Rating: 
Summary: Harmless Fun.
Review: I wouldn't call "Gideon" a "shocking" or "explosive" or "great" story... but it is an agreeably engrossing suspense/adventure novel with likeable protagonists and villainous enemies. It's absorbing. By the time you realize there are some serious holes in the plot, you're all done with it and on to the next read of the summer. No harm done and it's fun while it lasts.
Rating:
Summary: Shocking And Explosive Thriller....
Review: Carl Granville is a struggling New York City-based writer who has just received a most precarious offer. He is contracted by top editor Maggie Peterson to turn the contents of a top-secret diary into an instant work of fiction. She mentions that this is a rush job of the highest order ("the kind of thing we usually save for terrorist attacks, wars, or dead royalty"), and once the secret manuscript is finished, it could literally change the course of history. Carl is not told who the diary belongs to, just that the real owner wishes to remain anonymous and will be known simply as "Gideon". He is instructed to speak to no one about the project (including Maggie who says officially he does not exist) and is not permitted to ask any questions about the confidential information that will be fed to him. In return for his silence, Carl will be paid six-figures and have one million copies of his ghost-written book printed. Soon after Carl decides to take on the project, Maggie Peterson is murdered, and when he decides to come clean about the Gideon project (in an effort to cooperate with the authorities) he is told that there is no record of him or his project ever existing. That's when more people start dying and Carl becomes the prime suspect in all the murders. The only person he can trust is his ex-girlfriend, journalist Amanda Mays, who has her own doubts about becoming personally involved with Carl again after a rather stormy relationship. Soon they are both thrown into a world of murder, greed and politics as they go underground to catch the real killers before Carl is caught himself. Interestingly, Russell Andrews is a pseudonym for the writing duo of Peter Gethers and David Handler. Gideon is their first team effort and it is an exciting one. The book serves up an endless series of twists and turns that unravel over an exhausting 8 days. Just when you think you have things figured out, the author(s) throw another curve ball your way. This is a sharp novel will keep you awake and guessing until the very end. I also enjoyed pondering the present day implications of this plot. The truth behind the world shattering secret is all too possible in today's high tech information hungry society. Four stars because it missed the truly gifted mark ever so slightly...the ending was a bit bland when compared to the roller coaster ride Andrews provides between the covers, and the identity of the "Closer" was not very imaginative. These minor details notwithstanding, this is definitely worth a buy. Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Nice read
Review: 'Gideon'is a great thriller book with an excellent plot in it. It is a story of a writer who's hired to turn an old diary to fiction (which surely will become a bestseller).The writer agrees to do that but soon after he starts rewriting it lots of horrible things start to happen around.He finds out that he's writing about somebody who's very powerful and that he's in the danger but there's no turning back.The question "Who is the real owner of the diary???"
Rating: 
Summary: A page turner that doesn't satisfy
Review: Others have hashed the storyline, so I won't waste your time. Suffice it to say that this book is well written, with suspenseful turns that kept me interested. My disappointment lies in the fact that the solution to the mystery, the secret for which many people were willing to kill, was just not all that big a deal. I expected something EARTHSHATTERING,and well, it was sort of trite.
Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding!
Review: From the first page to the last, this books keeps you guessing with multiple twists and turns. Nonstop action, great plot, fantastic characters, well developed story line, suspense, thrills and chills - this one has it all!
Rating:
Summary: Gideon
Review: My husband read this book first and kept commenting that he couldn't put it down. When he finished, I began. We made a great game out of it. He knew all the answers, I continued to read at every opportunity asking all the questions. Of course, he would not tell me what happened next or what the secret was, just led me on with a few mini-hints. It was great fun for us to compare notes when I did finally finish the book as there were tiny buried details in the story that I missed and he could fill in and several little pieces that he missed that I could fill in. The author's style was believable in that his descriptions aptly painted a clear mental picture of the scene. All in all, we found it a tremendously entertaining mystery with plenty of surprises along the way.
Rating:
Summary: Catch and Release
Review: The story hooked me at about page 50, played me for about 100 more, and lost my real interest shortly thereafter. I stayed to see how it all played out, but it turned into a TV movie of the week. Interesting try but not a keeper.
