The Extinction Event

by David Black

After Jack Slidell’s discovery of his law partner’s death in an apparent drug/sex killing, he and the beautiful Caroline Wonder are suddenly hurled into a race for their lives, a hair-raising odyssey filled with outrageous characters and violent suspense. Hit men and sinister government agencies hunt them at every turn, but their quest for justice determines more than the guilt or innocence of a dead the fate of the earth and humanity’s survival hang in the balance. A page-burning, pulse-pounding chase-thriller of earth-shattering dimensions, The Extinction Event is also populated with colorful characters almost Dickensian in their energy and flamboyance. This is a book that will stick with you when you are done, a story you will remember for a long, long time.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery

304 pages, Hardcover

First published May 25, 2010

About the author

David Black is an award-winning journalist, novelist, television screenwriter, producer and teacher.

Librarian's note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[M]

My favorite thing about this book are its blurbs. And by favorite, I mean only thing.

Seriously--Lori Singer! Bill Cosby! The creator of Kate & Allie! And the ne plus ultra, Alec Baldwin: "Black is a serious writer in the old sense, in the absolute sense." I have no idea what that means, but I seriously love it, love it in the old sense, in the absolute sense.

Want a review? Lawyer dies suspiciously. Firm ne'er-do-well and hardboiled scamp gets in the frame with the police. Scamp also trades barbs with firm whippersnapper/hottie. They hate one another, until they love one another, and then sleep with one another, on a cross-country trail, as runners jump over them. Ooops. Spoiler.

Sleazy death leads to conspiracy. Conspiracy is rather tediously developed, but that is in keeping with the prose, which is rather tediously tough and "funny." "Funny" in the old sense, like a smell. Plot develops until the last few pages, when it goes ape-shit. Want another spoiler? It's in the title, so what the hell: what's really behind the conspiracy is not just big business and government cover-up. It's the imminent death of the world via asteroid! Didn't see that coming, did you?

[Paul]

Actual rating: 1.5 stars.

The Extinction Event lives somewhere in the murder mystery/thriller neighborhood, but promises an element of science fiction in the form of, well, an "extinction event"; i.e., a threat to all mankind. I was expecting, I don't know, maybe Andromeda Strain with some Bourne Identity thrown in? What I got was the standard hard-boiled detective novel, except the detective's actually a boozy small-town lawyer. But the thrills are there, and the book moves right along. The hard-boiled shamus and his gorgeous shamette zip around upstate New York, beating up recalcitrant witnesses and getting beat up and shot at in return, with causal sex thrown in, slowly zeroing in on the answer to the mystery of who might have killed their former employer and the prostitute he was snorting coke with. About halfway through I realized nothing had yet been said about any extinction event, and began to wonder how and when it would come into play. In the second half of the book the author began dropping hints that the threat to all mankind was electric radiation from overhead power lines, and that Con Edison was lurking behind the murders and the mysterious Cowboy (always capitalized) who begins trailing our amateur sleuths. At that point, things began to get ludicrous. In the climactic action scene, the boozy small-town lawyer drives in a demolition derby (!), where the Cowboy, apparently having stolen another contestant's car, tries to ram him to death. The two wind up on top of a Ferris wheel during a lightning storm, grappling in hand-to-hand combat, and the boozy lawyer prevails. But still no extinction event! Then, literally in the final three pages, it turns out that a giant fucking asteroid is coming to destroy the earth. What. A. Ripoff. David Black, you are one shameless hack. And oh by the way, lightning comes before thunder, not the other way around.

[Tracie]

If only we could give less than one star, because I honestly don't believe this book deserves even one.

This could easily been written by someone with severe ADHD. We're on one topic, everything's going great, and within the span of one paragraph, we're on something totally different, and what you just read will never come to play again. Ever.

Not to mention, it will riddled with cliches and absolutely unlikable characters. The nickname of "five spot" Caroline was given made me want to gouge my eyes out just so I wouldn't have to see it again.

This book is not worth your time, unless you are an author trying to figure out how NOT to write a book.

[Venky]

A lawyer, a hooker and a drug experiment gone wrong in a seedy motel sets the tone for David Black’s racy thriller “The Extinction Event.” Jack Slidell an irascible lawyer and a former street fighter is roused out of his sleep by a late night call in Mycenae, New York. The cryptic call leads Jack to a shady motel and to the dead bodies of Frank Milhet, his boss, Jean Gaynor, a hooker and traces of crack cocaine. What initially seems to be an innocuous case of sex and drugs gone sour, morphs into a murky maze involving international ecological implications. And into this maze, Jack gets drawn deeper and deeper with an unlikely companion to assist him in his endeavor to get to the bottom of the riddle. Caroline Wonder, a rookie lawyer in Jack’s firm and one who nurses a frosty relationship with Jack becomes a trusted all as the duo attempt to ward off bullets, betrayals, and barbed wires.

