Final Victim

Rating:
Summary: TV Pap Zillionaire Slams First Amendment! Film at 11!
Review: In a thinly disguised attack on "anon.pennet.no" (obviously anon.penet.fi) this Hollywood trash machine reveals his disdain for a democratic cyberworld. He obviously can't understand it. So he presents trivial and fraudulent arguments that the political types, equally ignorant and arrogant, will use as fodder in the censorship wars.He sprinkles the novel with techno-tidbits to make it look as if he spent more than an hour with a newspaper in doing research. Of course, he gets most of it wrong. And rather than trying to understand one of the most important developments in the history communications, he engages in perverted populism, appealing to and augmenting popular ignorance. I'm sure he's seen as a 'Net expert at Beverley Hills and Washington cocktail parties. For example, in referring to remailers, the fem protagonist actually says "I told you this remailer was a cesspool!" (page 109). Just in case you low-IQ types missed the point of the preceding melodrama. The author obviously assumes the reading public is as stupid as he is lazy. With his TV success, who could blame him? This is a book only Al Gore, the FBI, and the NSA could love. If you really do want to read an excellent cyber-thriller that gets the technical stuff right, read "Backslash" by Lovejoy. Not only does Lovejoy take minimum license for his storyline, he also spent the time to actually learn the philosophy and controversies concerning the use of the new communications. Such as encryption and remailers. Backslash is very thoughtful as well as being a great suspense novel. Final Victim is about what you'd expect from one of Hollywood's most successful prime-time formula trash writers. Brainless and condescending.

Rating:
Summary: A good plot, but a little too dark at times
Review: Stephen Cannell has shown that he can be very diverse as to his plots, but Final Victim isn't his best. The characters are well drawn, but the plot is fairly unbelievable and the antagonist is a little too evil.

Rating:
Summary: RATS!
Review: Stephen J. Cannell writes telebooks or cinemabooks. Having given us such classic t.v. shows as ROCKFORD FILES, A-TEAM, and WISEGUY, he knows how to write action scenarios, and fill them with almost cardboard characters that work only because they're in his books. We have the renegade DOC agent, John Lockwood, divorced from his beautiful wife, separated from his sweet daughter; the beautiful, brilliant and lonely Karen Lawson, a victim of only doing what her father wanted, who finds herself paired with Lockwood; and the handsome dashing (think Johnny Depp) computer hacker who seeks revenge on the man who put him in jail (Lockwood). Throw in the obscenely vulgar villain named Leonard Land/Rat/Wind Minstrel, who suffered abuse as a child from his religously fanatical mother, and you have the ingredients for this enjoyable diversion.
Toward the end, Cannell seems to make some incredulous things happen to hasten the plot, because if the two heroes are as bad off as they've been depicted up to this point, there is no way in hell they could do what they do at the end. But, hey, let's have fun, popcorn, etc., and enjoy this dose of high-velocity fluff.

Rating:
Summary: RATS!
Review: Stephen J. Cannell writes telebooks or cinemabooks. Having given us such classic t.v. shows as ROCKFORD FILES, A-TEAM, and WISEGUY, he knows how to write action scenarios, and fill them with almost cardboard characters that work only because they're in his books. We have the renegade DOC agent, John Lockwood, divorced from his beautiful wife, separated from his sweet daughter; the beautiful, brilliant and lonely Karen Lawson, a victim of only doing what her father wanted, who finds herself paired with Lockwood; and the handsome dashing (think Johnny Depp) computer hacker who seeks revenge on the man who put him in jail (Lockwood). Throw in the obscenely vulgar villain named Leonard Land/Rat/Wind Minstrel, who suffered abuse as a child from his religously fanatical mother, and you have the ingredients for this enjoyable diversion.
Toward the end, Cannell seems to make some incredulous things happen to hasten the plot, because if the two heroes are as bad off as they've been depicted up to this point, there is no way in hell they could do what they do at the end. But, hey, let's have fun, popcorn, etc., and enjoy this dose of high-velocity fluff.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty good.
Review: Stephen J. Cannell,s second book, Final Victim is not as good as his first, The Plan but it is still a page turner. Mr. Cannell has a knack for creating characters. All of the leads are fascinating especially Karen Dawson a beatiful genious with an apparent compulsive obsessive personality. The villian is scary although a bit farfetched. The plot is chilling and ghoulish. This is part horror, part drama, part action adventure. A good book overall.

Rating:
Summary: This book was the best thriller written by Steven Cannell
Review: The beginning of this book had a thriller-start that kept on giving. I have read almost all of Patricia Cromwell's and James Patterson's books and this has gotten them beat by far. This kept my attention (which is hard to do) and kept me guessing throughout the entire book. This is a definite "hat's off" to the author. I simply hope that Leonard Land doesn't come creeping around my house!

Rating:
Summary: Strong opener, silly ending
Review: The conspicuous giant was supposed to be supersmart and a computerwiz. He turned out to be a bumbling slob who was mediocre with computech. Don't expect this to be a computer crime book, the use of the computer ended midway in the book. The ending was not plausible nor believable.

Rating:
Summary: Since when does U.S. Customs go after serial killers?
Review: The creator of the A-Team takes on Silence of the Lambs and The Net! Computers, heavy metal and lots of gore. Not a bad read but....the plot has holes big enough to drive a truck through. Why would a serial killer profiler be working for U.S. Customs? Why would one of their rogue agents join her in flushing out a cyber killer virtually single handedly (with the help of a hacker/cracker they spring from prison). I don't think we'll see Hackman (no pun meant!) or Eastwood in this one. Strictly straight to video

Rating:
Summary: Bland
Review: The final victim may be the reader. Ok I am sure it is difficult to come up with a new exciting story all the time so I do not get too disappointed when an author goes to the holy grail of thriller writing - the bad cop, good side kick murder mystery caper. But this book pulled out so many of the good old stand by's that I thought it was written just to add them in. Sure the story is good - we all know it, and the action keeps you reading that particular section of he book, but the author tried to make these dull, well used characters have some depth and he just could not pull it off. I do give him credit for trying to make these central casting characters a little more meaty, but unfortunately all it did was slow down the book. If you are looking for something new, this is probably not the one to stop on, if you are looking for a standard fair action mystery then this will fit the bill.

Rating:
Summary: Bland
Review: The final victim may be the reader. Ok I am sure it is difficult to come up with a new exciting story all the time so I do not get too disappointed when an author goes to the holy grail of thriller writing - the bad cop, good side kick murder mystery caper. But this book pulled out so many of the good old stand by's that I thought it was written just to add them in. Sure the story is good - we all know it, and the action keeps you reading that particular section of he book, but the author tried to make these dull, well used characters have some depth and he just could not pull it off. I do give him credit for trying to make these central casting characters a little more meaty, but unfortunately all it did was slow down the book. If you are looking for something new, this is probably not the one to stop on, if you are looking for a standard fair action mystery then this will fit the bill.