Paranoid

Rating:
Summary: Paranoid is almost too ridiculous for words.
Review: I have never been so upset at an inanimate object before. I literally wanted to throw this book against the wall.

The main protagonist, Tom, reads like a deranged superhuman, a cross between James Bond and John Nash. Although he is only twenty-one years old, he manages to repeatedly vanquish seasoned cops and Secret Service agents, most of the time single-handedly. Although his mental problems are supposed to give him a human dimension, a flaw that would make him more sympathetic to the reader, they succeed only in making the story even more ridiculous.

Furthermore, the plot is filled with ludicrous moments. Although Tom is supposed to be brilliant and paranoid, he keeps a journal filled with important details of his discoveries, a convenient way for the Secret Service to discover what he has been up to.

Amy, Tom's girlfriend, a novice with little experience in the art of deceit and deception, manages to lose the Secret Service in a mall and then sneak by them on her way to the presidential retreat!

If the characters were set up as being super agents, or if the tone of the story were more lighthearted, the aforementioned actions could be stomached, but the author takes great pains to make the story seem realistic.

Every character is painstakingly developed. Even the lowliest coroner and car thief, each of whom only takes up a few pages of the book, comes equipped with a history and background. Therefor, having the main protagonists climb out of helicopters, swim through the freezing Atlantic, dodge countless bullets, and cripple highly trained agents makes the overall story read like a joke to which only the author is privy.

I'm upset that I had to give this book even one star.

Rating:
Summary: It was FUN
Review: I liked. You should read it. You will like it too.

Rating:
Summary: A genre-bending thriller
Review: I loved this book. I normally don't write reviews but the comments posted about Paranoid had me seeing red! The reviewer from Los Angeles neglected to discuss the whole point of the book, which makes me wonder if he even read it. The novel is about a conspiracy, where the fellow who can't go to the police with his hare-brained tale because they would just assume he was nutty as trail mix ... actually is. It's a paranoid thriller where the hero is actually paranoid. I'd never seen anything quite like that before and the twist near the end when we are forced to realize it's true (we've always had faith in Tom!) nearly knocked me off my chair.
The reviewer complains about a mere twenty year old's phycial prowess. I guess he wasn't watching Andy Roddick at the U.S. Open this year. In fact, the early twenties are the physical prime of life and the book makes it clear that Tom has been training in the martial arts for most of his young life. The idea that a paranoid schizophrenic wouldn't commit his thoughts to words is just silly. At least Tom didn't insist on being published in the New York Times, like the Unabomber! What the reviewer misses is the diabolical cleverness of that journal. Most of what we know about the conspiracy comes from there ... and eventually it's held up to us as the ravings of a lunatic. You don't normally see 'post modern' unreliable narrators in thrillers, and I was delighted to find one here. As to the dodging bullets and all that ... a certain amount of derring do is required in an action piece. Tom's girlfriend dodges the secret service in one of the most delightful set-pieces in the book: she goes to ground on her native turf ... Bloomingdale's. It's clever and funny and proves a point the book makes several times: all you have to do to outsmart the spooks and spies is be smarter than they are. Personally, I find smart people doing ingenious things I could never have thought of, to be one of the principal pleasures of reading adventure stories.
Another small detail the irritated reviewer fails to mention is the conspiracy itself ... an unholy marriage between the Mafia and the White House based on the crazy but actually kind of interestng notion of taxing organized crime. The advantages and pitfalls of co-opting the criminal class are dealt with engrossingly... or so I thought. All in all, I found this book to be an original delight.