Flinch : A Novel (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

Rating:
Summary: Cain and Abel in Southern California
Review: Ferrigno writes great dialogue and shoot 'em up action scenes with the sleazy side of Southern California as backdrop. Despite a sibling rivalry that is uncomfortable in its extreme, this is a great story.

Flinch is the game Jimmy Gage and his older brother Jonathan played as kids, each pushing the other to a point that would make him flinch. Jimmy creates a national sensation when he gets a box of broken eggs claiming to connect six unrelated murders and writes about it for "Slap" magazine. Soon the story is dismissed as a hoax with only Detective Jane Holt still believing there is an "Eggman killer" on the loose. Jimmy follows a rock band to Europe, gets tossed in jail for three months and finds that his girlfriend Olivia married brother Jonathan the day before he got out to return home.

Jimmy believes Jonathan is the Eggman killer, and one ongoing game of high stakes Flinch runs between them throughout the book. The interlocking stories work well. Jimmy avenges the death of cop Desmond Terrill's son killed by Lee Macklin, a real bad guy who runs drugs, a nightspot and a wrestling business of sorts with Great White, the classic monster muscle guy as his bodyguard. A rival group consisting of weightlifting Spanish chick Pilar and her lackey Blaine, wrestling's Robo-Surfer, fill out the cast of weird people.

There are some terrific action scenes with Great White - wait 'til you get to the one where he takes on the Chechens or his final showdown with Jimmy.

The ending is, well, interesting ... enough said. A very different but very enjoyable story.

Rating:
Summary: An action-packed thriller
Review: Jimmy Gage is a newspaper reporter and movie critic for Slap Magazine, a tabloid on a par with those sold in supermarkets. Amidst his office mail, he receives a letter from the Eggman, a serial killer who has slain six people. The Eggman brags that no law enforcement official has found a link between the homicides. The police conclude that Jimmy wasted their time and made up a story to gain notoriety for himself and his paper. He leaves town under a cloud.

Jimmy returns home a year only later to find his brother married to the woman he loves. He also finds a set of Eggman graphic pictures in Jonathan's beach house. By the time the police arrive, the photos are missing. Jimmy and Jonathan begin a rematch of their cat and mouse game that ran the former out of town once before.

Robert Ferrigno has written another action-packed thriller that sends chills up and down the spines of the audience. Jimmy is an interesting protagonist who remains likeable even as he rushes into trouble without thinking about the consequences. FLINCH is the ultimate cat and mouse game in which a blink may prove a lifetime for the loser.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Finally, a Ferrigno character to love.
Review: This book beats the hell out of Heartbreaker. I was so unimpressed with Heartbreaker that it took me several months to go around to Flinch. I'm not sure what happened to Ferrigno, but this book was so much better. Our hero, JImmy Gage, is great. Tough, tender hearted, and has great friends (who make great characters). Was a perfect story? No. The ending was a bit too neat, but I laughed, I cared and I look forward to the next one.