Afterburn

Rating:
Summary: Listen to the professional reviewers
Review: Listen to what the real critics - especially Booklist - had to say about Colin Harrison's "Afterburn" and ignore the few negative and misguided reviews that have been posted here.This is one of the very best thrillers/mystery novels to have been published in 2000: witty, supremely intelligent,and crafted by a pro. "Afterburn" was one of only a small handful of titles this past year that kept me compulsively reading long after it should have been lights out. Don't miss a truly great read!

Rating:
Summary: Read at your own risk!
Review: I whole-heartedly agree with a previous reviewer who described the experience of reading this book as "time in my life which I can never have back." I wish I had read that review before buying this book. This is the first novel by Mr. Harrison I have had the opportunity to read, and will be the last.

The scenes of graphic torture spread throughout the book are visceral and intense, but at least seem to be relative to the story until the end. The way he concludes his narrative is disturbingly pointless and callus, but worst of all unbelieveable. He subjects the reader to some of the most disturbing imagery I can recall, and for no good reason.

Do yourself a favor and don't bother.

Rating:
Summary: Don't bother
Review: In all my years of reading I have never encountered a book that made me feel as though I had been cheated out of a portion of my life. If there was a way to go back in time and not read this I would do it.

The story of bad things happening to miserable people leaves the reader feeling somehow infected by contact with the book.

Harrisson has great command of the minute details of life but misses the big questions,who cares and why should they?

If you can imagine a Quentin Tarantino movie without humor or plot resolution, it would be Afterburn.

Rating:
Summary: Nothing to get excited about
Review: A page turner undermined by mafia members portayed as the Soprano's gone psychotic. The sex and violence could be disturbing to some, but the real turn off is the plot which sort of fizzles out half way through the book. What takes place then is not so much a clinic on how to drill holes in live people, but how also to have a good time while doing so.

Rating:
Summary: A sorry introduction to this author
Review: After hearing good things about Colin Harrison I was looking forward to reading this novel (my first by him)...what a waste! I was tempted to put it down several times (particularly after the first torture scene) but hung on hoping things would improve. Unfortunately, additional gratuitous torture scenes were the reward. There is some good character development but it was just too grisly for me.

Rating:
Summary: What a horrible waste....
Review: Very few of the books that I buy do I not finish. This was one of them. Terribly formulaic in that dark 90's sort of way, off-putting in its bleakness without any kind of redeeming balance. Try Thomas Harris if you like that sort of tale; one winds up strangely admiring his Dr. Lecter. While Charlie in this novel is not the same kind of character, he winds up being disappointingly pathetic. A good review of this book prompted me to buy it sight unseen - an awful mistake. Truly a 0 star.

Rating:
Summary: eureka!
Review: And now we know the secret underlying the Harrison marriage! A love of torture scenes! An inexplicably grueling read. A case of sensibility train-wrecking genuine talent. It's all too bad.

Rating:
Summary: Violence Du Jour
Review: I read the whole thing, and wished I hadn't. The writing is great. The situations are convincing, except for the killer sex. The characters are consistent and generally avoid stereotypes. But I felt exploited by the use of violence that seemed entirely prurient, violence solely for the sake of sensation. I did not learn anything from the way the characters dealt with it, largely because they and their grim circumstances were foreign to my own experiences, and probably those of most other readers. I want to encounter people whom I recognize or imagine I might meet. I want to feel like their experiences might be my own. There's a lot of shock value in this book, but it only left me feeling used.

Rating:
Summary: Unrealistic Sex/Unrealistic Plot
Review: The book was definitely riveting . . . but for all the wrong reasons. You know how they say water seeks it's own level? Well, now we know why this author is married to Kathryn Harrison . . . the author of "The Kiss," the woman who had an affair with her own father. The sex scenes are too far out to be believed. This author has a very strange perspective on the female orgasm, but he apparently found a woman to marry whose sexual outlook is as screwed up as his own. And I so hate novels that have characters spell out all of the the "scams" by narrative to another person. The book held my interest, but disappointed in the end.

Rating:
Summary: Scam
Review: Incredibly, one of my son's fifth grade friends brought me this book, which no doubt he snitched off the remainder rack of our local independent bookstore (where such stuff is practically given away anyway). Fortunately, he hadn't read it, but mistook it as something I would appreciate (perhaps the cover photo, to a 10 year old, spelled "deep" or "important"). Out of consideration for the the kid's feelings, I spent half an evening with the book, but wished I'd watched tv--or cleaned the gutters--or done anything else instead. This is a lifeless, joyless, altogether artless effort, clearly written with one (jaunticed) eye on a movie contract, the other on fast bucks for a paperback deal. The author, who another reader aptly points out is an editor at Harpers, must have called in his colleagues to promote this, getting it a whole lot more notice than it deserves, and the sort of blurbs usually reserved for serious fiction. I suppose that's the way things go in the publishing world today, but they shouldn't. It makes it difficult for readers to distinguish between serious fiction--or at least a good beach book--and a book so poorly written and edited that it should have never found a publisher. As a lawyer, I feel books of this nature should be published with a disclaimer...it's a scam.