Gideon

Rating:
Summary: Superb -- the best thriller I've read since THE FIRM.
Review: I picked this book up this weekend because I saw an ad in the New York Times. I started reading on Friday night and pretty much stayed up all night because I couldn't put it down. I just finished it a few minutes ago and I had to write this review because I'm so excited. This is a great thriller! The characters are interesting and believable and either extremely likeable or wonderfully detestable. The plot is fast paced and the writing is great -- much better than an average thriller. I can't recommend this book highly enough. I'm a thriller nut and this is better than Grisham or Patterson or DeMille or any of those guys. It will also make a great movie! I can't wait to see who plays Harry Wagner (my favorite character and one of the great bad guys of all time).

Rating:
Summary: GOOD LUCK PUTTING THIS ONE DOWN!!
Review: Gideon is THE Book of the year (until The Devil's Teardrop comes out) !!! Gideon is the most inventive and original thriller I've read in a while. Its written by two men, Peter Gethers and David Handler under the pseudonym Russell Andrews and I can not wait until "Mr. Andrews" writes a new book. Please hurry. I'm waiting.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing!
Review: This book is really a page turner. You'll be on the edge of your seat the entire time. It really was amazing and exciting.

Rating:
Summary: Great Summer Read!
Review: I enjoyed this page turning thriller. This book is full of suspense that keeps you guessing. Watch out, the identity of the Closer will surprise you!

Rating:
Summary: Fast, furious and keeps you guessing!
Review: I was lucky enough to pick up an uncorrected proof copy at the London International Book Fair and once I started reading it I just couldn't put it down! As a lover of msyteries and thrillers I pride myself on working out the plot by the 50th page, but this has so many twists, turns and unanswered questions that I just wanted more! I trust that the authors have sold the film rights, because this, I am certain, would be a box-office smash. I hope that there is more to come from the 'joint' pens of Russell Andrews and will continue to recommend it to all my friends.

Rating:
Summary: Three Days of the Condor Revisited
Review: Remember when Robert Redford's character in Three Days of the Condor struggled to understand why all of his colleagues were assassinated? All he could explain was he "just read books". Well, Carl Granville was hired to write a book about GIDEON. Little did he know anyone connected with him or the book would also be systematically eliminated as with Redford's character. This is a fast-moving, heart-wrenching, politically explosive ride that has this reader seeing John Cusack (Pushing Tin, Con Air, Grosse Pointe Blank)as Carl Granville and Tammy Lauren (ex-Ginger of t.v.'s Homefront and Walker: Texas Ranger) as Amanda Mays. Somewhere between the power and greed one has to know the difference between right and wrong. As the body count rises, so do the stakes. All because of ONE secret. (Actually, there are a few more stunners as well!) And these two are more than up to the challenge. In this day and age of computer technology and information databases, these two use every bit of high-tech equipment, common sense, a good bottle of hair dye and a savvy computer hacker/friend with an attitude to stay alive. There are a many twists and turns through this story and some truths more shocking than others. There is a conclusion this roller coaster ride. Yet one wonders of all the untold stories out there, how many more Gideons will never know justice or be able to rest in peace? I, personally, want to see Carl Granville and Amanda Mays get back to what they do best, investigative reporting! Maybe they right a few more wrongs after resting up at Big Willie's! :-)

P.S. There is a mistake between Page 268 - 270. If anyone spots the problem, please e-mail me at: [e-mail] or let the author know you spotted the same mistake.

Rating:
Summary: Not to read if you want to sleep...
Review: This book kept me not only awake but thinking about the story when I wasn't actually reading it. I'd find myself working on my laptop and my mind drifting toward the story and hungry to get back to it as soon as I possibly could. Definitely could not put this one down! I'm looking forward to reading more of what this team has put together already.

Rating:
Summary: Power House Thriller...!!!
Review: I picked up this book at a used book store. Only its not the book that was out after they printed it. This book is an unrevised proof, and not the real thing. I found some cute mistakes and misspelled words and loved it!! Great book to add to a collection, boy was I lucky. Great action packed thriller, sorry, you DO have to READ this for YOUR self!!

Rating:
Summary: AWESOME BOOK
Review: This is the kind of book a good thriller fan devours. "Gideon" is one of the most suspenseful, intricate, and chilling novels I've read in a long time. Without going into a rehash of the plotline, suffice to say Russell Andrews has woven a tale of deception, intrigue, murder, betrayal, you name it..it's in there!
The novel opens with a mysterious suicide, and then goes on in so many different directions, your head spins. But it's done so well, you can't help but get involved. The characterizations, I think, rather than being cliche, are wonderfully original. Take the hero, Carl Granville...he's so desperate he gets into something he knows very little about. But once he gets fully involved, he takes the bull by the horns and as any good hero would do, he sticks it out and comes out just fine in the end.
Momma One Eye is beautifully drawn. Although she's not in the novel a lot, her presence is so essential, you can almost hear her chanting her psalms. Then we have Harry Wagner, a very different villain...cold-hearted of course and irreprehensible, but there's a softness in him that makes you like him, just a little. And then, of course, there's President Tom Adamson and his wife, Elizabeth. Now here we have a different take on the president and his wife. Tom Bickford, the vice president, stricken with Bell's palsy; Amanda Ways, Carl's ex-girlfriend who finds herself getting involved; Toni, the would-be actress who lights up Carl's life briefly; The Closer, a cold-hearted villain that you can't find ANY good in; Father Patrick Jennings, a priest who hears a horrifying confession; Nora Adamson, the president's mother, whose one scene is riveting; on and on, throughout, this novel cooks, and has some real shockers in it, too.
Wow, this book blew me away.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Rating:
Summary: Great Premise that Fizzles
Review: Carl Granville is a talented young writer, living in NY, struggling to get his first book published. When his agent dies, he surprisingly is approached by any writer's dream agent who has an interesting propostion for him. He will be given someone's secret diary and he will fictionalize it within 3 weeks. A guard will accompany the installments of the original manuscript to ensure that Carl does not copy it and at the same time, deliver the finished fictionization to the agent. For doing this, Carl receives $50k up front, $50K when he finishes and the guarantee that his first book be published and seriously marketed. Carl readily accepts, burning the midnight oil to fulfill his end of the deal, but when his new agent and a female neighbor mysteriously end up dead, Carl finds himself out on a limb from which he cannot possibly survive, as he is thought to be and labeled by the media a serious killer on a mission.

Sound fascinating?

It is----but sadly, once the actual diary is read and transformed into Carl's manuscript, the killings are executed and Carl has no where to run, the book just loses steam fast. Suddenly the interesting premise transmogrifies into formula--Carl's ex-girlfriend (conveniently a Wash. Post journalist) becomes involved and the reader follows the actions of a ring of outsiders whose histories eventually tie together to lead to the plot's denouement. Problem is, it is just too formula to be fresh and lead to disappointment even when reading the book's most startling revelations.
I picked this book up after reading this writing teams' latest offering, "Icarus". Although, I found "Icarus" to be a moderate-to--superior suspense type yarn, I expected Gideon to be better based on its reviews. I was disappointed.