In so far as murder mysteries and conspiracy theories go, “The Extinction Event” does no better than its companion next door. Although making for a Pacey read, there is nothing to distinguish this pot-boiler from a million others from the genre. There is also a forced attempt to make Jack Slidell more flamboyant, boorish, charismatic and a punch line spewing Bond, leaving a jarring impact on the reader. This where James Bond-meets-Indiana Jones-meets-John rebus attempt does more harm than good from a narrative and plot perspective.

There come and go in a breezy fashion a phalanx of characters each one more insidious than his or her predecessor in both intent and execution. There is Cowboy, a hit-man and an almost personal stalker of Jack. He stalks Jack with the same determination of a Moriarty stalking Holmes, but with a suaveness that is exasperating and a silence that is frustrating. Other than nodding heads, civilly tracking Jack and of course attempting to murder him, all that the Cowboy seems to be doing is to compete with a perpetual motion machine. There is Mama Lucky, an extraordinarily obese woman who runs a brother and subsists on Jack Daniels. She also turns out to be a very able informant passing vital pieces of information to Jack.

After multiple pages of irrelevant dialogues, inchoate encounters and implacable emotions, we are left with an ending that is more philosophical than fictional. We are left to scratch our heads in both bewilderment and disbelief and left wondering whether it was worth the while trudging through the pages only to be met with what has to be one of the most ambivalent climaxes in the recent fictional literature past.

The Extinction Event – totally uneventful.

[Dave]

For a thriller, it has a lot of character development and less plot development. However, I loved the subjects he chose to explore. Never would have guessed the twist at the very end: at least how it happens.

[Steve]

Jack Slidell’s law partner is found dead in a hotel where his “companion” is clinging to her life by a very thin thread. Jack begins to investigate which results in his being let go from his law firm. He winds up teaming up with Caroline, a beautiful associate with the firm, in a search for who killed his friend (and now also his companion). Apparently his law partner had discovered something (but what - is it a corporate coverup?). Jack is being followed by an unnamed assailant, getting beat up several times along the way but able to keep moving forward. Getting help from a cavalcade of random people, Jack finally finds out what happened to his friend - in the last 10 pages of the book without a clue having been seen as to the final explanation.

This was a tedious read to say the least. There were frequent descriptions of locations, dwellings, landscapes, books, records, and so on that just filled pages and had nothing to do with the story. It’s not often that I finish a one-star rated book - I wanted (hoped) that some kind of resolution to the issues raised by the deaths of several characters would appear. I guess they did in those last 10 pages in the very unsatisfactory explanation of “the extinction event.”

[EvelienTalitha]

-100 stars.

How on earth did this book get published? Let alone win awards?? This is the absolutely most disgusting, cringey, ridiculous, nonsensical and the stupidest book I have ever read. The ONLY reason I finished it was so I could get the credit on my book goal for this year.

I don’t even have words for how pathetically and horrifically bad this book was. I’m literally shocked. DO NOT READ THIS BOOK! Also the end is stupid. An asteroid is going to destroy earth and that’s why these people were going around trying to kill each other? And Caroline randomly reveals she’s pregnant in the last paragraph? Nope, I’m not doing the spoiler tag because that’s how much I want to save you from reading this complete garbage. It’s trash.

My friend has a habit where she loves to sit and just rip paper. I’m going to let her rip up this book, so it at least serves some purpose to someone. :)

[Janeth]

It’s one of those books that I did rather not even try to finish. From my point of view, it’s very slow, full of filler, and packed with unnecessarily long descriptions that don’t add anything to the reading experience. I’m glad I only paid one dollar for it at a garage sale

[Cheryl]

Big waste of time.

