Rating: 
Summary: kept my interest-BUT MAIN CHARACTER WAS TOO NAIVE!!!!
Review: I must say that Jim Hougan's Kingdom Come was one of the finest thrillers I have read in years, and I read alot! about 3 books a week. First Horseman kept my interest, was nicely paced and well written. The MAJOR flaw was the utter stupidity of Frank Daly- the main character. He seemed to be far too naive for a "veteran journalist" For example, when he sees a cult member going through his car, her explanation is , he left his lights on.
And he buys that!!!! Come on now!!! He knows he is battling a very vindictive and dangerous cult and seems utterly incapable of putting 2 and 2 together when it comes to obvious things, throughout the entire book. So much so, that the reader loses confidence in him and cannot identify, because nobody with half a brain would be so gullible. This flaw is repeated throughout the book. Also, Daly is directly responsible for the "microwaving death" of a young student, yet doesnt express any guilt, another disjointed example of a non-too believable lead character. This may seem picky, but when one reads a thriller, it becomes increasingly annoying- so much so that you want to reach into the pages and slap some sense into the so called investigative reporter.
Rating: 
Summary: Mass Market Media dabbles in bioterrorism.
Review: I was recommended this book by a friend, and was quite disappointed by it. ....Tragically, this book fails to deliver. It starts out moving along at a fairly good clip, although the writing style is stilted and the dialogue is tinny and forced; it slows down about halfway through and never picks back up. It feels like the book was written to meet a page count, and 500 pages were used where 300 would've done the trick. The FBI is, naturally, protrayed as the bad guy, the CIA is, naturally, written off as incompetent. It's the standard DC-based thriller Stock Character set (the heroic journalist, his lovely girlfriend, the meddling and incompetent but silent and probably resourceful federal agents). And the ending with a twist, the basic, this is fiction... or ISN'T it!? ending, was kind of sickening. In general the whole novel feels like it was poorly researched and not well done. It had the potential to be a timely book (bioterror's a hot topic now), with a real-life edgy kind of thrill to it (North Korea's hot too), but in fact it just sort of fell flat. It's mass market paperback. It's worth avoiding...
Rating: 
Summary: DARK SPANISH LADY
Review: "The First Horseman" carries on the John Case tradition of scaring the pants off of you with some really horrifying what if jitters!!! And as in previous novels, it starts off with mysterious murders and then you're off as to how in the world they have anything to do with what's going on now. Our hero this time is newspaperman Frank Daley, and he's quite the assertive journalist. The plot is so involved that to retrace it here would be redundant and superflous. As in all Case novels, he people it with some really nasty characters, and again religious sects play a big part in the whole scenario. I did have a problem with the character of Susannah. Here's this obviously ditsy young woman who has a child, casually murders people...puts poison...on the hero's steering wheel that sends him into...hallucinations, then when her religous leader tells her she isn't supposed to be having a baby, he engages her in a violent boxing match, puts a plastic bag over the baby's head, and then when it's done, tells her she did a good job, the baby is fine and she is actually thankful to him...that's stretching it..and the ending, as per previous Case books, is again anticlimactic, and over much too quickly.
But, hey, what the heck..it's one great roller coaster ride, so hop on and enjoy, and think WHAT IF????? GET THOSE FLU SHOTS!! RECOMMENDED
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