Review by Booklist Review
Gideon Crew, the hero of Preston and Child's new novel, has a complicated backstory. As a boy, he watched as his father, who had taken a man hostage, was shot down by a sniper. Less than a decade later, he learned from his mother that his father had been used by the U.S. government as a scapegoat for a failed intelligence project. After dispatching the man responsible for his father's murder, Gideon is offered a job with a private contractor that does hush-hush work for the government. Gideon's mission: to intercept a Chinese scientist and relieve him of the plans for a top-secret weapon. The mission doesn't go as drawn, however, and Gideon is left with a mysterious string of numbers. Now, working mostly alone, he must determine what the numbers mean. This novel (which is apparently the first installment in a new series) isn't as elegantly written or constructed as the authors' popular Special Agent Pendergast novels, but it does once you get past the backstory hold the reader's interest, and Gideon is undeniably a big-shouldered character, capable of supporting a series.--Pitt, David Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
John Glover's hard-edged, slightly sinister voice (familiar to fans of television's Smallville) sustains Preston and Child's entertaining but slight thriller. In this installment, Gideon Crew, whom Glover imbues with more depth and humanity than the text itself suggests, is seeking revenge for the murder of his father, an Army intelligence officer. But he's interrupted in his mission, conscripted by a clandestine agency to perform a near-suicidal task: to steal the plans for a Chinese WMD. Crew exhibits extreme versatility in accomplishing his task, for when it comes to an impossible mission successfully performed, a better example is the way Glover adds dimension to the novel's cardboard characters and vitality to its overly long backstory. A Grand Central hardcover. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The dynamic duo is back! New York Times best-selling writers Preston and Child (www.prestonchild.com), creators of the iconic Agent Pendergast series, strike gold once again with this story about a man dying of an incurable brain disease who is hired by a secretive government organization to steal something from a defecting Chinese scientist. Protagonist Gideon Crew is one clever character, and Smallville's Lionel Luthor-actor John Glover-is the perfect narrator to capture his humor, suspense, and ingenuity. The final scene in New York City's Potters Field is one of the best ever written by Preston and Child, but the entire book is a roller-coaster delight from start to finish. Highly, highly recommended! [See Major Audio releases, LJ 1/11; the Grand Central hc also received a starred review, LJ 1/11.-Ed.]-Joseph L. Carlson, Vandenberg Air Force Base Lib., Lompoc, CA (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A shadowy quasi-governmental organization hires a highly resourceful art thief-turned-physicist to obtain plans for a mysterious weapon in the first book in Preston and Child's (Fever Dream, 2010, etc.) new series.Gideon Crew was a successful art thief until his mother, on her death bed, informed him that his father had not been the failure he'd always assumed he was, but was in fact set up to take the blame for the mistakes of his superiors. She urges him to seek revenge. After years of preparationincluding getting a job as a physicist at Los Alamoshe enacts his revenge and prepares to devote his newfound free time to fly-fishing. His plans are interrupted by the appearance of a mysterious man in his favorite fishing spot, who offers him a large sum of money to take on a dangerous mission. It seems a secretive organization that does work for the Department of Homeland Security took notice of the work to avenge his father and wants to enlist him to procure the plans to a mysterious weapon being brought to New York by a possible defector from China. As part of his recruitment "pitch," Crew is informed that he suffers from an incurable disease and has a short time to live. Faced with a dwindling set of options, Crew takes the mission and spends the next several days desperately trying to get his hands on the plans without falling into the clutches of Nodding Crane, a deadly operative sent by the Chinese to retrieve the plansand kill anyone who gets too close to them. No reader expects Preston and Child to let too much realism get in the way of a good storynor should theybut there are limits, and the authors sometimes exceed them.While the fun is, for the most part, worth the outlandish coincidences, exceedingly stupid adversaries and/or superhuman feats, it is not worth it by a large margin. Still, Crew is a great character, and this series holds promise.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
