Home :: Books :: Mystery & Thrillers  

Arts & Photography
Audio CDs
Audiocassettes
Biographies & Memoirs
Business & Investing
Children's Books
Christianity
Comics & Graphic Novels
Computers & Internet
Cooking, Food & Wine
Entertainment
Gay & Lesbian
Health, Mind & Body
History
Home & Garden
Horror
Literature & Fiction
Mystery & Thrillers

Nonfiction
Outdoors & Nature
Parenting & Families
Professional & Technical
Reference
Religion & Spirituality
Romance
Science
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Sports
Teens
Travel
Women's Fiction
Brandenburg : A Novel

Brandenburg : A Novel

List Price: $24.95
Your Price: $24.95
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 2 3 4 >>

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good story, so-so writing
Review: I was interested in the premise of the book when I picked it up at the bookstore for an upcoming vacation. The plot itself was well-conceived (although as I read, it seemed like I'd heard the story before in a lot of late-60s/early-70s spy movies and TV shows). But the writing itself was a little disappointing. Meade's presentation of the story was somewhat labored, some of narration repetitive, and the injection and development of so many minor and supporting characters made it confusing. Furthermore, Meade ought to shoot his editor, or spring for a word processing program with spell-check and punctuation-check.

I confess to being compelled to finish the book, especially toward the end, but it was too easy to put down, especially on a beach where it's main competition for my attention was my bikini-clad wife and other similarly-attired females.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A compelling page-turner
Review: I was stuck on the tarmac at the airport in Providence, RI for 4 hours waiting for O'Hare to reopen: and was I ever glad I had this book to keep me company! Not great literature by any stretch, but a truly compelling page-turner. Interesting characters, and an almost believable plot (I don't want to give it away, but before entering Meade's compelling story, you would NEVER imagine that you'd find his premise believable...but he somehow makes it work!).

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: not the greatest,
Review: Just by imagening the possibility of a Fouth Reich and how Germany would achieve it made me get this book. The idea of a 4th Reich is very powerful and fearing and the way it is presented in the book is quite entertaining. It's a nice, smooth book and not boring. It is sometimes surprising and the events are very film-like.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Entertaining
Review: Just by imagening the possibility of a Fouth Reich and how Germany would achieve it made me get this book. The idea of a 4th Reich is very powerful and fearing and the way it is presented in the book is quite entertaining. It's a nice, smooth book and not boring. It is sometimes surprising and the events are very film-like.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: The Nazi's are coming! The Nazi's are coming!
Review: Run of the mill thriller that mines all the same ground that other thriller writers have already picked over. Nothing new is said. The good guys win (though way too many die!). And those Nazi's down in South America are foiled again.

Believable => No

Fun => Most of the Time

A good summer vacation read.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Melatonin on the double
Review: St. Martin's has the clout to get reviewers and book peddlers to push a slowly paced sleeper with the thrust of a Saturn rocket- Only in America, where publishing is as deftly engineered as the Lowinsky lip service and Jerry Springer's jive. Go to Australia for a read that'll keep you turning pages to a beat that'll put a smile on your face-spear of golgotha. I bought that book-I wrote it too.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: atmospheric thriller!
Review: this is a classic thriller that pits a international policeman,a lovely reporter against evil conspiracy to start the fourth reich.Meade's sinister premise is backed with exotic atmosphere, violent action, plot twists and some really nasty villians that leads to chilling conclusion that will make you pause and think!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Come on, get real.
Review: This was like somebody was writing a term paper for someone else. Nothing personal but if I bluy a book I hope that the guys reviewing it can be straight about what's between the coers. It was B O R I N G and I mean boring as hell. I'm sure the publisher payed the guy a lot of money for a miltibook contract, but how did anyone witha anything better do really read this and think that it was anything that made you keep turning pages. It made me turn the lights off and read a book I read before. Like something great like an old Jack Higgins book or Ross Thomas story. Who do you reviewers think your kidding? Oops. I know who. Everyone who reads the reviews that the company pays you to praise. When are reviewers going to be legit? Dumb question. Sorry Mister Meade. This was crummy. I hope you can write something that keeps our interest. Oh yeah, that Sands of Sakkara, I borrowed it from someon and read few pages and it looks like the same thing. Whatever, you already made it with the reviewers so, what can a poor schmuck like me have to say? Keep up the mediocre work.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Fast-paced, well-researched...good read
Review: This was my first Glenn Meade book, and I was impressed by the amount of research he's put into this book. Like any other thriller, it has some loopholes, but overall, I think it is fun...specially if you are into the Forsyth-Higgins genre

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Abysmal
Review: This work is long, weak and a tremendous disappointment. The characters are poorly formed and poorly executed. Depicted in the most impossible of situations and terribly stereotypical, they tend to irritate more than entertain. If a reader can bear grown women being referred to as girls, often, very often, and descriptions of the same being lurid and misplaces in the text of the novel, they just might enjoy this supposed thriller that takes place on both sides of the Atlantic. What I am sure of is the author knows the street address and organization of every law enforcement and counter-espionage agency in Europe. To a lesser extent in South America where in this book, a new Nazi party is doing its best to revive the Reich. There are endless and needless explanations of the form and function of these agencies throughout the novel. Still, with all this manpower and resources all over the world, the protagonist, a British DES agent, and his unlikely sidekick, a sexy, blonde journalist, are the only people between peace and a new Nazi Empire. Very predictably the sexy blonde the progeny of an SS officer and the hero, Joe Volkmann is the son of a Jewish victim of the Holocaust. However it is made clear he himself is not Jewish, only half. I think it is also very clear the author doesn't know anything about Jewish people or culture and was just trying to make the book interesting. There are some almost humorous gaffes committed by the writer when it came to ethnicity and international culture. Why a DSE agent would move a journalist he has never met into his home, cris-cross the globe with her, investigating the murder of her cousin in Paraguay is a stretch of the imagination. The reader has no idea how is footing the bill for all this travel or why European intelligencia would even be interested. The text mires down into a hodgepodge of poor Ian Fleming imitation. The hero is haunted by his father's suffering. He is also terribly clumsy and inept to be the dashing Bond-like character he's supposed to be. The beginning of the book is actually better than the latter part. Other than the grotesque but unrealistic murders and cruelty inflicted by the neo-Nazis, there is little else in the realm of action-adventure genre offered. Characters and situations depicted are weak, stereotypical and poorly if at all developed. It is just so improbable and so typical of a bad 1960's spy thriller, it is hard to finish reading. At just under 400 pages, it happens to be a long one, too. The formula used as the plot, super sharp agent, lovely sidekick, Nazis as villains, a nuclear weapon as the bad guy's bargaining chip, lots and lots of narrative about what the "girls" look like in and out of their clothes, and a climax wherein the super agent meets his arch-nemeses eye to eye, fulfilling his destiny, is just worn out. And pitifully re-done in this novel. Unless you are very bored and want a few laughs, skip this offering.


<< 1 2 3 4 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates