Rating: 
Summary: Things that make the world 'round: Blood, cash and sperm
Review: ..."Afterburn" concerns itself with what peoplecare about now, here on the eve of the 21st century. That is, money,death and life in all of its wiggling, messy weirdness. Life, asCharlie tells us, is your plane getting shot down, your wife going crazy. And if your life isn't like that--hang on, it's coming for you, trust me. I finished "Afterburn" yesterday and was mesmerized if not outright floored as I raced to its conclusion...Having been there and worked with folks who are New Yorkers, I can say that Harrison captures the place and people admirably, pinning it up in all of its cruelty for everyone to see...The bad dudes in this book feel like bad dudes albeit very smart ones, and the gruesomeness of this novel adds to its power and doesn't detract. Mr. Harrison captures life on the edge: the edge of sanity, the edge of life, the edge of the 21st century, the edge of death, the edge of madness. This book is an unflinching, unwavering heart-pounding, head-knocking, white-knuckle inducing (insert your own overused adjective of praise) thriller of the first order. It's a thriller for smart people who read big books with big words. It's a thriller for lonely people who want to hold onto to the passion in their lives. It's a thriller for people who know death, who know sex and are smart enough to be afraid of both. (And the sex scenes are sexy and wild and over-the-top but, my People-magazine reading friends in Iowa and Florida, the sex depicted herein feels and seems about right--not just "right" for a thriller but for the passionate lives of real people in desperate situations...I would say that if you liked David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest" and admired its big, baggy dose of energy, information and capturing life as it's being lived right now in America; if you added the testosterone of Thom Jones in his "Pugilist at Rest" phase; and if you think that James Ellroy's L.A. Quartet books are the cat's meow, baby, then "Afterburn" is for you. It's an urban, information-ized, know-everything, be-everything, do-everything novel with focus, energy and gusto. As someone who did not like Harrison's last book "Manhatten Nocture" I was wary of this one, but after finishing it, I was glad I did. Rock on.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Book
Review: Colin Harrison's Afterburn is quite simply one of the most powerful genre thrillers in quite some time. The largely negative reader reviews here bafffle me to some extent. I think the core of the problem many have with the book is that it is very raw and deals its characters and plot in a much more realistic fashion than that to which readers of the genre are accustomed. But for those who are willing to forego the standard issue thriller trappings, this book is a gut-wrenching tour-de-force.
Rating: 
Summary: Save your money!
Review: I am always looking for a new good author. This isn't a book that makes me want to buy any more of Mr. Harrison's work. The common theme of torture, ridiculous disgusting sex and characters you can't like made me mad that I'd wasted both my time and my money on this one. I kept thinking it had to get better...it didn't!
Rating:
Summary: Do NOT buy this book!
Review: The ONLY reason I bought this book was that it had beenrecommended as the "Page Turner of the Week" in PeopleMagazine. It was a page turner because I kept thinking it HAD to get better -- it didn't. The book was sex (described in the most lewd, crude ways), torture (a REPEATED event throughout the book) and dismemberment. I am angry that I wasted my time and money, and want to know WHO planted the recommendations for this book. I will not be buying any more of this author's books. END
Rating: 
Summary: disappointing
Review: This book was a starred selection in People magazine. I eagerly set to reading...but lost interest along the way. Torture and sex scenes were uninhibitedly graphic and disturbing. The conclusion was unsatisfying. A let down.
Rating:
Summary: Heartburn
Review: I wouldn't put Colin Harrison on the same level as DeMille,McBain or Harris. The book I read was poorly edited and full of typos. Thecharacters were dull and shallow. The main character Charlie Ravitch is nothing more than a poor mans immitation of Charlie Croker from Tom Wolfe's ``A Man In Full''. I'm not sure why this book is considered a thriller, there's nothing thrilling or even suspenseful in the book. It was overloaded with tons of bad dialogue, gratuitous violence, and unnecessary sex. I'm sorry I wasted my money on this one!
Rating:
Summary: eloquent and hateful
Review: He writes well, has obviously done loads of research, but three graphic torture scenes involving saws, dismemberment, etc.? A very ugly and joyless book.
Rating: 
Summary: Extremely Enjoyable
Review: Colin Harrison has written a story good enough to rival Grisham, Harris & DeMille. Afterburn is surprisingly good story and quite a page turner. The culmination of the 3 main characters meeting results in a page turning read. Afterburn will be the summer must read of 2000.
Rating:
Summary: If you like garbage, this is for you
Review: There's nothing wrong with good schlocky escapist beach-book fiction. Ed McBain, Thomas Harris (exception Hannibal) and J. Wambaugh write good, solid stories with good, solid workmanlike prose. Harrison's problem is that he's trying to, uh, Say Something Important About Death and Family, and quite frankly, this novel, with its stretch-the-bounds-of-absurdity-plot, can't carry it. What's worse, Harrison overwrites. He's like a drunk blathering at a bar. The two-bit philosophizing is embarassing, the kind of stuff you hear in freshman dorms. Charlie Ravitch is the least convincing veteran I've ever encountered in any novel (not to mention real life -- I recently retired from the U.S.M.C), and the women aren't much more than sex machines. And I do mean machines -- Harrison writes about sex the way a Bolshevik writes about pistons: as though it's the height of all human aspirations, but the way Harrison depicts it, there's nothing remotely sexy or fun about it. The only other person who writes so awfully, and so unrealistically, about sex is Harold Robbins. The mafiosos are bad caricatures (especially in light of the Sopranos) and the torture scene is not gross, it's stupid and gratuitous. Maybe the editor, seeing there was really nothing by way of a story here, told Harrison to put in something so they could market it to the gore crowd. Anyway, this is the sort of book that'll have a shelf-life of about a month. Then it will disappear. Thank God. My son gave me this book for my birthday. I might cut him out of the will after this.
Rating: 
Summary: well written and overrated
Review: This is a well written, silly and finally predictable story. All Harrison seems intent on doing is following in the tracks of the other recent gruesome-meisters by attempting to horrify us with his very own version of Hannibal Lector. But in the end AFTERBURN is neither Thomas Harris NOR Auchincloss as one reviewer(inappropriately)put it. I also have a not-so sneaking suspicion Harrison would not have gotten the publicity for the book that he has if he weren't the editor of Harper's Magazine. I mean, how many thrillers do you see blurbed by David Foster Wallace?
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