Synopsis: At twelve, Gideon Crew witnessed his father, a world-class mathematician, accused of treason and gunned down.
At twenty-four, summoned to his dying mother's bedside, Gideon learned the truth: His father was framed and deliberately slaughtered. With her last breath, she begged her son to avenge him.
Now, with a new purpose in his life, Gideon crafts a one-time mission of vengeance, aimed at the perpetrator of his father's destruction. His plan is meticulous, spectacular, and successful.
But from the shadows, someone is watching. A very powerful someone, who is impressed by Gideon's special skills. Someone who has need of just such a renegade.
For Gideon, this operation may be only the beginning . . .
Have you ever eaten instant mashed potatoes? Yeah, so have I, unfortunately. So, do you like ‘em? Ugh, me neither. I don’t think there’s a real potato within 10 miles of the factory.
So why am I starting a book review with mashed potatoes? Because the latest effort by the writing team of Preston and Child is just like a box of Spud Buds. The time, effort, craftsmanship and possibly sheer luck are completely missing from this imitation product. It’s a bummer because I was looking forward to having another intriguing character to follow through from one impossible situation to another. Now it only means fewer Pendergast novels and more waiting. No, I won’t be following Gideon through any more of his adventures and I really hope the lamefest doesn’t spill over into the Pendergast series.
What’s the disconnect? I’ve given it some thought. Back when Relic and its bastard offspring Reliquary were written, Pendergast was a supporting character. He was weird and certainly a force in Relic, but he wasn’t yet the eye of the tornado he is now. By the third book, Cabinet of Curiosities, the writers knew what they had on their hands, but even then I’m not sure they knew exactly where they were going. That worked. That forced them to only give us small details; tidbits of information about Pendergast and his shadowy past. Teasing us into wanting more and more. Piling one puzzling clue upon another, leaving questions unanswered. It was one of the best sales techniques I’ve been the willing victim of. As preposterous as he is, there is enough, I don’t know, heft, to Pendergast that we (at least I) keep coming back for more.
Not so with Gideon. Him they want to force upon us fully grown and realized. As Garza says in the end, he hasn’t made his bones yet, but we are still expected to take him seriously. I just can’t do it.
The first problem is the story; Gideon’s father is framed and made the scapegoat for a dismal failure of a government project that results in the deaths of many well-placed spies. For some bizarre reason he and his mother are called to the scene where dad is holding someone hostage to make the government fix the mistake. Instead they shoot him while he’s trying to surrender. Fast forward to the present day and Gideon is about to make good on his promise to make the architect of his father’s downfall pay; one General Tucker. An elaborate and unbelievably implausible operation ensues and is over in about 50 pages. Not only does he get to the evil mastermind, but he also turns the mastermind’s most loyal minion. He does this with about 2 pages of bad dialogue. In what universe?
If they wanted to present Gideon’s initial success, they should have given it to us as back story; a fait accompli, not given us a blow-by-blow of the operation in all its unlikely aspects in 50 pages. It’s so completely stupid that I rolled my eyes the whole time. Credibility points – 0. The story is so forced, so rushed that they can’t establish any fact without just coming out and telling us. I would have rather had the General Tucker story take a whole book, keeping the watcher who appears to hire Gideon in the background; a sinister presence we aren’t sure of. Save their meeting and initial project for the second book. I could have lived with that. It would have been a better mechanism for showing us what Gideon can do.
So we’re told that Gideon is some kind of science dude at Los Alamos, has degrees up the wazoo and graduated from MIT (despite his mother being destitute as a result of dad’s death and disgrace). He’s also a master of disguise (am I the only one who pictured Inspector Clouseau?), a superb con-man, a self-affirmed wiseass (complete with full wise ass mode), is in great physical shape, has striking good looks (and floppy hair), is a gun expert, a computer hacker, a meticulous planner and makes women’s clothes drop off (but only the pretty ones). Yeah, sure, some of these super powers were shown to us, but in such an bald and factual way I don’t buy it. Oh yeah, and he also used to be Neal Caffrey. Please.
I think you get it by now…this book is unbelievably stupid. Even for these guys, who, let’s face it, write cliff-hanger pulp fiction. I enjoyed it up to now because the stuff I had to suspend my disbelief over was so big that it was easier to do so. The details were more coherent and plausible and that somehow makes the giant weird stuff easier to just go with. If I didn’t see their names on the cover I wouldn’t have believed Preston and Child were capable of this crap. Were they broke? Did they fall for some slick, bullshit-slinging publicist that said this would be ok? Whatever it was, it was a mistake. I’m not coming back for a second helping of Spud Buds.
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