Book Review: Panic

This is a fairly typical thriller/chase book. The main character is Evan Casher, a young filmmaker. He has a pretty good life; his films are doing well, his family is fine and he’s just got involved with the beautiful Carrie and he thinks he’s finally in love. All that changes when he receives a mysterious phone call, which throws everything he’s ever known about himself into doubt – and him and Carrie into danger. Throughout the course of the book, coming across the FBI, the CIA, a sinister underground organisation and more double-crossers than you could shake a stick at, they endeavour to find out the truth about who they really are and what has been happening, hidden from everyone, for so long.

I chose this book because I saw it at an airport once and thought it looked vaguely interesting, and then when I came across it in a charity shop, I decided to give it a spin. It’s not normally my cup of tea, but I do like to experiment with different genres (though I do have my limits!).

Overall, I didn’t really like this book. I felt that it was dragged out too much, with too many complications for its simple plot. The bad guys were stereotypical bad guys and didn’t ring true. Our hero did the one thing you really hope authors who write these books don’t have their characters do, which is to totally change his personality as soon as the going gets tough. The Evan of the first few pages and of the brief slower-paced sections throughout the book was not the same Evan as in the many, many chase scenes. As a result, it was very difficult to care about him. I also felt that the whole book in general had been done before: cops gone bad, secret organisations, spies, double-crossing families, ‘I’m not who I thought I was’…it can work, but it’s been done so many times that it now needs something new to bring back interest, and this book didn’t have that.

The writing style wasn’t bad, but wasn’t good either. I think the author was trying to tell a story with this book, rather than anything else, and it’s very true that the prose doesn’t get in the way of the story at all. There are no fanciful descriptions, no flights of fancy that aren’t directly related to the plot and barely a sentence that isn’t just factually describing what’s going on. The reader is left to add most of the tension and suspense for themselves. Unfortunately, though, while this could have been one of the book’s high points, it seemed to me that in this book, there was just too little. The whole focus was on the story, but the story wasn’t good.

I wouldn’t recommend this book. It was hard to find the motivation to follow the characters on another chase when we know they’ll get everything right in the end (that said, the end was very unconvincing and spectacularly out-of-character). Once the plot had dealt with one thing, it moved on; there was no reference to what had happened before, and as a result, I didn’t feel like I was getting anywhere or that the story was moving forward. Overall, this book was rather limp.

However, if you would like to read it, my copy is currently available on bookmooch (username: newcaribou).

Have you reviewed this book? Let me know and I’ll link to your review!