Book Review: Ghost Country by Patrick Lee
Ghost Country
Patrick Lee
Harper, January 2011
ISBN 0061584444
Mass Market Paperback (ARC)
Paige Campbell has just left the White House when she and her Tangent colleagues are attacked and everyone is killed, everyone except Paige. She has been kidnapped but, before being taken, she manages to make a desperate call to Bethany Stewart, another colleague, for help. Paige directs Bethany where to find the “entity”, a duplicate of the one which has now been stolen, and tells her to seek out Travis Chase for help. Bethany and Travis will need to use the device, the entity, and will then see the horrible future awaiting mankind in just four short months. They must go public with the facts but they can’t go to the authorities…not even the president.
Travis is from Paige’s past, a past that included the Breach and its fabulous scientific secrets and the dire things the wrong people will do to control such secrets. It also included a destiny for Travis revealed to him through the Breach, a destiny that forced him to leave Paige behind despite the great love they had for each other. Since then, he has lived under a false identity and has had no contact with anyone from his past. Now, a strange girl has come to his door and spoken his name, Travis, the first time he’d heard it in more than two years. She tells him that her name is Bethany and they must race to find Paige and to somehow stop Doomsday.
Patrick Lee established himself, to my way of thinking, as a premier thriller writer with his first novel, The Breach, one of my favorite reads of this year—
http://www.cncbooks.com/blog/2010/03/03/review-the-breach/
Lee meets my demands for a very good writer, technically speaking, meaning his prose is to the point yet leaves no doubt as to intent and his work is generally free of spelling and grammatical errors. That in itself is an accomplishment these days when so many books are riddled with mistakes and appear to have skipped the copyediting process. He also has a masterful way of blending suspense and science fiction so that readers of both genres can enjoy his novels and they are thrillers in the best sense of the word. You know a book is good, really good, when you simply must keep reading through mealtimes and into the night to find out what is going to happen next.
The Breach will be on my list of best books of 2010. Now I have to add Ghost Country to that same list. I think this is the first time I’ve ever had two books by the same author on an annual tallying up and, well, that tells me this author is a keeper. I suspect he’s going to become like Lee Child—titles don’t matter so much, you just say “Last night, I finished the latest Lee Child” or “I can’t wait for the next Lee Child” and every discerning reader knows what you mean. I just hate that I now have to wait a year for the next Patrick Lee.
Reviewed by Lelia Taylor, December 2010.
December 29, 2010
Tags: Harper, mystery, science fiction, suspense, thriller Posted in: Full Reviews, My Reviews
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2 Responses
This sounds like a very good book. I will have to put him on my list of authors that I want to read.
Well thought out storyline. Fast moving plot. The story contains all of the classic thriller devices mixed with enough sci-fi to take the plot when earthly being can’t go. I read it on a flight to Paris. My only complaints are the author’s inconsistent descriptive style and a few clumsy sentences.
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