Panic

by Jeff Abbott

What if everything in your life was a lie?

Things are going well for 24 year-old Evan Casher: his career as a documentary filmmaker is booming and his relationship with his new girlfriend, Carrie, couldn’t be better. After an urgent phone call from his mother, he makes an unexpected trip home to Austin. Then the unthinkable happens. He arrives to find his mother brutally murdered, and narrowly escapes an attempt on his own life. Spirited away from the scene by an enigmatic mercenary with an agenda of his own, Evan is confronted with a shocking fact: his entire life has been little more than a carefully constructed lie.

Pursued by a powerful, ruthless organization of killers who will stop at nothing to keep old secrets buried, Evan’s only hope for survival is to uncover the truth about his family…and his own past. With his mother’s attackers fast on his heels and with no one to trust--not the authorities, his father, nor the woman he loves--his perilous search takes him from the Texas Hill Country to New Orleans, to London, and to Miami. Full of unforgettable characters and jolting plot twists, Panic is an emotionally charged, heart-stopping thriller about one man’s determination to take back his stolen life.

Praise for PANIC:

"PANIC is a ride down the roaring rapids. Jeff Abbott has put together a hell of a page turner."
—Michael Connelly

"PANIC is Jeff Abbott's best novel yet... an instant classic immediately full of questions--who, what, why, how--that have answers you won't see coming."
—Lee Child

"Jeff Abbott's PANIC is a superb story, a sterling example of why we love stories about ordinary men thrust into extraordinary circumstances. Don't even try to anticipate the twists and turns in this intelligent thriller -- just hold on tight and remember to breathe."
—Laura Lippman

"PANIC is a sleek, smart thriller that combines a family tragedy, international intrigue, and the redemptive power of love into one of this year's best books. There is no question: Jeff Abbott is the new name in suspense."
--Harlan Coben

“PANIC is what a reader enjoys when a really talented writer like Jeff Abbott comes up with a fresh and gripping plot. It's even better than his CUT AND RUN."
--Tony Hillerman

"Jeff Abbott has all the ingredients of high suspense in PANIC: an ordinary man whose everyday life changes within minutes into an unrecognizable landscape, a place where he is in constant danger and can find no easy way out. Be prepared to stay up all night."
--Jan Burke

Genres: Thriller, Fiction, Mystery, Crime, Mystery Thriller, Suspense, Espionage

355 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Jeff Abbott (born 1963) is a U.S. suspense novelist. He has a degree in History and English from Rice University. He lives in Austin, Texas. His early novels were traditional detective fiction but in recent years he has turned to writing thriller fiction. A theme of his work is the idea of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary danger and fighting to return to their normal lives. His novels are published in several countries and have also been bestsellers in the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, and France.

Series:
* Whit Mosley
* Jordan Poteet

Reviews

[Baba · Rating 2 out of 5]

With an interesting and strangely beguiling and captivating minimalist... book cover, I had good expectations for this thriller which were slowly broken down as I progressed reading it. This is yet another, not that creative formulaic attempt at thriller storytelling, which in reality feels like an untreated film script, in that it feels like the true target of the writer and publisher is to get this book optionable, sell a few 100,000 copies and then sell the film rights. Know what I mean?

Of course I could be wrong, as generic formulaic thriller and crime fiction sells by the bucketful, and at this point in my reading journey (Summer 2006), I might just have maybe past my tipping point for this genre. The reality is that I finished it... all 400+ pages. 4 out of 12.

2006 read

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was gripped from the first page. Twists and turns at every chapter. Loved it :)

Five stars.

[Piyush Bhatia · Rating 3 out of 5]

An average book. The storyline is quite common as that of any other murder mystery, though it gets high-strung at some moments.The ending of the novel is mundane, which is rather unlikely for a murder mystery and thriller.

"Don't trust unless you must" is an appealing line from this book and quite rightly describes the story.

[Cláudia Teles · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was an Ok book. It was (and I hope I won't be misinterpreted when I say this) so American.
Like: the nobody with a boring life turns out to the hero of the whole story killing the bad guys (even though he has no actual shooting or fighting training) and discovering the truth about his past thus improving his relationship with his estranged father and mysterious girlfriend.
"The unknown white hero that safes the day and gets the girl" could very well be the title.
What a cliche.
But it was entertaining. Like a Sunday afternoon movie.

