Fear Runner

Name: Fear Runner
Author: Dale Brandon
ISBN: 978-0-692-51162-6

by Dale Brandon ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 27, 2015

The author keeps the action flowing and delivers enough clever twists to make this an enjoyable read for thriller fans,...

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A thriller, set in the world of high-stakes finance, involves a ruthless trader who targets a government employee.

In Brandon’s (Death Mountain, 2015, etc.) first non-Western novel, Scott Quinn is a commodity trader haunted by his father’s failures in the market. Quinn crosses paths with Lauren Chandler, an attractive Department of Agriculture employee, and asks her out for a drink. She tells him to meet her after work at a restaurant named Henry’s. Soon, Chandler finds herself involved in a treacherous plot when she overhears Deputy Secretary Hayden Benson passing inside information about soybeans to Victor Merrick. Merrick turns out to be a cunning trader willing to blackmail and murder his way to a fortune. Benson discovers that Chandler overheard his call, and she immediately flees the office. He tells Merrick, and from that moment on, Chandler is in danger, just a few chapters in. She drives to her apartment complex and spots two sinister-looking strangers who turn out to be hit men. Terrified, she manages to meet Quinn at Henry’s and tells him: “I overheard something at work that I wasn’t supposed to hear, and now, they’re trying to kill me.” The two armed assassins appear at the restaurant and Quinn tells Chandler to run. Most of the book is devoted to the chase, and Brandon does a good job pacing the action and heightening the suspense for the most part. The author, a former commodity broker who now owns a company that specializes in virus and malware removal, puts both of those bodies of knowledge to work in thinking of a clever way to defeat the different levels of security the Department of Agriculture might employ to protect commodity reports. But there are times, especially in a sequence in which Chandler joins Quinn on the trading floor, when the tale devolves into a tutorial on how the system operates. That’s understandable, because there is a lot the reader needs to know about the market to understand the intricacies of Merrick’s scam. But the rest of the book is snappy enough that the explanations can drag in parts. Quinn, Merrick, and even a hit man named Cade are well-drawn characters, but Chandler too often seems a caricature of the helpless damsel in distress.

The author keeps the action flowing and delivers enough clever twists to make this an enjoyable read for thriller fans, especially those who want to learn about the world of trading.

Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-692-51162-6

Page Count: 367

Publisher: Bright Eagle Press

Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2016

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.

Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

Pub Date: March 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-345-46752-3

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.

"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.