Trust
Me
Non-series
Jeff
Abbott
Dutton
(Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 0-525-95121-0 (0525951210)
ISBN-13: 978-0-525-95121-6 (9780525951216)
Publication Date: July 2009
List Price: $25.95
Synopsis (from
the publisher): Luke Dantry tells people he has a job on the cutting
edge of the war on terror-only he knows it's nowhere near as
adrenaline-filled as he makes it sound. Luke's nightly task working for
his stepfather's Washington think tank: Go undercover from the
anonymous safety of his computer and infiltrate Web-based, home-grown
terrorist networks, cataloging the screen names and details of a motley
collection of rage-filled, mentally suspect, and mostly impotent loners
he comes to call the Black Road. Now and then he encounters someone who
may have the capability to make good on his threats, but Luke figures
that the vast majority of his targets are simply frustrated malcontents
using the Internet as an empty soapbox.
When Luke is kidnapped at gunpoint, without warning, and left for dead
in an isolated cabin deep in the woods, he realizes it must be related
to his work, and that the Black Road is far more organized than he
thought-and much closer to home than he could have ever imagined. After
a daring escape, with both the terrorist group and their enemies on his
heels, he must quickly assemble a complex puzzle of convoluted
histories and motives, where the final pieces extend deep into his own
past-and where Luke himself may hold the key to stopping the Black Road
before their spectacular plans come to horrible fruition.
Review:
Jeff
Abbott's stand-alone novel Trust Me
is a fairly routine "chase" thriller that presents an intriguing
supposition but never fully realizes its potential.
The person being chased is Luke Dantry, the 24-year-old stepson of a
think tank analyst, who's working on a project he refers to as Night
Road, a plan to identify potential terrorists using online social
networks. He's kidnapped at gunpoint from his home town of Austin and
forced to drive to Houston, where he witnesses his abductor kill a
homeless man. Luke's chasers are pretty much everyone else in the book,
and include the authorities, who captured the murder on a security
camera and assume Luke was in on it. At first, Luke simply wants to be
free, but he quickly realizes that he's not sure who to trust,
especially after his stepfather refuses to discuss a ransom demand for
his release. Luke manages to escape, and turns to the only people who
he believes can help him: the anonymous would-be terrorists that make
up the Night Road, with whom he's developed a mutually trusting
relationship online.
Trust
Me starts quickly,
with a pace that doesn't let up for the first 100 pages or so. But then
the story begins to get a bit repetitive and doesn't develop much
beyond this: Luke finds himself in yet another precarious situation,
and he needs to devise yet another clever way to get out of it all the
while learning a bit more about the people chasing him, and who, if
any, can be trusted.
Luke, as the principal character, is portrayed as smart and
resourceful, but also impulsive, naive and gullible, an interesting
combination that works within the context of the plot and helps keep
the reader's interest from waning too much. But the other characters
are given mostly formulaic personalities and traits, their actions (and
intents) predictable.
Effective thrillers have to, or at least should, possess some baseline
level of credibility to be enjoyable, where people do, or don't do,
something for a reason. It doesn't necessarily have to be a reasonable
reason, but it should exist. And this is where Trust Me
generally misses the mark.
A question frequently asked by the characters in the book is a relevant
one: What is Hellfire? But there's a related question that isn't asked,
nor answered: Why Hellfire? This latter question is, arguably, more
important to the premise of the story than what it is, yet it's never
addressed in any meaningful way. The Night Road is described as,
“So many people, all with their own agenda, their own skills,
their own cause, trading their brilliance and their resources, ready to
strike against the far wider world. An army, hidden in the shadows, and
waging a war that would change the world. … A scary, and a
beautiful creature, a beast of justice, was being born.” But
to
what end? For what purpose? For whose justice? In other words, why?
Similarly, there's the $50 million that is introduced in the first
chapter and which drives much of the action here, yet it, too, isn't
fully explained as to why assuming control of it, this particular and
not some other $50 million, is so important to so many of the
characters. To embarrass the source of the money? To shut down
Hellfire? Simple greed or revenge? It's all these unanswered "whys"
that prevent this otherwise thoughtful and well-written novel from
being a better thriller.
Special thanks to Goldberg McDuffie Communications for providing a copy of Trust Me for this review.
Review Copyright © 2009 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
Have you read Trust Me? How would you rate it?
Non-series thrillers by this author ...
Panic
Dutton (Hardcover), August 2005
ISBN-10: 0-525-94904-6 (0525949046)
ISBN-13: 978-0-525-94904-6 (9780525949046)
Fear
Dutton (Hardcover), August 2006
ISBN-10: 0-525-94972-0 (0525949720)
ISBN-13: 978-0-525-94972-5 (9780525949725)
Collision
Dutton (Hardcover), July 2008
ISBN-10: 0-525-95028-1 (0525950281)
ISBN-13: 978-0-525-95028-8 (9780525950288)
Trust Me
Dutton (Hardcover), July 2009
ISBN-10: 0-525-95121-0 (0525951210)
ISBN-13: 978-0-525-95121-6 (9780525951216)
Omnimystery
keywords for Trust Me
...
Location(s) referenced: Austin,
Houston,
Chicago,
Washington
DC.