[Razvan Banciu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad book, but there are some facts I did not like:
- too much cruelty and unprovoked violence
- far too many coincidences
- some scenes not very credible, including that in Bandera and the chase and escape in New Orleans
- Evan is too stubborn to become friend with Gabriel, the man who has saved his live and was killed afterwards mostly because of him.

So, a good book, but quite not good enough...

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

This might have been better if I'd read it & could skim more, but the writing wasn't great. The story line was pretty good, though. Not exactly a new plot, but it was different enough to keep it interesting.

Unfortunately, the author was another who succumbed to putting a silencer on a revolver or else turned an automatic into a revolver - I forget which, but it doesn't really matter. I won't go out of my way to read another by this author.

The reader wasn't bad. Not great, but I'm VERY picky about readers. His voices weren't the best, but he wasn't irritating at all.

[Jennifer Stevenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I Read this book last year when i went to college, and i couldnt put it down!
I was reading on the bus, at my Breaks, even sneeking looks during boring classes!
Its a real page turned and is ace for people who love reading crime storys.
The beast thing about this book is that you tend to find crime books about a cop, but this one is about a boy who finds out his life has been a lie! and he slowly it revals that his parents arnt who thay say they are, and are infact up to there necks in trouble. Even his girlfriend is employed my a gang who kills his mother!
Its a real good book and i highly recomend it to anyone whos lookin for a change when it comes to crime storys.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well done exciting story of intrigue and espionage. 9 of 10 stars

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Starts fast: check
Plenty of momentum: check
Not what I expected: check
No shortage of action: check
High body count: check
Liberal sprinkling of mayhem and carnage: check
Curious as to who cleans up the mess(es): check
Not something I could've thought up on my own: check
Pages turned easily: check
Chock full of fun, quirky Easter Eggs: check
Won't be confused with non-fiction: check

Personally, I'm late to the Jeff Abbott party, and I've enjoyed his newer stuff more but, I was curious to try some of his earlier books. This was an easy read, perfect for, say, a long plane ride.

I'd recommend Abbott for anyone who craves action - maybe folks who concede they prefer entertainment to enlightenment, ... can comfortably suspend their disbelief, reaches for Jack Reacher (yuck, yuck, no pun intended. LoL) or Gabriel Allon when they don't want to spend any time thinking in an the airport or train station bookstore, and feels that authors like James Lee Burke and Tana French may have gone astray, nay, erred, by mashing up their murder and mayhem with excessive literary flourishes and ponderous prose. (To be clear, I'm a huge consumer and fan of both Tana French and James Lee Burke, but this is far more Lee Child and Daniel Silva than French or Burke.)

Overall, this comfortably resides on the fast and furious shelf.

[Kath · Rating 1 out of 5]

I bought this because I thought it would be easy reading, so I guess I wasn’t really expecting a lot from it. It pretty much met my expectations. I would describe it as an average thriller, fairly unoriginal with plot twists you could see coming from a mile off. I only finished the book because I hate leaving books half-read, otherwise I could have easily given up on it without feeling the need to know what happened to Evan or his father. Evan has no experience in this world, yet manages to frequently escape capture, blackmail the bad guys, kill a man with his bare hands, use a gun, steal cars, negotiate deals etc etc with people who have been doing all those things a lot longer than he has. It just wasn’t believable, and I didn’t grow attached enough to any of the characters to care what happened to them. However, I wouldn’t describe the book as disappointing, as it was exactly what I expected it to be. Overall, I would describe the book as ‘average’.

[Cecilia Bigelow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everything a thriller needs:
action, suspense, mystery, drama, bits of romance!

The suspense in the beginning is unbelievable!

24 year old, film director Evan Casher gets a call from his mom that she desperately needs to see him. He arrives only to find her murdered and mysterious unravel including that his whole life has been a lie.

It does get slightly annoying with Evan’s inability to trust anyone including those who are clearly trustworthy.

