Dead Watch (Night Watch) | John Sandford | Sanford is Born for the Political Thriller     books:     Dead Watch (Night ...   Dead Watch (Night Watch) John Sandford Berkley, 2007 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 90 reviews view larger image  for more information click here The beginning of a new series? Dead Watch is a very good book; well written, interesting plot, good characters. It is different from the Prey books, but still has the Sandford quality. I hope that this is the beginning of a new series. Sanford is Born for the Political Thriller Three-fourths of the way through "Dead Watch," I thought I was reading the best book John Sanford had ever written. By the end, I was still well into "thumbs up" territory, but, like a number of Sandford's other books, the ending was a little disappointing. The best part about the book is Sanford's intricate and fast-past "whodunnit." Once the mystery gets resolved, and the book becomes about character developement and killing the bad guys, things tend to peter out. There is a rule in political thriller writing that authors must take their characters from cereal boxes. "Dead watch" is no exception, so when I say that the heroes and villains are far better-written than is usual in this genre, I am not saying much. As is usually the case, most of the villains are more interesting than the heroes. The protagonist, Jake Winter, has real potential; but so far is a bit underdeveloped. His "shady fixer" side could use a lot more exploration -- in most of the book, he simply plays the role of a private investigator or a special-projects cop. He does it well -- this is a real page turner, and even though the plot is not very "twisty," it is both complex and about as credible as plots get in political thrillers. Perhaps the most disturbing part of the book is the main characters' decision to entrap and in effect murder two of the second-tier villains. This decision is both gratuitous and counter-productive. It is pointless, because the bad guys would surely have been convicted of their murders with the DNA evidence they left behind and were not "evil" enough to justify removing them at any cost. It is counter-productive because if these thugs had lived to face trial, the testimony would surely have done a lot more damage to the first-tier crooks than their elimination did. Moreover, the killing of these guys seems out of character for Jake Winter, who does not come across as the sort of "Rambo" who would have to take the law into his own hands. Much less is it in character for his love interest. That said, Sandford certainly knows how to hook and keep the reader. I could not put it down. It's just that after I finished it, I was a lot less enthusiastic about it than while I was reading it.  for more information click here Just OK This is a departure for Sandford, who's done a number of novels with Lucas Davenport as the main character (the Prey novels) and several other books. This one introduces a new character, a political fixer who knows how to maneuver the bureaucratic maze in Washington, and who has a rather tough ability to troubleshoot, apparently sometimes via really shooting the troublemaker. Jake Winter, a limping Afghanistan vet with a nose for trouble, is on the case, and the first thing he takes on is a convoluted case involving a Republican ex-Senator who's been murdered in a particularly bizarre fashion, a maverick Democrat governor with a group of neo-Nazi thug followers, and a secret gay Republican underground with a hidden agenda of their own that isn't precisely kosher, to say the least. The problem with all of this is that it's not well enough developed to be an interesting plot with well-rounded characters. Instead, you meet the FBI agent investigating the murder, and you think that he's going to be an interesting character. Instead, after his first appearance, he just makes cameo appearances, popping up periodically in conversation as a threat that Winter uses to intimidate someone. Other characters who could have been interesting are instead just cardboard cut-outs, and the plot is, after a point about halfway through the book, pretty well set, because you know who did what to whom (unbelievable though it is) and all that follows is resolution of the plot. This isn't a terrible novel. It's on the level, to my mind, of something David Baldacci or John Grisham would write. I don't like either of those authors, much, though, so hopefully Sandford can regain his earlier form.  for more information click here Unsatisfying I'm a long-time John Sandford fan. I have read each of his Prey and Kidd books (and "The Night Crew"). I was pretty eager to read something new from Sandford. The first half of the book was very intriguing. By then you know what's going on and it's just a matter of bringing everything together to some sort of conclusion. Some might like this book, but I have to say it's on my "bottom 5" list of Sandford novels (but still better than a few Prey installments). reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 products you might be interested in search for books dead watch, dead, night, watch      toavi.com    web randomly chosen book: Ship of Destiny (The Liveship Traders, Book 3)