charles o. peed

This should have been titled stupid people having interminable conversations manage to solve crimes and conspiracies anyway. Just by way of an example, one of the first issues is whether somebody shot himself or was murdered. Our heroes debate this ad nauseam. Nobody ever asks about gunshot residue tests on the guy's hands? I mean come on, don't our cop, secret service agent and FBI agent even watch CSI??

This is more of the same, but with less "plausibility". Way to much talking for the amount of story. Not the best. My wife told me nothing made me finsih these things, and so I didn't. Thus I will not review part 2.

My most serious criticism of the genre is when characters who ought to know better do really stupid stuff. Would you go out looking for a sadistic serial killer who can recognize you when you have never seen him? Why, "no". Would an FBI profiler and a crime reporter who almost got killed once before by a serial killer do this? Well, maybe in this book.

The writing is pretentious. You get the feeling he made up his figures of speech, and then tried to fit them all in the story. Descriptive passages that would have been good if limited, just go on forever.
The worst, though is that the hero, Billy Bob, is outwitted by everybody. I like my heroes smarter than the competition.
When you have finished the book, and think about it. Billy Bob did Nothing to advance the resolution of the story except (believe it or not) at least two reprehensible actions. And here's a survival tip(not to give too much away): Don't shoot at people you don't want to hit.

I only got thru the first part, which consists of a rant by the nutjob president of the Custer Hill Club justifying why it's a good idea for his group to set off nuclear bombs in American cities, framing the Arabs so we will set off "Wildfire" and kill ALL the arabs. Ok he's a nut case. Buy this, and you'll listen to him for five hours. Want to do that??

This is absolutely the most tedious thing I ever tried to listen to. I had listened to another Stephen Hunter book, so I tried this. Could NOT finish it.

There's this old shaggy dog story where an architect throws a brick in the air. no punch line. then you tell (seemingly) another story where a dog gets killed, and you ask rhetorically "what killed the dog?" Answer: The Brick.
That's the plot of this godawful book.