Mercury Rising

Rating:
Summary: Decent mystery fare...
Review: An autistic child gets a copy of a puzzle the FBI cryptographers planted into a Genius-level magazine. Basically, the kid sees the puzzle, solves it in about a minute, and then does what the puzzle solves into: instructions to call a number listed and tell that he solved the puzzle. When he does, he's targetted for "removal."

Putting the FBI into a tailspin of potential disaster - who is this person who called and cracked the code? And what will the man in charge of what is now a 10 million dollar mistake do to this child? The tension begins to rise... Enter Art Jefferson, who is the one man who might be able to keep this autistic child alive long enough to get him to some sort of safety.

It has a good rising tension throughout, and definitely the last side of tape two is just a race of danger and bullet-dodging and so forth. Very well done. I didn't expect some of the last few twists - though quite a bit of the plot I did see coming - and the ending quite satisfied me. I liked it... though I'd love to know why the book/audiobook FBI agent was a huge black man - and the movie had Bruce Willis. Why do they do that?

Anyway - well worth the time, and the abridgement wasn't half bad. The only real frustration I had was that Joe Morton tried too many accents (his Japanese is borderline offensive stereotype), and that sometimes you were on name overload - there were a lot of characters to this one, and by the nature of abridgement, you didn't get into a lot of their heads. Quite often I was thinking, "Wait, who's this guy again?"

'Nathan

Rating:
Summary: Exalant book!
Review: I am a big fan of Mercury Rising. I read the book first and then watched the movie both where very good. I hope that the movie and book give people more awareness to Autism! And I am proud to note that I am an Autistic myself.

Rating:
Summary: Still as Bad With The New Title
Review: MERCURY RISING by Ryne Douglas Pearson is billed as dramatic suspense. I found it to be otherwise.

The government is worried about the security of its transmissions. As a result, all transmissions go through a coding box. To test the new code a sample is run in certain genius magazines. Enter one Simon, an autistic young man who likes puzzles. He can decode the transmissions with ease. That makes him a target for the agency that has spent millions and assured everyone that the code is unbreakable. When a hit goes wrong a young FBI agent takes up the case and slowly unravels what is going on and tries to protect Simon.

The novel is set mostly in Chicago and is full of that sort of facts an author will use to prove they know the city. Unfortunately they are almost all wrong. Blatant errors ruin the pace of a suspense novel for me. I also find them very irritating. Then, of course, I had trouble reading the book without visualizing the movie trailer. Bruce Willis plays a black man (at least in the book he is black and I see no reason to change it). Simon is sixteen and not nine like in the movie. The Willis character is also not really a hero. He manages to protect the kid for about two days. I am sure Willis had better luck.

Aside from the pacing that kept hitting speed bump errors, the book also suffers from overuse of inappropriate adjectives and adverbs. It almost looks like the story was written and then pumped up with last minute descriptions. Another sign of the book's quality is that it was originally released only a year ago under the title SIMPLE SIMON and it did not sell all that well (which makes for a lower-priced movie contract). So go see the movie if you want to but stay away from the book.

Rating:
Summary: Still as Bad With The New Title
Review: MERCURY RISING by Ryne Douglas Pearson is billed as dramatic suspense. I found it to be otherwise.

The government is worried about the security of its transmissions. As a result, all transmissions go through a coding box. To test the new code a sample is run in certain genius magazines. Enter one Simon, an autistic young man who likes puzzles. He can decode the transmissions with ease. That makes him a target for the agency that has spent millions and assured everyone that the code is unbreakable. When a hit goes wrong a young FBI agent takes up the case and slowly unravels what is going on and tries to protect Simon.

The novel is set mostly in Chicago and is full of that sort of facts an author will use to prove they know the city. Unfortunately they are almost all wrong. Blatant errors ruin the pace of a suspense novel for me. I also find them very irritating. Then, of course, I had trouble reading the book without visualizing the movie trailer. Bruce Willis plays a black man (at least in the book he is black and I see no reason to change it). Simon is sixteen and not nine like in the movie. The Willis character is also not really a hero. He manages to protect the kid for about two days. I am sure Willis had better luck.

Aside from the pacing that kept hitting speed bump errors, the book also suffers from overuse of inappropriate adjectives and adverbs. It almost looks like the story was written and then pumped up with last minute descriptions. Another sign of the book's quality is that it was originally released only a year ago under the title SIMPLE SIMON and it did not sell all that well (which makes for a lower-priced movie contract). So go see the movie if you want to but stay away from the book.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but predictable
Review: Mercury rising was a good book, but I felt that it was somewhat predictable. But I loved all the action scenes. I've never heard of Ryne Douglas Pearson before, but he is a great author and I would definately read another of his books.

Rating:
Summary: One of the worst mystery books ever written
Review: Ryne Douglas Pearson, give me the name of your writing teacher! Boring and clumsily plotted, with the wit and charm of the Sears Robuck catalog. If I had something better to do the day I read this junk I would have never have bothered to finish it. The protagonist of this book is an African-American but in the movie he's played by Bruce Willis. Shame on you Ryan for allowing the character to be de-raced by Hollywood.