Rating:
Summary: Hillary should have read this 8 years ago
Review: This release by a two-headed author (Peter Gethers and David Handler)is a thriller of many layers. Perhaps too many for one to write ashort, succinct review that is yet intelligible. Carl Granville isa wannabe novelist living in New York. His ex-girlfriend is AmandaMays, deputy metro editor at a major Washington, DC rag. His brand newgirlfriend of one night is Toni, an aspiring actress who livesupstairs. Carl is hired by Maggie Peterson, the rapacious editor of aNew York publishing house, to ghostwrite a novel based on memoirsobtained from a high-level Washington source named GIDEON. Bynecessity, Gideon's identity must remain secret. Carl must crankthe book out in three weeks, writing from notes made from examiningoriginal material brought in daily by a gun-toting heavy, then takenaway. Carl soon realizes that his book will be the vehicle to expose ahorrific incident in someone's past. However, within a week ofstarting, Carl's apartment is ransacked, and his fledgling creationstolen....With clues remembered by Carl from the original sourcematerial, both flee to Mississippi, pursued by an efficient assassinnamed The Closer, to seek an answer to the Gideon riddle. Implicatedin the conspiracy is the President of the United States. (Well, hey,what modern day Chief Executive isn't at the heart of one sort ofconspiracy or another?) And above everything, seemingly pulling allthe strings, is a power hungry, international media mogul. (Sure, whynot. Let's give Bill Gates the day off on this one.) Whew!By thelast 100 pages of this 466-page paperback, I was prepared to award 3stars. The characters are well drawn, the action tightly paced, andthe plot reasonably ingenious, but not more so than in many otherpotboilers on today's racks. I did like the unusual choice of theDelta region of northern Mississippi as the location for much of theaction. (I lived in Tupelo for 15 months, and not much happens in thatregion - or the entire state for that matter - except kudzu vine.)However, the let's-kiss-and-make-up interaction between Carl andAmanda was old hat. (For a change, how about two ex-lovers hating eachother even more by the end of a forced alliance. Now, that would bedifferent!) But then came the double-take plot twists, especially thecompletely unexpected identity of The Closer. So, by the last page, Ihad to polish up another star. I would have awarded 5, but theincredibly intricate storyline was tidied up way too efficiently formy taste. Sometimes, a few remaining hanging threads are appropriate.
Rating:
Summary: TOO WEIRD & TOO EXTREME OF A NOVEL FOR ME!
Review: The two men author team, Peter Gethers & David Handler, are very creative, gifted, and skilled individuals when it comes to the art of writing. I felt that the book was extremely strange. After reading the first one hundred pages of this novel, you think to yourself what the heck are these people talking about when they say the name GIDEON. Well, at first I was turned off from the book because the story seemed so unreal (a struggling author who gets asked to write a book secretly for a strange hit man and his editor, who later gets murdered), but I finished the whole thing! The ending and how it tied together was not what I thought was going to happen after all. I love the cover of this novel, it draws the eye to it immediately and that's what made me buy it. Overall, I would say if you want to read something different than the orginal "serial killer on the loose" novels, then this is your kind of book. Don't mistake me it is a good book, but it just doesn't appeal to me.
Rating:
Summary: Rewriting history.
Review: Granville's a poor, struggling writer, a man who still carries a torch for his One True Love - a woman he lost, apparently forever, a couple of years ago.These are facts which are given you in the first few pages, so you just know this book's going to have a happy ending. Granville is asked by a predatory publisher / editor to novelise a heavily censored diary... and, after a couple of weeks intensive work, our hero notices that there are a few corpses piling up - and various members of the constabulary are pointing the finger at him. He goes on the run: a defenceless, gentle, confused man, pitted against the forces of evil. And all the preconceived notions I had about this book flew right out the window. See - I thought it was going to be a cliche. And, in a number of ways, it is. But cliches wouldn't become cliches unless they were apt, pithy, easily understood, and fun. And that's "Gideon". A complex plot, which is skillfully written to be easily understood. A Galahad-type hero, with the unattainable Lady Faire. A truly sinister set of evil-doers, who must be vanquished by their innocent foes. This book has it all. And it delivers them with panache, style, wit, a certain tongue-in-cheekedness (!) and a joie de vivre that'll have you celebrating the fact that you've just read a damn' good story. Excellent story-telling, well-crafted writing, heroes you'll root for, villains you'll love to hate. It's a conspiracy thriller, a political yarn, a story that Ludlum would have loved to write. Unfortunately, of course, Ludlum can't write, so he didn't. Good yarn. Buy it.
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