[Shiloh Mounce]

a review on the cover of this book called david black a john grisham rival and i’ve never been more disappointed because it’s not true

[Tyra Masters-heinrichs]

I couldn't read this book. My husband volunteered. What did we like about this book, not much. What we think is wrong with this book: too many tangents into irrelevant activities, events and information. Lots of incomplete dialogue, he starts a conversation and then seems to assume the reader will simply know how the conversation ended. Chapters are broken into section without any apparent reason - not even a point of view shift, nothing. Characters didn't read true. The hero has memories of a generation he isn't from; he lost track of one of the murders (a hotel clerk was killed and then forgotten about); and he read as very unlikely alcoholic senior character that really shouldn't have been the hero - the 'tough guy' persona was not portrayed well - it does not come authentically across to the reader. The killer didn't even raise the tension levels (this is writing 101 - the antagonist has to be equal too and slightly better than the protagonist - not some ordinary guy killing for some shadowy and very unorganized government organization).
The final reveal of the why seemed to come out of no where. I had already put the book down, husband read to the end and made it clear that it was an unlikely ending, nothing read true. Again writing 101-play fair with your readers. My recommendation is that this book needs a good editor. I can't in good conscience recommend anyone reading it.

[Dawn]

I can't believe I finished this book. The only good thing I can say about it is that it's short. The plot was stupid, the title was misleading, the characters were unlikeable, unsympathetic and their actions made no sense. The whole book made no sense. Scenes ended abruptly. Dialogs were cheesy and stupid. I don't know how this book even got published. And even with all that, the thing that bothered me the most was the continued use of phrases such as "I'd of," "would of" and "must of." Really? Did this guy not have an editor? If he did, I would suggest he find a new one, but really, he should never write another book. The author information says he won a lot of writing awards, but I don't believe it. Writing this bad is not a fluke. It also says he does a lot of TV writing. I can't imagine he writes any better for TV. If I see his name as a writing credit I'm definitely changing the channel.

[Jennifer]

Why read: Picked up a copy at BEA

What impressed me: That I continued reading this after the first five pages.

What disappointed me: The Extinction Event was a jumbled mess of ideas that seemed geared only towards appealing to the masses. Drugs and sex and how about we throw in some transvestite strippers? Not scandalous enough? Perhaps bloody violence will get this book noticed. If all else fails, make the characters rudely obnoxious in the a perceived effort to be considered gritty. There may have been a point to this debacle, but damned if I could find it.

Recommended: Absolutely not.

[Garyjn]

Didn't think I would ever rate a 1* book since I usually read books I expect to like. This was a present, so I felt obliged to finish it.
First of all, the title and book jacket are mis-leading. The book is much less about an extinction event than it is about a murder mystery,
and a hard to beleive one at that. Both the plot development and actions of the characters stretched credability. Also the author had a tendency to ramble on about trivial matters, such as how people were dressed or how a room was furnished. Maybe it would make a half-way decent made-for-TV movie, but as a novel I found it trying.

[Kev]

Not bad, but not my cup of tea.
The main characters, Jack and Caroline, kind of flail around for about the first 348 pages trying to figure out why people around them are getting killed and why someone keeps trying to kill them. Then someone comes along and explains to them what's really going on and the book ends.

[Veet1]

The plot subject was ok, but the story was all over the place. It turned out to be pretty anti-climatic and disappointing. I got what he was trying to say, but he really didn't develop the story or the characters in a believable way. It would make a great 1 hour TV show or 2 hour movie, but a not so great book.

[Courtney (Life as a Convert)]

I picked this book up at a local dollar store and was excited to read it. Once I started I had a hard time really getting into it. The description of the book didn't really match the storyline. I had the wait until the very end to see where the connection was. The characters were fine. The chapters were split into very shot sections. Never read a book like this before.

[Chip]

Finished this months ago and was deeply disappointed. The writing was ragged. the plotting sloppy and the "surprise" ending pulled out of nowhere having no emotional connection to the main characters. Really not a good use of your time to read this.

[Dara]

"Why'd you come here?" he asked. "What do you want?"
"To help you."
"I usually handle things by myself."
"Even big jobs?"
"All my jobs are big."
"What about this one?"
"Biggest I've ever had."

(p.47 of hardback)

..........yeah. Dear lord was this awful.

[Cottageunderhill]

Eh, I wanted more from the end... and the middle. Eh.

[Howard]

A bit of a mess. Started out well and with pretty interesting plot and characters, then halfway through til the end was just a mess for me. Wanted so much to like this book/author!

[Sanji]

Not great - twist came out in last 3 pages with no build up

[Bob]

It was a short and ok read.

[Bob Mask]

Poor!

[Matt]

The ending made the book.

[Danette Moreno keith]

I started this book at 10am & finished by 7pm. Killer book the ending totally surprised me.

[Phil]

Meh. Hackneyed, cliche after cliche.

[Bev]

to slow, too much bad humor