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beastreader's review against another edition
4.0
Reporter Henry Parker is back. This time he may have found himself in a way over his head.
Henry was leaving the office, when he was approached by a drug junkie. The man tells Henry…” The city’s gonna burn.” Henry may have given the guy a chance if he hadn’t been a junkie. That evening, Henry receives a phone call from the authorities. They want Henry to come down and identify a body. It is the same man who Henry ran into earlier today. His name is Stephen Gaines. Supposedly Mr. Gaines is Henry’s half-brother.
This comes as a complete surprise to Henry. There is only one was to solve this mystery. Henry will have to contact his estranged father. It seems though that Henry isn’t the only one who wants to contact Henry’s father. The authorities believe that Mr. Parker killed Mr. Gaines. It is up to Henry and his lover, Amanda to come to the aid of Henry’s father.
Another good read by Mr. Pinter. The Fury is the fourth book in the Henry Parker series. This is one of my favorite series currently out in the market today. Henry Parker is a lovable character. He may be cut throat but than hey…what news reporter isn’t? What I like about Henry is that he is personable. Everyone around Henry would consider him a friend. From page one the action never lets up till the very last page. The ending was a bit of a cliff hanger…leading up to the next book, titled The Darkness.
Henry was leaving the office, when he was approached by a drug junkie. The man tells Henry…” The city’s gonna burn.” Henry may have given the guy a chance if he hadn’t been a junkie. That evening, Henry receives a phone call from the authorities. They want Henry to come down and identify a body. It is the same man who Henry ran into earlier today. His name is Stephen Gaines. Supposedly Mr. Gaines is Henry’s half-brother.
This comes as a complete surprise to Henry. There is only one was to solve this mystery. Henry will have to contact his estranged father. It seems though that Henry isn’t the only one who wants to contact Henry’s father. The authorities believe that Mr. Parker killed Mr. Gaines. It is up to Henry and his lover, Amanda to come to the aid of Henry’s father.
Another good read by Mr. Pinter. The Fury is the fourth book in the Henry Parker series. This is one of my favorite series currently out in the market today. Henry Parker is a lovable character. He may be cut throat but than hey…what news reporter isn’t? What I like about Henry is that he is personable. Everyone around Henry would consider him a friend. From page one the action never lets up till the very last page. The ending was a bit of a cliff hanger…leading up to the next book, titled The Darkness.
ttnnllrr's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
I very much enjoyed reading this book, it had some good insights on the life of an addict coming from a book that was essentially dunking on them…
I also liked reading about the relationship between the main character and his girlfriend, it was so refreshing to read about a healthy well communicated relationship rather than the usual secret keeping stuff that goes on.
I’m still not sure if I’ll continue in the series or not, but the cliffhanger is very much exciting enough for me to want to continue.
I also liked reading about the relationship between the main character and his girlfriend, it was so refreshing to read about a healthy well communicated relationship rather than the usual secret keeping stuff that goes on.
I’m still not sure if I’ll continue in the series or not, but the cliffhanger is very much exciting enough for me to want to continue.
katymvt's review against another edition
2.0
2020 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge-a book with a character in their 20s.
This book was ridiculous. There were bunches of continuity errors. Such as the main character got out of the shower, there were no towels so he put on a pair of boxers fell asleep, was awakened by the phone, jumpted out of bed and his towel fell off so he was naked. Then, he kept talking about how he left home 10 years ago, then it was 8, then it was 10, then it was 8 again. He read an old interview of a murder victim. He said that he had a son who was going to be 15 next month. The next page he's trying to track down this son and hopes he remembers something about his father's murder as he was 8 when it happened.
Then there was stuff that didn't make any sense. The murder happened in NY. The main suspect lives in Oregon. He was extradited back to New York. Then he was sitting in jail for like a week waiting to be indicted. What?
They acted like chocolate covered strawberries were not a perishable item.
He had to go through a whole bunch of shenanigans to pick his girlfriend up from a club which were totally not necessary.
I could go on and on. The story itself wasn't bad, but the nonsensicalness of all the details killed it.
It ended on a semi-cliffhanger. Luckily for me, I don't really care. I doubt I'll ever read this author again. Apparently editors and proofreaders are a thing of the past.
This book was ridiculous. There were bunches of continuity errors. Such as the main character got out of the shower, there were no towels so he put on a pair of boxers fell asleep, was awakened by the phone, jumpted out of bed and his towel fell off so he was naked. Then, he kept talking about how he left home 10 years ago, then it was 8, then it was 10, then it was 8 again. He read an old interview of a murder victim. He said that he had a son who was going to be 15 next month. The next page he's trying to track down this son and hopes he remembers something about his father's murder as he was 8 when it happened.
Then there was stuff that didn't make any sense. The murder happened in NY. The main suspect lives in Oregon. He was extradited back to New York. Then he was sitting in jail for like a week waiting to be indicted. What?
They acted like chocolate covered strawberries were not a perishable item.
