Flint

Rating:
Summary: Sharp on Flint but blunt on originality
Review: ...and it held my interest. Once you get used to Mr. Eddy's style (and the fact that he is writing English...not 'Murrican) it moves right along. Another reviewer said one wouldn't warm to the Flint character. Perhaps so, but I wouldn't turn my back to her either.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent, well written thriller
Review: After reading a recent run of some disappointing thrillers, I came across Paul Eddy's "Flint." This is a masterful blend of character and action.

This well-plotted thriller focuses on Grace Flint, an undercover cop who is physically and emotionally scarred in a bust gone wrong. As she rebuilds her life, the ghosts of her past come back to haunt her, and she gets a chance for revenge on those who injured her. However, this is no simple revenge tale. but a well-told cat and mouse thriller, and a fine character study.

Seek out this great read!

Rating:
Summary: What happens to Flint is horrifying...
Review: both physically and psychologically. The brittle, cold heroine of Paul Eddy's first fiction thriller is worth more than a glance. It is hard to know what makes Flint tick, even though the book explores her life from the viewpoint of an outsider, in
retrospect. Flint's a British operative, gone awol after she is caught in the crossfire of an international plot.

Harry Cohen, trying to find her, gives us the retrospective. Unlike Flint, Harry's almost too real, too wounded, to be given the task. His character, the best developed in the book, sees every issue from both sides; he's devoted to finding Flint, helping her, and righting the wrong that's been done her.

Meanwhile, Flint uses her powers of deception and persuasion to seek her revenge on an international criminal. The reader is absorbed in her risk-taking, all the while learning what makes her tick. Think Marg Helgenberger for the film or the TV movie.

Not a big fan of spy thrillers, I found Flint engaging, well-written, with a few forgiveable flaws. Looking forward to more from Paul Eddy, he has a new and crisp voice.

Rating:
Summary: Flint doesn't produce a spark
Review: I read a lot of books of this genre, but for me, this didn't hit the mark.

The opening scene is explosive, but the story goes down from there. In essence, the plot is interesting enough - top-level secret-service agents on both sides of the Atlantic have gone corrupt and Flint sets out on her own mission to catch them - but the details get too complex. You end up having to stop and remember back to previous passages to clarify the latest detail.

I also found myself not caring about the character of Flint. There was nothing there that made me warm to her. However, the other central character, Harry Cohen, is plausible and I did become endeared to him.

The blurb on the front cover, making comparisons to Clarice Starling can be seen as a desperate attempt for an inferior publication to garner sales. Flint should have been able to sell of its own accord, not through dubious association with another authors work.

Finally, the big test for me is the question, "Is this believable?" With this book, I didn't suspend disbelief. I felt all along that it was a work of fiction.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting heroine runs out of steam.
Review: I was drawn in by a strong start but found the plot un-necessarily complex by the end. Was there really need for all those characters - un-developed names thrown in all around. Lots of bone but very little meat and a rushed ending that left me dis-satisfied. Felt Flint stumbling through by the finish.

... and the name...we already had a Flint... it was James Cockburn. Bit cheesy don't you think.

Rating:
Summary: Graceless Flint
Review: Plot and character development are high on my list of priorities in fiction, and at the end of Flint, I was dissatisfied in both these aspects of Eddy's work. Combine this with the sloppiness of changing from present tense to past within chapters/sections, and this drags the rating I would give the book down. Toss-in the previously mentioned loose end and a gruesome torture scene that seems devised purely to shock and disturb the reader, and a higher rating than three stars is simply unreachable.

However, the characters were complex and the scope of the story very broad. That it was well-researched seems apparent. These aspects kept my interest at a very high level.

I also had difficulty grasping the logic of some of the characters' actions, most notably towards the end of the book, Harling.

So too, Flint (the mian character) at times seems to embrace the concept of her femininity being used as a tool not only by herself but by her supervisors. This didn't click as being entirely credible, but I suppose history is littered with examples - Delilah and Mata Hari spring to mind.

As a first attempt, the book has a lot to commend it, but when I read a thriller, I want to be thrilled, excited, frightened.

