The Panic Zone
A Jack Gannon Mystery by Rick Mofina
Review: Following up on a lead from a terrorist attack in Brazil is just the first step for investigative reporter Jack Gannon that will take him on an international adventure across four continents in The Panic Zone, the second mystery in this series by Rick Mofina.
Though Gannon was a seasoned investigative reporter in his native Buffalo, he's a novice when it comes to the world stage. Relatively new at the New York City headquarters of World Press Alliance (WPA), and anxious to make his mark, he jumps at the chance to follow-up on a bombing in Brazil that claimed the lives of two WPA staff, a reporter and a photographer. Travelling to Rio de Janeiro, he is met with resistance by both his local colleagues, who resent his intruding presence as a corporate overseer, and the authorities, who view him as an interfering outsider. Still, with sharp eyes and quick thinking, he's able to pick up on a few clues as to why the reporter and photographer were at that particular cafe at that particular time when the bomb exploded … and the start to the story of his career.
Readers will likely have to exercise some patience in reading The Panic Zone. The sheer number of characters and locations is overwhelming as is the fact that the (at least initially) numerous concurrent storylines are seemingly unrelated and have no common elements. A cheat sheet to keep everything straight is practically a necessity. And it doesn't pay to start asking the "why"- and "why not"-type of questions that will naturally arise along the way; just go along for the ride. It takes quite a long time — well into the second half the book — for the disparate subplots to begin to come together, and even then, there's no sense of accomplishment. It's rather disappointing, since there are many individual scenes in this book that are quite well done, yet the overall picture doesn't come together in a completely satisfactory manner. The Panic Zone isn't a poor thriller by any means, just more of an unnecessarily complicated one.
Acknowledgment: Planned Television Arts provided a copy of The Panic Zone for this review.
Review Copyright © 2010 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
Selected reviews of other mysteries by this author … Free Fall MIRA (Mass Market Paperback), July 2016 ISBN-13: 9780778319467; ISBN-10: 0778319466
Location(s) referenced in The Panic Zone: Wyoming, New York City, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Washington DC, The Bahamas, Morocco
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The Panic Zone by Rick Mofina — A Jack Gannon Mystery
Publisher: MIRA
Format: Mass Market Paperback
ISBN-13: 978-0-7783-2794-3
Publication Date: July 2010
List Price: $9.99

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Page Author: Lance Wright Site Publisher: Mysterious Reviews
Mysterious Reviews is a Division of The Hidden Staircase Mystery Books and a Business Unit of the Omnimystery Family of Mystery Websites
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