Rules of Deception by Christopher Reich
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Book Reviews of Rules of Deception
Book Review: Plot is confusing, but still a page turnerDr. Jonathan Ransom is a surgeon with Doctors Without Borders. His wife, Emma, dies u
Summary: 3 Stars
Dr. Jonathan Ransom is a surgeon with Doctors Without Borders. His wife, Emma, dies unexpectantly while mountain climbing, and the next day, baggage claim tickets arrive at their hotel for her. Ransom discovers she was a double spy, and goes on a wild ride around Europe trying to discover who she was.
While the plot is intricate and complex, it was a little bit confusing. All the twists and turns left me wondering which one was the good team, and which one was the bad team. Some of the characters started blurring together and I had trouble keeping everything separate. Who's working for the Department of Defense, who's working for the CIA, and who's working for the Israelis? It all gets jumbled.
Everything is a bit exaggerated and unbelievable, yet it is a fascinating read. It is fast paced and even though it is confusing, it does manage to keep the reader engaged and constantly wondering, `what's next?'
Book Review: Worth the Price?
Summary: 3 Stars
Got the kindle version and certainly this book was worth the price. And I definitely will check out some of Mr. Reich's other works. I enjoyed the beginning and particularly the end of the book, but it tended to lag big time in the middle. It could have done with some major editing, and it was VERY difficult to keep all of the players straight. At times I yearned for a list of characters such as we used to see in older novels. Not a good sign. An editor with a red pencil would have done wonders for this book.Book Review: Clichéd, contrived, and corny
Summary: 2 Stars
Excuse me, ladies and gents - all 94 reviewers who went before me - have we been reading the same book? If you extracted all the unnecessary, superfluous, redundant, clichéd, unoriginal, worn-out, passé, overworked, stereotypical, timeworn, banal, commonplace, hackneyed, overused, stale, tired, unimaginative, ...sigh... I am running out of synonyms for awful writing - expressions and words, we would have a 200 page decent book, instead of a 576-page bloat. Somebody compared this writer to the likes of Ludlum, Forsyth and Trevanian, true masters of the thriller genre.... Are you kidding? If this is what passes for modern thriller-writing, I think I am changing the class of books I have been reading with such relish for 40 years. I will give this book two stars for the plot. But, it is pretty awful reading material. I, for one, was not entertained and I will probably have to see a dentist to see about the damage caused by hours of teeth-gnashing.Book Review: Audiobook good but way too long
Summary: 2 Stars
I listened to this and found it fairly interesting but would have probably much more enjoyed an abridged version. There were just too many long stories, too many characters, and way too many flashbacks. I'm not sure but one of the busboys in a restaurant probably had a flashback:-) I believe an abridged version probably would have cut out a lot of the irrelevant stuff and made the book much more interesting. The narrator of the book, I believe Paul Michael, was excellent.Book Review: Not believable, in any sense of the word
Summary: 1 Stars
I loved the first 2/3rds of the book (it was my first Christopher Reich read). Granted, the idea that the main character's wife was living the secret life of a spy (like "True Lies") was a stretch, but I was OK with it. (One day I want to find the person who lives a life of a spy, while in real life is holding down a significant position at an active non-profit...and whose spouse had no idea of the double-life).
We can tell that there are two sides--one wants to arm Iran with Nukes and kill a plane full of people, the other has an assassin killing the first group. But when it is revealed that these two battling groups are the Dept of Defense and the CIA, it loses all believability. Not a soul in these organizations would blow the whistle on such terrorist acts? A don't buy it.
Then the frosting on the cake--the leader of one of the groups is doing this because he converted to Christianity? "Like Christ suffered for people, he would suffer for all the hundreds he killed in the plane." Right (??)
Sorry--it was a good tale that was laughable by the end.