Not shaking with horror, unable to sleep, and this is how the torture scene left me.

So despite the many good points of the book, this will be my first and last Eddy novel.

Rating:
Summary: Gritty and hard-boiled
Review: That could describe the novel and is just as apt summing up Grace Flint's main attributes as well.
Flint was an undercover inspector in England, when an undercover operation went south and she was beaten to within an inch of her life. As her body healed with the help of plastic surgery, she teamed up with other law enforcement agencies hoping by climbing back on the horse her emotional healing could begin. As the taut plot unwinds it is obvious that for Flint to feel whole again she needs revenge on the man that beat her.
This is a crisp and clean thriller that harkens to noir fiction in the best sense of the word. Although Eddy writes with a palpable edge the reader isn't exposed to gratuitous voilence and gore.
Flint is at heart an excellent characterization piece and an invitation to the reader to come to know a truly remarkable heroine.
Although there isn't graphic violence lacing this novel Eddy does an admirable job leading his audience into the world's seedier side. Over all an exciting tense effort, not exceptional but it would be a cold reader indeed that didn't feel for Flint's plight and sympathize with her life's challenges as they read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Sharp on Flint but blunt on originality
Review: This reads like a crime novel that was written in a hurry and under pressure. In some places it shows, such as one villian being in possession of a VHS tape splicing machine. You cannot splice VHS tape and no such machine exists. You can dub and dubbing machines exist. But this error passed not only the author but also his editors.
Little if any original thought is given to the characters. They say and do nothing that you could not have predicted. The plot conforms to one beloved of all journalists who turn to fiction, namely the lone outcast against a corrupt system. It doesn't matter whether you call it 'The Organisation' or 'The Network', it is the same old theme of evil conspiracy at the heart of society. The name of the main character Grace Flint, tells you all you need to know about how lightweight this story is. She is bitter and sharp (Flint) she is a woman at heart (Grace). To conform to what publishers think sell books our Grace is naturally the female equivalent of the boozing, divorced, cynical but fair, dogged police hero. The blurb has the temerity to compare Flint with agent Starling. Neither Flint nor the plot begin to match up to Silence of the Lambs. Character development is nil. Everyone in the book starts the way they mean to go on, and remain cardboard figures in a plot that resembles a cereal packet give away game.
Eddy admits in interviews that he cannnot invent. His facts are minutely researched. But the point of fiction is indeed to make it up. That is what good fiction writers do best. Stand this book next to John Grisham's Pelican Brief and it is immediately apparent that Grisham's characters are more complex, have more interaction between them and his plots a lot more fully thought out. For example to make the ending of Flint a cliff hanger Eddy has our heroine hunted by her own side as a terrorist, when her own bosses know she is nothing of the sort. Our heroine seeks out one of the baddies by posing as a swinger in a Paris swinger club and agrees to return to his apartment. To avoid the obvious happening in the bedroom Flint fakes a sudden migraine of such terrible proportions that the baddie leaves her alone in the flat and jets off somewhere else: in other words 'with one bound our heroine was free' - all very Mills and Boone. Such plots twists creak with disbelef.

Rating:
Summary: Violated, traumatized, vulnerable, smart, driven and deadly
Review: Thus might Grace Flint, possibly one of the most intriguing heroes of recent thriller fiction, be characterized.

Grace is Detective Inspector Flint of Scotland Yard, assigned to the Major Crimes unit as an undercover operative. Three years previous, she got caught in a sting gone awry, during which her partner was killed and her face stomped to a pulp. Now, after extensive reconstructive surgery and rehabilitation, she's back on the job. While on assignment to America, she stumbles across the trail of the man, Frank Harling, who ordered her beating. It's becomes evident that Frank is now involved in an international blackmail and money laundering scheme masterminded by highly placed individuals in the West's intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Not knowing whom to trust, even within her own service, Flint goes underground to track Harling down.

There's actually a second protagonist in this plot, Harry Cohen, who's on an almost equal footing with Flint. Harry, a solicitor by profession, was once MI5's chief legal counsel, but was sacked after recommending against too many operations of dubious legality. Now, Grace's friends bring Cohen back to find Flint before she runs afoul of either Harling again or the criminal schemers within the Establishment that want her investigation stopped. But, are Grace's "friends" really her friends, or are they the Bad Guys?

