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xsBusiness - The Assassin: A Novel
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List Price: $26.95
Our Price: $6.99
Your Save: $ 19.96 ( 74% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Press
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780312323578
ISBN: 0312323573
Label: St. Martin's Press
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: 2008-08-05
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Release Date: 2008-08-05
Studio: St. Martin's Press
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Not his best effort
Comment: Seemed like a novel that was written without much logic or background. Disjointed with many loose ends and "you've got to be kidding me" sequences
Customer Rating:
Summary: Authors should not insult their reader's intelligence
Comment: I've read nearly all of Coonts' novels and would call myself a tepid fan of his work. Coonts can range from absolutely terrific to pretty bad. "The Assassin", however, is the first Coonts novel I've ever set aside without finishing. In fact, I gave it up at page 75.
Why?
Because there is not a smidgen of credibility in the book. Coonts draws on recent headlines for his plot line and that becomes a part of the problem. Coonts uses the 2006 murder of Alexander Litvinenko with Polonium-20 as the weapon. Not a good thing to do since anyone who followed the news of that truly unique act knows that Coonts is simply borrowing it for the story. There is no credibility to Coonts' back story. To be believable, Coonts should have invented his own narrative from the same base.
The main characters, Jake Grfton and Tommy Carmellini, are back again - and frankly they have beome threadbare. Grafton, the retired Admiral and intelligence czar, was at one time a formidable character. Now, frankly, his dialog bounces mercurially from all-knowing to stuck on stupid. Carmellini, who speaks to us in the first-person while everyone else uses third-person, needs help with his sex addiction. The plot device of a privately financed, government executed campaign against Muslim terrorists is unbelievable from the very first words describing it.
The Abu Qasim character, supposedly the world's most feared terrorist, whom no one can identify by sight is - here's that word agsain - unbelievable. His alleged daughter, who is now a French socialite (and, of course, rich and stunningly beautiful) is also unbelievble.
All of this mind numbing, silly nonsense comes in the first 62 pages. Then Coonts unloads on his technically literate audience with the introduction of Robin Cloyd. The stereotyped description is enough to cause teeth grinding: "Robin was a technical genius, a tall, gawky young woman who lived in jeans and sweatshirts because the rooms where she spent her working life were filled with computers and heavily air conditioned. She also wore glasses, large, thick ones . . . "
Coonts needs an advisor. Being intelligent and even a "geek" doesn't mean you look weird. Also, most people who do what are soon described as Robin's work, would not be in a computer room. Coonts obviously doesn't understand what computer networks are all about.
Within moments, however, Coonts goes from awful to horrible. Robin is described as a "data-mining exert who had been working for NSA. She had been temporarily transferred to the CIA and assigned as Jake's office assistant." Office assistant? Coonts obviously is clueless as to what data-mining is, which he demonstrates in the very next sentence: "One of the many things she did for the admiral [presumably including coffee fetching?] was to hack her way around the Internet, which was, of course, illegal."
Of course, Coonts doesn't know what hacking is. Coonts doesn't know what the word Internet means. Coonts not only doesn't know what he is talking about, he insults those who do.
Coonts has his "office assistant" on a moment's notice "hack" into the computers of the three of the richest people in the world, all leaders of large businesses. No problem. Takes only a few seconds. Nonsense.
But Coonts keeps right on going. Having cracked these systems in seconds, Robin isolates their email accounts, saying "They're using a fairly sophisticated encryption code . . ." Of course, she cracks it in seconds.
You can get free encryption programs that are essentially invulnerable to cracking. Coonts is not only apparently unaware of that, but thinks everyone else is to.
At that point, I lasted another 13 pages as the plot and characters went from dumb to dumber.
This is not Coonts at his prime. Far from it, this is Coonts approaching rock bottom. Avoid this turkey.
Jerry
Customer Rating:
Summary: Peculiar book at best
Comment: I'm a fan of Coonts and I've tried to like this book. It gets off to a great start and the overall concept is good, but the writing takes an experimental twist that I can't warm up to. The reader is in the dark for far too much of the narrative.
Jake Grafton, whom Coonts's readers have come to know over many novels, is a distant and cold enigma. Tommy Carmellini is presented in the first person while the rest of the book is in the third person. Characters are introduced just long enough to make us want to know them better (a sniper team in the Hindu Kush, an undercover agent hiding in Rome) but then killed off before we develop sufficient attachment for their deaths to mean anything.
I tried. This one just left me cold.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Another great novel from Coonts
Comment: The Assassin is a great action thriller. Stephen Coonts is excellent at keeping his readers hooked in to the plot. The second half of the book is absolutely relentless action whereas the first half sets it all up nicely. All the plot points drop into place emphatically.
Well recommended if you like political/action/violent thrillers.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good read - shame about the narrative.
Comment: As an avid audio listener and having read all of the reviews I couldn't wait to hear this novel. What a disappointment - a good book spoiled!
Whoever did the review for Audiofile must have listened to a totally different audio book than I did. Suffice to say that I do not agree in any way with this review. In my opinion this has to be the most dull, boring and monotonous narrative I have ever listened to.
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Editorial Reviews:
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The headlines only reveal half the truth. Here’s the real story. . . .
Abu Qasim, the ruthless and cunning Al Qaeda leader who nearly succeeded in blowing up a meeting of the G-8 in Paris, has escaped from the grasp of the Americans and is plotting his next move. A small band of powerful men, highly placed leaders of industry and politics in the West, have decided they need to target and destroy the terrorist and his inner circle before he can strike again. When a prominent Russian dissident is poisoned in London, however, it’s clear that there’s a very dangerous leak within the ranks of the Westerners, and that Abu Qasim has turned the tables on his rivals---it is now he who is pursuing, and his aim is to kill.
Admiral Jake Grafton dispatches special agent Tommy Carmellini to infiltrate the plot. He tracks the gorgeous and seductive Marisa Petrou, a Frenchwoman who may be Qasim’s daughter and who has her own reasons for wanting him alive---or wishing him dead. Qasim, meanwhile, has a trick up his sleeve---one that he’s been planning for years.
Who is behind the methodical assassinations of the wealthy and powerful Western vigilante team? Will Abu Qasim slip the noose once again? In this pulse-pounding thriller, Tommy Carmellini must put a stop to a master of terror before he unleashes even more death.
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