Flint

Rating:
Summary: Sharp on Flint but blunt on originality
Review: ...and it held my interest. Once you get used to Mr. Eddy's style (and the fact that he is writing English...not 'Murrican) it moves right along. Another reviewer said one wouldn't warm to the Flint character. Perhaps so, but I wouldn't turn my back to her either.

Rating:
Summary: Chipped Flint
Review: ...as in a razor-sharp arrowhead. The character of Grace Flint is given a sharp edge by what she has endured. The writing of Paul Eddy is incisive and well-aimed.

I picked up a copy of the UK paperback version of this book here in Tokyo, in spite of the cover line comparing Grace Flint to Clarice Starling. The comparison is off the mark, and suggests that Eddy's novel is somehow derivative of the work of Thomas Harris.

It is more true to say that Paul Eddy is writing in the tradition of John Le Carre. Good character development, excellent plotting, an insider's knowledge of organizations and locales. I particularly enjoyed the confrontation with the President of the Northern Turkish Republic of Cyprus; Eddy shows a keen insight into international affairs, and takes us to a place not often visited in novels.

This book is very difficult to put down; I resented every minute that I was obliged to do something else. I look forward to Eddy's next book.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent, well written thriller
Review: After reading a recent run of some disappointing thrillers, I came across Paul Eddy's "Flint." This is a masterful blend of character and action.

This well-plotted thriller focuses on Grace Flint, an undercover cop who is physically and emotionally scarred in a bust gone wrong. As she rebuilds her life, the ghosts of her past come back to haunt her, and she gets a chance for revenge on those who injured her. However, this is no simple revenge tale. but a well-told cat and mouse thriller, and a fine character study.

Seek out this great read!

Rating:
Summary: What happens to Flint is horrifying...
Review: both physically and psychologically. The brittle, cold heroine of Paul Eddy's first fiction thriller is worth more than a glance. It is hard to know what makes Flint tick, even though the book explores her life from the viewpoint of an outsider, in
retrospect. Flint's a British operative, gone awol after she is caught in the crossfire of an international plot.

Harry Cohen, trying to find her, gives us the retrospective. Unlike Flint, Harry's almost too real, too wounded, to be given the task. His character, the best developed in the book, sees every issue from both sides; he's devoted to finding Flint, helping her, and righting the wrong that's been done her.

Meanwhile, Flint uses her powers of deception and persuasion to seek her revenge on an international criminal. The reader is absorbed in her risk-taking, all the while learning what makes her tick. Think Marg Helgenberger for the film or the TV movie.

Not a big fan of spy thrillers, I found Flint engaging, well-written, with a few forgiveable flaws. Looking forward to more from Paul Eddy, he has a new and crisp voice.

Rating:
Summary: Top Notch!
Review: Do not believe the border line reviews here. This book has the pace, good writing style and the characters of a an excellent novel. The heroine is flawed in a real world way, In fact the people that populate this novel are more realistic than I have read about in a long long time.

Plot is tight, with a fast pace, but not a break neck speed that usually leaves a reader wondering where the rest of the book is. Eddy uses the whole book to develop his main characters, thus leaving the reader satisfied at the end.

I recommend this book highly.

Rating:
Summary: Flint doesn't produce a spark
Review: I read a lot of books of this genre, but for me, this didn't hit the mark.

The opening scene is explosive, but the story goes down from there. In essence, the plot is interesting enough - top-level secret-service agents on both sides of the Atlantic have gone corrupt and Flint sets out on her own mission to catch them - but the details get too complex. You end up having to stop and remember back to previous passages to clarify the latest detail.

I also found myself not caring about the character of Flint. There was nothing there that made me warm to her. However, the other central character, Harry Cohen, is plausible and I did become endeared to him.

The blurb on the front cover, making comparisons to Clarice Starling can be seen as a desperate attempt for an inferior publication to garner sales. Flint should have been able to sell of its own accord, not through dubious association with another authors work.

Finally, the big test for me is the question, "Is this believable?" With this book, I didn't suspend disbelief. I felt all along that it was a work of fiction.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting heroine runs out of steam.
Review: I was drawn in by a strong start but found the plot un-necessarily complex by the end. Was there really need for all those characters - un-developed names thrown in all around. Lots of bone but very little meat and a rushed ending that left me dis-satisfied. Felt Flint stumbling through by the finish.

