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February 22, 2007
Panic - Jeff Abbott
Another week, another crappy thriller, I really must stop reading them now. Open appeal to WH Smiths - stop sticking these turkeys in prominent positions on your shelves as part of 'Buy one get one half price" offers!
Anyway, Evan is a young documentary film maker, and his mother calls him very early one morning to ask him to drive over to her house to see her urgently. When he gets there - she is dead, murdered. How could this happen? Why would someone want to kill his sweet mom?
Before long Evan is fighting for his life, being pursued by the police, the CIA, and the 'Deeps' who are a secret limb of the CIA, his girlfriend is also a bit suspect. He comes to realise that his family are not what he always assumed, and that they have a very dark past.
Relentless action, stereotyped psychopathic villains and danger from every corner stops things from getting boring, but I wasn't really involved enough to care that much about Evan. Being a geek, I liked some of the cryptography - hiding data using steganography inside photograps or MP3 music files is a fairly neat idea to use, and I was pleased that though he mentions computers quite a lot, he manages to get the technical details right.
One good character tries to save Evan, risking his own life several times, only to get written out ignominiously - I think this was a mistake and would have liked to see a bit more of him.
I'm disappointed in the title too, pretty meaningless as no-one actually panics in the whole story. I think it would be a fun film to watch in a "Bourne Identity" kind of way, but no, I really don't think I'll be trying any other of his books any time soon.
Posted by se71 at February 22, 2007 09:16 AM
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