explained enough to understand why the flashbacks were used in the first place.
The thing that bothered be was the details when it came to describing the instances of being killed by electrical execution. And having to wait for it, which is why I am also against the capital punishment. It's the most retarded idea in the history of this country, I have to point out. Those of you who are for it, I don't mean to get political, that's just how I feel.
Also, I agree with the guy who gave this book only one star that the back cover review of hte book is very lacking. It basically tries to get off by telling the least to the reader, not to spoil the ending, and frankly doesn't tell much at all. Andrea really has very little to do with the Weatherman except having his deep admiration.
So, all together, the book is really deep for a murder mystery, and the ending I thought was unfare and cruel. Somewhat inhumane. Which is another reason to read this book, to see if I'm wrong.

Rating:
Summary: Mixed feelings...
Review: My rating is based on a combination of two factor.

Steve Thayer obviously did a very thorough research about news casting, police inverstigation and meteorology before writing this book, and it shows.

On the other hand, the story line isn't very good. I'm not sure whether this is a murder investigation story involving a news station or a story about the dynamics of a newsroom with a background story of a serial killer, but the 2 very prominent story lines doesn't give a feeling of a 'focused' story. The time gaps between the different parts of the book also makes it hard to read. We don't see the whole process of Rick Beanblossom and Andrea Labore's relationship changing from deep dislike to love and marriage, we only see segments of different stages of it. We witness atrial based on partial evidence, and a few pages the guy is sentenced to death, and is about to be executed after all his appeals and petitions weren't accepted.

I'm sure many people noticed the striking resemblence od the botched electrocution scenes in this book and the Green Mile - did one author get any ideas from the other, or did they both stumble of the same evidence / idea somewhere? I wonder...

Rating:
Summary: An educated and articulate thriller.
Review: Normally, if I pick up a book which has too much language I find offensive, I don't waste my time on the book. As a professor at the University of Pittsburgh has on a sign on her door, "Life is too short to read bad books!" I fully agree with this, and with the perhaps archaic but valid view that those who have to depend on obscenities in language often have very little else to say that is of any worth.

Having said that, this book was otherwise one of the best surprises that I have ever read. Mr. Thayer is an intelligent person who obviously did more than his fair share of research for this book. The end came as a complete surprise to me, since usually in less academic mysteries the reader can figure out who-done-it...and this time I totally was convinced by the author of another route. Nice trick. Proves to us educators/scientists we don't know everything.

Other then the crudity of some of the language, the author's plot, character development, and writing are impeccable. The book also again brought to the fore the need this country has to recognize the sacrifices made by the young men and women who served during the Vietnam War. Korea may have been forgotten, but the Vietnam veterans were ignored or despised, and we still have much to make up for that.

The weather information and part of the plot was totally believable and fascinating. I am hoping the author will do more with this idea in the future, but not necessarily with the same characters. Karen Sadler, Science Education, University of Pittsburgh

Rating:
Summary: Not really worth it...
Review: Ok, It starts off pretty interesting... but it gets really slow and very predictable. The ending just leaves you hanging

Rating:
Summary: How did I hate it....let me count the ways
Review: Rant #1: the person who wrote the little summary on the back of the book had obviously *not* read the book! The summary said that "Andrea Labore is a beautiful, ambitious TV newscaster. She's hungry for a story that could make her career. Now is her chance... He's called the Weatherman. And he's going to make Andrea a star. Even if it kills her."

...um...noooooo...Andrea Labore had absolutely nothing to do with finding the Weatherman! That was all Rick Beanblossom! It's simply utterly factually incorrect, which is too annoying for words. Can't the publisher be trusted to read the book?

Rant #2: Rick Beanblossom NEVER takes his mask off? Ever? Not even to have sex? Has the guy heard of plastic surgery? So the veteran's administration let him down in that regard, well, here's a newsflash: his insurance would cover reconstructive surgery. Really. He could have enough of a face to at least let him walk around without a mask.

Rant #3: No background or character development given for the suspect and why he might have done any of what he did. Pattern? Motive? None.

Rant #4: Female news anchors getting their positions by having sex with the boss? Oh, thanks Thayer, thanks so much for promoting the notion of women sleeping their way to the top, that's so very 1950s of you.

Rant #5: No suspense. None. Ever. At all.

Rant #6: Was this just an anti-dealth penalty argument in disguise? I too am opposed to the death penalty, but what a ham-handed job of it.

Rant #7: I was trapped in Michigan with nothing else to read.

Rating:
Summary: Suspense from the Tundra
Review: Since I live only minutes from the action, the suspense was intense. I could relate to characters and find myself invisioning the setting as the events were unfolding. If you live in the Twin Cities area, you can appriciate the fact that every action occurs in a real life place. You can read mystery novels set in Ney York City or Las Vegas, but all the locations are meaningless. With Steve Thayer's backround and profound writing ability, it would be hard to put this book down. Even ir your not from the great state of MN, this novel should still appeal to your hunger for an accurate depiction of real suspense.

Rating:
Summary: Starts strong. Loses intensity. Good book for a short trip.
Review: Starts strong. Loses intensity. Good book for a short trip.

Rating:
Summary: FLAT
Review: Stephen King wrote about_ The Weatherman_ "the first forty pages would serve as a climax of most book". Well it served as it's own climax as well. I just could not be drawn in. There was nothing in the story of interest, nothing in the characters to want to stay. The reviewer before me, [e-mail], says it nicely. Not recommended.

Rating:
Summary: The Whether Man
Review: Steve Thayer is the Whether Man. Right to the very end of The Weatherman, we don't know whether weatherman protagonist Dixon Graham Bell is guilty of serial murder or not. We think only what Thayer wants us to think. Readers are putty in the hands of this fiction-writing genius. Readers believe that--aha!--I know how this will end; only to be forced time and again to change their mind at Thayer's whim.

Dixon Graham Bell is a Vietnam veteran with heroic qualities. He saved a little girl's life in Southeast Asia, and later, as a Twin Cities weatherman with a keen sense for predicting weather, he saved countless others with his early warning on a killer tornado. But suddenly he is accused of a murder spree. At the change of each season, an innocent woman is brutally killed in the land of "Minnesota Nice," and the circumstantial evidence points to Bell.

Thayer takes us deep into the seedy underbelly of local network television news. There we meet Bell's coworkers. One is a reporter and fellow Vietnam vet who wears a mask to cover hideous war wounds (the killer also wears a mask). Maybe he's the murderer. There is also the beautiful and ambitious anchorwoman who rejected Bell's advances and sleeps with the married Governor instead. She might be the killer. There's also the porn-obsessed station manager, and the bitter old weatherman Bell replaced. Will the real killer please stand up?

Thayer wends his way through fleshy characterizations and a twisty plot to the climax in which he masterfully makes the implausible seem plausible: capital punishment in liberal Minnesota. But the death sentence goes dreadfully wrong. Who's in the chair? Are they guilty? What disaster transpires? Do they live or die? Read it to learn whether your guesses or right or wrong. I forecast an enjoyable read. --Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.