Flint is fascinating because of the heavy load of emotional and psychological baggage she carries. There are, obviously, the aftereffects of her physical trauma manifested by her obsession with Harling. But also, as the storyline reveals, Grace's mother vanished one day when her daughter was but a young girl, apparently to foul play since the family dog was severely and deliberately injured in the same event. The woman was never found, not even her body. For a period during her adolescence, Grace actually thought that her veterinarian father had committed the murder, and had him investigated by the police - an investigation that discovered nothing. Because of all this, Flint is extremely vulnerable. Yet she remains smart, highly motivated, and terribly good at what she does for the London Metropolitan Police, i.e. being an undercover agent that can completely take on whatever role of the moment she needs to play. In that sense, she's a chameleon, both to her quarry and the reader.

As much as I enjoyed FLINT, I'm only awarding 4 stars because of a major loose end not tidied up at the conclusion - the question of her mother's disappearance. Perhaps the author means to return to the mystery in a sequel. Perhaps not. It seems too curious a thread to leave hanging, and I shall be sorely vexed if a following volume doesn't revisit the incident.

Rating:
Summary: 2.5 stars really
Review: Well, there's one thing you can say for him, he tries. He really does.

but he ultimately fails.

I can't actually understand all the hype which this overrated novel has achieved for itself. I'm actuallt surprised it got published. Not because it's badly written, but because everything about it is just so complicated. I'm surprised hwo any publisher could actually understand enough of the book to be able to say "yes, we'll publish this".

And it is complicated. Very much so. About half way through i gave up trying to comprehend the to-ings and fro-ings of all the stolen money, and just read the rest of it without understanding what it was on about.

The whole plot is just far too complex for readers to understand. The financial goings on and exactly who took what and put it in which bank and why is mind boggling. There is an impossible number of characters, which are all quite similar and often hard to recall which one you are reading about now. You need to keep thinking "now who is this again?"

The writing is good, but only language-wise. It doesn't have much depth at all. and none of the characters are very interesting, even Grace Flint, the heroin. Although apart from this, it is quite assured writing, especially for a first novel. Which really isn't all that surprising, he's been writing short stories and other espionage articles for about 25 years. So i would be surprised if it <i>wasn't</i> assured.

THis, at heart, is really a spy thriller for the modern age. the idea it carries is interesting, but Paul Eddy simply makes it far too complicated. It starts brilliantly, with real promise of something great. But sadly these hopes are not realised. He goe son for a bit about all the gadgets etc which members of the special branch carry, which is actually interesting. But it would have benefited the book a great deal if he actually incorporated some of them into it. If some of them had been relevant to the plot it would have made it quite a bit better.

Another thing which was confusing was the constant switching between tenses and time frames. I could never fathom which events were supposed to have happened before, which after, and which currently. He seemed to just jump about, filling in bits and pieces here and there until he was satisfied he had written all the important evnts into it. But it is by no means in any sort of chronological order. There is occasionally a switch to an event which happened in the past, which has an effect upon the current scene, btu as soon as it's over, he goes straight onto something else, and doesn't bother telling us what he's on about.

The catchphrase on the front of the english version of the book goes like this...

"First there was Clarice Starling, now meet Grace Flint...>"

NO NO NO! you do not immediately plant preconceptions in readers minds. it always, always disappoints them. (im thinking in particular of the Patricia Cornwell/Kathy Reichs comparison.)

and this, as i expeted, only served to disappoint. By comparing her to Clarice Starling the reader automatically expects something which Eddy can not possibly deliver.

Also, in this book there are definitely echoes of Hannibal, by Thomas Harris. It is blindlingly obvious that he's trying to make it seem like Hannibal. The ends are practically the same. and it does NOT work. i can't waork. because the two books are completely different genres. with completely diferent plots. written by completely different authors, each with different ideas.

But whereas Hannibal was a masterpice, this book just falls flat on it's face.

don't bother with it.