He had to go through a whole bunch of shenanigans to pick his girlfriend up from a club which were totally not necessary.
I could go on and on. The story itself wasn't bad, but the nonsensicalness of all the details killed it.
It ended on a semi-cliffhanger. Luckily for me, I don't really care. I doubt I'll ever read this author again. Apparently editors and proofreaders are a thing of the past.
littlemissh's review against another edition
3.0
A light and easy read, not sure I like a first person narrator in a crime thriller. He was also written to be painfully naive, constantly reiterating plot points and there were inconsistencies/continuity issues between scenes.
xterminal's review
3.0
Jason Pinter, The Fury (Mira, 2009)
The Fury is the fourth novel in Pinter's Henry Parker series. Had I known this, I would probably have not had Vine ship it to me, as I haven't read the first three books in the series. It doesn't help that I also missed in my skim of the product description that the book is published by Mira, and my encounters with Mira-published novels have, to date, been entirely unsatisfactory. This did, however, give me the chance to address two questions that have been sitting in the back of my mind for a while now. The first is what a book written by a male author and published by Mira would look like. The second is whether it's possible to read a truly episodic series out of order (or whether Parker's enduring Spenser novels are an anomaly in that regard). I now have answers to both, and they are about as I feared.
In this one, Henry is approached by a junkie at the beginning of the novel. He shoos the guy away, uneasy thanks to one of his reporter colleagues having just been assaulted the day before outside the offices. That night, he gets a call from a homicide detective. It seems the junkie, whose name is Steven Gaines, has been murdered execution-style, and that Parker may have been the last one to see him alive. The detective on the phone then drops a big bomb in Henry's lap which I won't reveal here, since the jacket copy actually gets it right for once and keeps all the spoilers out. In any case, Henry ends up needing, and quickly, to find out who killed Stephen Gaines. And thus the mystery begins.
I'll address the second question I had first, because it's by far the easier answer. I haven't read the first three novels in the series, and now I don't think I have any need to; Pinter goes way, way overboard in reminding the readers about events from previous books. There's none of the subtlety of the Spenser novels (which, for the most part, I also read out of order), where Robert Parker just integrated the events of previous books and went on with the story; Pinter feels the need to stop every time one of those subtle moments drops by and have Parker ruminate (with all the cud-chewing imagery that word should bring to mind) about the event(s) in question.
And, before tacking the first question, let me add a codicil to that above: the final plot twist (which comes only a few pages after the climactic plot twist, which is an entirely different, and equally badly set-up, animal) seems to exist here solely to set up the events in Henry Parker Book Five (the title of which does not, thank all that's holy, have anything to do with Half-Blood Princes). As such, it seems all too convenient given a number of observations Henry Parker makes earlier in the book. (Of course, if that's Pinter's goal all along, I'm entirely wrong about all this, but that is not something we'll know until reading Henry Parker and the Half-Blood... oh, forget it.)
Okay, so now. “What would a book by a male author published by Mira look like?”. Perhaps it's my limited knowledge of Mira's work (and if you've read Erica Spindler, you may understand my reticence to read more than a handful of Mira-published books), but those few Mira books I've come into contact with have all been written by women, and have all been the suspense equivalent of Harlequins. I don't want to call them “romantic suspense”, because there are some authors who have historically done that genre very well (two words: Barbara Michaels), and I don't want to cheapen those earlier novels. Men are not traditional writers of romantic suspense novels, so I asked myself the question. And to be fair, Jason Pinter is not a writer of romantic suspense, but I think Mira mandated that sort of angle. And thus we have Amanda, Henry Parker's better half. Not that I have anything against Amanda, as a character, at all. In fact, she was my favorite character in the book (aside from the nasty, ingratiating gossip reporter, Tony Valentine, who reminds me of far too many people I actually know). No, what bugged me about Amanda is that, in the same way Pinter stops the action to ruminate on scenes from earlier novels again, he also stops to ruminate on Amanda. The passages in which this happens are entirely separate from the rest of the text, and could have been excised without damaging the book in any way. Thus my belief that Mira mandated emphasizing the romance angle (and my corresponding belief that Pinter added those passages after finishing the novel, making no attempt at all to integrate them into the story).
David Thomson has said in more than one critical analysis of over the years that documentaries about the making of certain films would likely have been far more interesting than the films themselves. Perhaps it's my inner conspiracy theorist talking, but I have a similar feeling here—I think the account of the writing of The Fury would probably have been a better book than The Fury itself is. But while I realize the tone of this review has been relentlessly negative, I must add as a footnote that Pinter does one thing very well. He keeps the reader turning the pages. It took me a while to get into the book, whose first three or four chapters are phenomenally slow (and I find that odd in a series novel), but once I did, I finished the rest of it over the course of a day and a half. It's not great literature, nor is it even great genre writing, but there's enough “what happens next?” to make it worth reading if you're stuck in an airport and have nothing else with you. ** ½
The Fury is the fourth novel in Pinter's Henry Parker series. Had I known this, I would probably have not had Vine ship it to me, as I haven't read the first three books in the series. It doesn't help that I also missed in my skim of the product description that the book is published by Mira, and my encounters with Mira-published novels have, to date, been entirely unsatisfactory. This did, however, give me the chance to address two questions that have been sitting in the back of my mind for a while now. The first is what a book written by a male author and published by Mira would look like. The second is whether it's possible to read a truly episodic series out of order (or whether Parker's enduring Spenser novels are an anomaly in that regard). I now have answers to both, and they are about as I feared.