But overall quite wonderful.
I definitely recommend to all thriller and murder mystery fans!

[Kerry · Rating 1 out of 5]

Proclaimed as "One of the year's best books" on the cover, I was obviously expecting something very good. However on the contrary, I was bitterly disappointed. 2005 was clearly a very bad year for publication.

If you're a fan of the fast-paced and simplistically written novels of Dan Brown, then you'll like this. The pace of the story is so fast that you've barely come to terms with what's just happened, before you're being transported to a completely different world altogether, within the space of 2 pages. Incidentally, the characters are weak and hard to like, and it's a book that's difficult to really lose yourself in. The story additionally keeps on twisting and turning into the farfetched until you find yourself lost altogether and not really caring what ridiculous twist the story is going to take next.

Definitely not recommended. Watch the film instead, if/when it inevitably comes out!

[Jack Heath · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 Stars. It was a fun ride. A thriller that moves. A young documentary film maker, Evan Casher, meets an interesting young woman; one thing leads to another and it looks like they have found the love of their lives. But she disappears while out to get coffee on the same morning as his mother urgently asks him to come home. It turns out his life is a lie and we're off to Houston, New Orleans and London. A little of the action early on seems superfluous but the ending is well worth it. (spring 2017)

[Claire · Rating 1 out of 5]

A rather lack lustre novel I'm afraid. I gave him and decided not to finish it as everytime I went to read it I found something else to do instead. The characters seemed extremely one dimensional and tbh I didn't really care about Evan or what happened to him. Jargo and son felt panto-evil and the not for children warning on the front cover leads me to believe they shouldn't read it so as not to put them off reading for life!

[Lιƈíɳια · Rating 4 out of 5]

Foi o primeiro livro que li deste autor, e gostei (ainda bem porque comprei logo 3 livros do autor).
Em "Pânico" os capítulos levam-nos logo em suspense para o capítulo seguinte. A história está sempre em crescendo porque estamos sempre a descobrir mais e mais sobre o mistério que enreda o assassínio de Donna mãe de Evan personagem central. É uma trama fácil de acompanhar e envolvente e com um pouco de romance também.

[Marta Alves · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thriller mas não do género que goste.
Ficou aquém das expectativas.
Ao ler, imaginava um filme típico "americano", onde o tipo comum é confrontado com os mauzões e, de um momento para o outro, anda aos tiros, perseguições e a negociar com os grandes do mundo da espionagem. Não. Não me convenceu.
No meio disto tudo, salvou-se o romance.

[Karine P · Rating 1 out of 5]

Enfin fini!

Une couverture et un résumé qui laissent penser à un genre de thriller. Finalement, c'est un roman à saveur pseudo policière / scénario de film d'action poche.

Je l'ai lu juste pour savoir jusque où ça allait me taper sur les nerfs!

[Bruna · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

[Jood · Rating 1 out of 5]

Okay - so the premise is that a young guy (attractive, of course - we can't have an ugly hero, can we!)who's been living a normal, not too exciting life, is suddenly thrown into a world of violence and chaos. Out of the blue he receives a whispered phone call from his mother telling him to to go to her house - a good two to three hours drive away. He does so only to find his mother dead on the kitchen floor, he is then attacked by the unknown assailants and so his nightmare begins.....

If there's one thing I can't stand it's blow-by-blow accounts of fights - not necessarily because of the violence portrayed but because it's all so unnecessary and almost cartoon-like - I can almost see the Biffs, Splats and Wallops leaping off the page. It's boring!

There is nothing new in the plot, the writing is clunky, and the characters cliched. in fact it has the feel of a writing competition about it. It has that Jackson Pollock approach to it....throw enough at it and some of it will stick.

No, no, no, not for me - I was almost having a panic attack reading it, and actually gave up halfway through.

[Jayne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't think the title quite fit the story. The events that unfolded would certainly cause you to panic, but such an emotive title gives you certain ideas and expectations which if you are lucky, match.

I was not so lucky. That's not to say that it was a dumb book. Not at all. Just that it took me a little longer to get into the feel of the book, because of the title.

It's a good enough read.