... and the name...we already had a Flint... it was James Cockburn. Bit cheesy don't you think.

Rating:
Summary: Graceless Flint
Review: Plot and character development are high on my list of priorities in fiction, and at the end of Flint, I was dissatisfied in both these aspects of Eddy's work. Combine this with the sloppiness of changing from present tense to past within chapters/sections, and this drags the rating I would give the book down. Toss-in the previously mentioned loose end and a gruesome torture scene that seems devised purely to shock and disturb the reader, and a higher rating than three stars is simply unreachable.

However, the characters were complex and the scope of the story very broad. That it was well-researched seems apparent. These aspects kept my interest at a very high level.

I also had difficulty grasping the logic of some of the characters' actions, most notably towards the end of the book, Harling.

So too, Flint (the mian character) at times seems to embrace the concept of her femininity being used as a tool not only by herself but by her supervisors. This didn't click as being entirely credible, but I suppose history is littered with examples - Delilah and Mata Hari spring to mind.

As a first attempt, the book has a lot to commend it, but when I read a thriller, I want to be thrilled, excited, frightened.

Not shaking with horror, unable to sleep, and this is how the torture scene left me.

So despite the many good points of the book, this will be my first and last Eddy novel.

Rating:
Summary: Gritty and hard-boiled
Review: That could describe the novel and is just as apt summing up Grace Flint's main attributes as well.
Flint was an undercover inspector in England, when an undercover operation went south and she was beaten to within an inch of her life. As her body healed with the help of plastic surgery, she teamed up with other law enforcement agencies hoping by climbing back on the horse her emotional healing could begin. As the taut plot unwinds it is obvious that for Flint to feel whole again she needs revenge on the man that beat her.
This is a crisp and clean thriller that harkens to noir fiction in the best sense of the word. Although Eddy writes with a palpable edge the reader isn't exposed to gratuitous voilence and gore.
Flint is at heart an excellent characterization piece and an invitation to the reader to come to know a truly remarkable heroine.
Although there isn't graphic violence lacing this novel Eddy does an admirable job leading his audience into the world's seedier side. Over all an exciting tense effort, not exceptional but it would be a cold reader indeed that didn't feel for Flint's plight and sympathize with her life's challenges as they read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Sharp on Flint but blunt on originality
Review: This reads like a crime novel that was written in a hurry and under pressure. In some places it shows, such as one villian being in possession of a VHS tape splicing machine. You cannot splice VHS tape and no such machine exists. You can dub and dubbing machines exist. But this error passed not only the author but also his editors.
Little if any original thought is given to the characters. They say and do nothing that you could not have predicted. The plot conforms to one beloved of all journalists who turn to fiction, namely the lone outcast against a corrupt system. It doesn't matter whether you call it 'The Organisation' or 'The Network', it is the same old theme of evil conspiracy at the heart of society. The name of the main character Grace Flint, tells you all you need to know about how lightweight this story is. She is bitter and sharp (Flint) she is a woman at heart (Grace). To conform to what publishers think sell books our Grace is naturally the female equivalent of the boozing, divorced, cynical but fair, dogged police hero. The blurb has the temerity to compare Flint with agent Starling. Neither Flint nor the plot begin to match up to Silence of the Lambs. Character development is nil. Everyone in the book starts the way they mean to go on, and remain cardboard figures in a plot that resembles a cereal packet give away game.
Eddy admits in interviews that he cannnot invent. His facts are minutely researched. But the point of fiction is indeed to make it up. That is what good fiction writers do best. Stand this book next to John Grisham's Pelican Brief and it is immediately apparent that Grisham's characters are more complex, have more interaction between them and his plots a lot more fully thought out. For example to make the ending of Flint a cliff hanger Eddy has our heroine hunted by her own side as a terrorist, when her own bosses know she is nothing of the sort. Our heroine seeks out one of the baddies by posing as a swinger in a Paris swinger club and agrees to return to his apartment. To avoid the obvious happening in the bedroom Flint fakes a sudden migraine of such terrible proportions that the baddie leaves her alone in the flat and jets off somewhere else: in other words 'with one bound our heroine was free' - all very Mills and Boone. Such plots twists creak with disbelef.