In this one, Henry is approached by a junkie at the beginning of the novel. He shoos the guy away, uneasy thanks to one of his reporter colleagues having just been assaulted the day before outside the offices. That night, he gets a call from a homicide detective. It seems the junkie, whose name is Steven Gaines, has been murdered execution-style, and that Parker may have been the last one to see him alive. The detective on the phone then drops a big bomb in Henry's lap which I won't reveal here, since the jacket copy actually gets it right for once and keeps all the spoilers out. In any case, Henry ends up needing, and quickly, to find out who killed Stephen Gaines. And thus the mystery begins.
I'll address the second question I had first, because it's by far the easier answer. I haven't read the first three novels in the series, and now I don't think I have any need to; Pinter goes way, way overboard in reminding the readers about events from previous books. There's none of the subtlety of the Spenser novels (which, for the most part, I also read out of order), where Robert Parker just integrated the events of previous books and went on with the story; Pinter feels the need to stop every time one of those subtle moments drops by and have Parker ruminate (with all the cud-chewing imagery that word should bring to mind) about the event(s) in question.
And, before tacking the first question, let me add a codicil to that above: the final plot twist (which comes only a few pages after the climactic plot twist, which is an entirely different, and equally badly set-up, animal) seems to exist here solely to set up the events in Henry Parker Book Five (the title of which does not, thank all that's holy, have anything to do with Half-Blood Princes). As such, it seems all too convenient given a number of observations Henry Parker makes earlier in the book. (Of course, if that's Pinter's goal all along, I'm entirely wrong about all this, but that is not something we'll know until reading Henry Parker and the Half-Blood... oh, forget it.)
Okay, so now. “What would a book by a male author published by Mira look like?”. Perhaps it's my limited knowledge of Mira's work (and if you've read Erica Spindler, you may understand my reticence to read more than a handful of Mira-published books), but those few Mira books I've come into contact with have all been written by women, and have all been the suspense equivalent of Harlequins. I don't want to call them “romantic suspense”, because there are some authors who have historically done that genre very well (two words: Barbara Michaels), and I don't want to cheapen those earlier novels. Men are not traditional writers of romantic suspense novels, so I asked myself the question. And to be fair, Jason Pinter is not a writer of romantic suspense, but I think Mira mandated that sort of angle. And thus we have Amanda, Henry Parker's better half. Not that I have anything against Amanda, as a character, at all. In fact, she was my favorite character in the book (aside from the nasty, ingratiating gossip reporter, Tony Valentine, who reminds me of far too many people I actually know). No, what bugged me about Amanda is that, in the same way Pinter stops the action to ruminate on scenes from earlier novels again, he also stops to ruminate on Amanda. The passages in which this happens are entirely separate from the rest of the text, and could have been excised without damaging the book in any way. Thus my belief that Mira mandated emphasizing the romance angle (and my corresponding belief that Pinter added those passages after finishing the novel, making no attempt at all to integrate them into the story).
David Thomson has said in more than one critical analysis of over the years that documentaries about the making of certain films would likely have been far more interesting than the films themselves. Perhaps it's my inner conspiracy theorist talking, but I have a similar feeling here—I think the account of the writing of The Fury would probably have been a better book than The Fury itself is. But while I realize the tone of this review has been relentlessly negative, I must add as a footnote that Pinter does one thing very well. He keeps the reader turning the pages. It took me a while to get into the book, whose first three or four chapters are phenomenally slow (and I find that odd in a series novel), but once I did, I finished the rest of it over the course of a day and a half. It's not great literature, nor is it even great genre writing, but there's enough “what happens next?” to make it worth reading if you're stuck in an airport and have nothing else with you. ** ½
ibeforem's review
4.0
I didn’t realize this wasn’t the first in the Henry Parker series until after I started reading it, which is unfortunate since I actually *do* have the first book sitting in my TBR pile. Thankfully, reading the previous books is not crucial in your enjoyment of this book — you just miss out on some character development, though several previous events are alluded to. Henry’s not the easiest guy to like, but I found that I warmed up to him. He’s had an unhappy family life, so when a murder victim turns out to be a brother he never knew he had, you can understand how everything changes for him. What else has his father not told him? I thought the suspense and the mystery were pretty good, even if Henry does just stumble across many of the things he "figures out". There’s an interesting tie-in to his mentor at the end, and you can see where the next book is going. I’d read more of this series.
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