Adrian McKinty came up with the kind of Gotcha gimmick that gives thriller novelists wet dreams......the attention-snapping idea that guarantees a stay-up-all-night readership and an instant movie deal......
How can you resist this plot..........children abducted and held for ransom by tormented parents who've been threatened into kidnapping a child to save their own.......who in turn has been kidnapped by yet another set of parents desperate to save their child, who in turn. (get the idea yet?) ........ ..thereby.generating a perpetual conga line of stolen, traumatized kids and parents turned into instant criminals.........
A never ending, seemingly infinite chain of innocent parents extorted and transformed into ruthless snatchers of random children as part of the ransom deal..........
Befitting such a striking, diabolical conspiracy, the book zips along with ruthless efficiency in its action and twists. McKinty moves his characters around like a Grandmaster chess champion.
A staggering, mathematically impressive progression of evil and cruelty, engineered by........(ooops, no spoilers here....)
The problem: There's not one sentence, not one character, not one moment that's even remotely believable.......or has any resemblance to real human behavior. It functions more as a grotesque, modern-day Grimm's fairy tale.
McKinty makes little or no effort to convince a reader that all of these innocent people would instantly convert themselves to violent kidnappers..........and eagerly seize and terrorize somebody else's child instead of calling the FBI.......
Nope, don't hold your breath for that.. All these unreal folks carry on not like human beings, but like cardboard cutout characters in an action franchise movie. If this book ever does make it to the screen, only a mindless, inhuman shlockmeister like Michael Bay could do it justice.
True, we turned the pages fast enough.......but most of the time, while shaking our heads, laughing out loud and muttering.....'you gotta be shittin' me' with this'......
Two thirds into it, the book pulls out a ludicrous twist in order to bring victims and villains together for an explosive, ultra-violent finale. Like the ending of the book we reviewed a few days ago, 'The Girl Who Lived Twice' you can picture the author rubbing his hands together anticipating a film deal......
If you're willing to lobotomize yourself before you dig into it, 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)....it's fast and entertaining enough. But if you can't tolerate thrillers in which people behave as if Earth isn't their home planet.......you stand warned.
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