Red Warning

Red Warning by Matthew Quirk

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

I DNFed this book. Part of the problem i think was before reading this, I read two Adam Brookes thrillers and after those, this was just to flat to engage my interest. The prose leaned towards the purple end of the spectrum, the protagonist was far too guild-ridden and I found all the angst merely annoying. I think the author wants to develop his hero's 'character' which is popular among the 60% of readers who focus on character development and regard plot as secondary. One thing bothering me was the lack of professionalism in both the protagonist and the villain. The villain has a bomb planted and a remote control device in his pocket. He has identified our not-so-secret agent. The individual is walking in the correct direction. If he waits a bit and then detonates his device, there's a good chance he'll kill his target. First, he phones him and let's him know he's being stalked. Then he sets of the bomb so as to kill and injure a bunch of innocent people and leave his opponent alive. Somewhere around here I started shaking my head and after our hero spends page after page being 'driven' to catch or kill the villain I gave up on the book as a bad effort.

Interestingly in both book, this and the ones by Brookes the senior bureaucrats are obstructionist; however at least Brookes provides them with motives. Here they seem merely incompetent. it's rather bad when these bureaucrats appear far more professional then the protagonist. In any event I found the hero's constant whining about the suits on the seventh floor merely annoying. The whole environment was far to facile for me.



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