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A review by amandagstevens
The Chain by Adrian McKinty
Did not finish book. Stopped at 42%.
This is the eleventh book I have read (well, almost read) by Adrian McKinty. I have loved the Michael Forsythe trilogy, the Sean Duffy series, and to a lesser but still definite degree Falling Glass. I grabbed the opportunity to read this for review although the premise sounded a bit far-fetched and I don't read thrillers as a rule. I had no doubt McKinty could make a thriller readable for me and infuse his signature character development that has always made me worry and root for his protagonists even when they're committing cold-blooded murder.
Forty pages into The Chain, I felt as if there must be two Adrian McKintys writing fiction and this must be the other one. The dialogue was informational, voiceless, and passionless; the wit was missing altogether; the protagonist was entirely flat. I persevered because hey, McKinty wrote this. It's got to get better. It can't not get better.
Well, at least by p. 151, it doesn't. Pete is an ex-Marine because the plot needs him to know what he's doing. Rachel is a cancer survivor so we sympathize with her. On top of the lack of character depth is a lack of reality in a single thing going on so far. Maybe the thriller audience will have no problem on this score; if you love thrillers, don't take my review too seriously. But if you love Sean Duffy and Michael Forsythe, don't expect to find characters of their caliber here.
An example of the absurdity and cliches that finally forced me to give up on one of my favorite authors:1. Pete and Rachel snatch an eight-year-old child with a peanut allergy so severe her entire school banned peanut products. They both know this, yet Pete feeds the kid cereal that sends her into anaphylactic shock because he forgets to read the ingredients. Oops.
2. The EpiPen they have ordered from eBay isn't in their possession yet but might be at the drop box they had it shipped to, so off Pete goes to check while Rachel holds a dying child in her arms and hopes for the best. Mmkay.
3. Meanwhile because a dying child isn't high enough stakes (or something), a cop shows up at the vacant house where they're holding the child because a neighbor thought she saw movement in said vacant house. Rachel leaves the dying child in the basement and goes upstairs to convince said cop that oh, she is the one who called him but she was probably overreacting and everything is fine. When he states he is going to check the locks (which would give away her B&E job), she decides flirting with him will make him go away. After all, she's 40 and he's 20-something and he won't know what to do with that. And it works.
4. Rachel returns to the basement in time for the child to stop breathing; after a few rounds of CPR she picks up her phone to call 911 after all. Then she pictures the face of her own endangered child and puts her phone away. Nope. The eight-year-old is just going to have to die in her arms if it comes to that. Sorry, kiddo.
5. Pete arrives with the EpiPen. Oh, wow, it works like a miracle; the dying eight-year-old's breathing and color are normal within an hour! Thus the author contributes to the Incompetent Cops trope, forces his supposedly competent hero to be stupid for the purpose of tension, and then escalates tension yet again only to de-escalate the new tension immediately because the only purpose for the second tension was, you guessed it, more tension.
And I'm done. I don't buy any of it and, worse, if I don't care about the characters as real people, the book can quite literally wipe them all out and I'm still not going to care.
Forty pages into The Chain, I felt as if there must be two Adrian McKintys writing fiction and this must be the other one. The dialogue was informational, voiceless, and passionless; the wit was missing altogether; the protagonist was entirely flat. I persevered because hey, McKinty wrote this. It's got to get better. It can't not get better.
Well, at least by p. 151, it doesn't. Pete is an ex-Marine because the plot needs him to know what he's doing. Rachel is a cancer survivor so we sympathize with her. On top of the lack of character depth is a lack of reality in a single thing going on so far. Maybe the thriller audience will have no problem on this score; if you love thrillers, don't take my review too seriously. But if you love Sean Duffy and Michael Forsythe, don't expect to find characters of their caliber here.
An example of the absurdity and cliches that finally forced me to give up on one of my favorite authors:
2. The EpiPen they have ordered from eBay isn't in their possession yet but might be at the drop box they had it shipped to, so off Pete goes to check while Rachel holds a dying child in her arms and hopes for the best. Mmkay.
3. Meanwhile because a dying child isn't high enough stakes (or something), a cop shows up at the vacant house where they're holding the child because a neighbor thought she saw movement in said vacant house. Rachel leaves the dying child in the basement and goes upstairs to convince said cop that oh, she is the one who called him but she was probably overreacting and everything is fine. When he states he is going to check the locks (which would give away her B&E job), she decides flirting with him will make him go away. After all, she's 40 and he's 20-something and he won't know what to do with that. And it works.
4. Rachel returns to the basement in time for the child to stop breathing; after a few rounds of CPR she picks up her phone to call 911 after all. Then she pictures the face of her own endangered child and puts her phone away. Nope. The eight-year-old is just going to have to die in her arms if it comes to that. Sorry, kiddo.
5. Pete arrives with the EpiPen. Oh, wow, it works like a miracle; the dying eight-year-old's breathing and color are normal within an hour! Thus the author contributes to the Incompetent Cops trope, forces his supposedly competent hero to be stupid for the purpose of tension, and then escalates tension yet again only to de-escalate the new tension immediately because the only purpose for the second tension was, you guessed it, more tension.
And I'm done. I don't buy any of it and, worse, if I don't care about the characters as real people, the book can quite literally wipe them all out and I'm still not going to care.