[Sally Sutton · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not enjoy this book and cannot really claim that I read it fully. As a previous reviewer wrote (saw this after I started the book), it’s too American and implausible that a ‘normal’ person would suddenly become a trained competent spy- his only irritating flaw being he persisted in believing his girlfriend was innocent. To be fair she was on the good side but their relationship was particularly annoying.

[Richard · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think this book is at least 11 and a half hours too long: it is also too complicated. The concept is not unique, but is interesting.

[Ingrid · Rating 3 out of 5]

De spionnenwereld van de CIA, KGB, etc. is niet echt aantrekkelijk voor mij. Waarom weet ik niet, maar daardoor heb ik niet echt een klik met dit boek.
Het plot zit verder wel prima in elkaar en het boek leest als een grote achtervolging waarin weinig momenten zijn om even op adem te komen.

[Marcia Arguelles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh.

[Emna · Rating 1 out of 5]

A cheap american version of monster .It is as if the writer watched monster and made it his entire personality which resulted in the making of this book.
The book cover was immaculately done misleading me into thinking that the book has to be one of be the best thrillers of all time.
Won’t ever read again unless i want to die from boredom.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Evan Casher probably led a sheltered life. It all changed when he got a call from his mother. She needed to see him right away. When he got to her home, she had been murdered and the killers then tried to kill Evan but Evan is rescued by a stranger who says he's a friend of Evan's mother.

Steven Jargo, an information peddler, is the man who killed Evan's mother. Dezz is Steven's son and Carrie Lindstrom is the girl Jargo has pretending to be Evan's girlfriend so she can get the files he has on his computer.

The man who rescued Evan, Gabriel tells Evan that he's in danger and that his mother hired Gabriel to get her out of Austin. He tells Ev that Jargo is a freelance spy. Evan doesn't know who to trust and runs from Gabriel.

Slowly, Evan is learning that the life he was used to is made up of lies. Nothing about his family was true. By checking on some names in his father's passports he finds info about a family who disappeared years ago. That story mentioned a concerned neighbor. Evan calls the neighbor and asks the woman to look at the photos of his mother in the news and see if she is the person who lived next door to her. In this way Evan learns his identity as Robert Peterson.

Next Evan gets in touch with a person called Shady that owed Evan a favor. He calls Jargo and finds that he's holding Evan's father and they arrange to meet in return for the missing files. Then Evan calls a person who told Evan he was with the CIA nicknamed Bricklayer and tells him of the meeting with Jargo.

It is a complicated plot but it moves along swiftly. At the next meeting, we learn something about Carrie Lindstrom that is a significant plot twist. Does Carrie really love Evan or is she a clever plant?


The plot does get a little complicated and it was difficult to know who were the good guys and who were not. However, it was still full of action and suspense.

[Bilge B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matruşka bebeği gibi sır içinden sır çıktı şaşkına döndüm. Aksiyon filmi izler gibi bir kitaptı çok beğendim.

Biraz edit hataları var ama editör baştan savma çalışmış sanki.

[Rafaela (dragonsandpaperbacks)]

DNF at 26% because spy plots aren't it for me

[Chloe · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of this one sounded good - a young guy receives an urgent summons home phone call from his mother and returns to find his mother murdered and his life turns upside down. So, we have an intriguing mystery on our hands! The young guy discovers pretty fast that someone is trying to kill him too! Panic stations = lots of action!

The issue I had (and couldn't stop thinking about) is, here's this young guy ... he's film maker with no police experience, hey, he's hardly even fired a gun. But, that doesn't seem to be a problem because he becomes the hero ... and even tells the CIA what to do! And they do it! Implausible much? Hmmm

Other than that, it was an OK read, lots of action as mentioned but nothing out of the box.

[Zézinha Rosado · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brutal!
Foi o primeiro livro que li deste autor, mas ainda bem que já tenho as restantes obras por ele publicadas na estante à espera para serem lidas, porque se forem semelhantes a esta são realmente brutais!
Uma escrita muito fluída e emocionante, que nos faz ter vontade de andar a correr atrás das personagens de um lado para o outro.
A acção não tem momentos mortos, é sempre vivida debaixo de grande adrenalina.
Gostei muito deste livro.