Dead Watch (Night Watch) | John Sandford

Dead Watch (Night Watch) | John Sandford | Great weekend reading...Beltway thriller in near future

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Dead Watch (Night ...

	Dead Watch (Night Watch) John Sandford Berkley, 2007 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 90 reviews view larger image
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"Frenetic" Watch

With "Dead Watch", Sanford has delivered a political thriller that is fully worthy of mention alongside his popular police-procedural Prey series. I share the Booklist reviewer's sentiment that Sandford has produced a D.C. intrigue reminiscent of Ross Thomas (a VERY good thing!).

My biggest beef with Dead Watch is the bland characterization of Jake Winter (though Sandford does do a good job of making Winter not be Lucas Davenport); nearly every other character has more personality-pizzazz. Not to worry though, the Madison Bowe character and the breakneck speed of the story more than make up for that shortcoming. If I'd been turning pages any faster, I'd have probably started a fire.

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Great weekend reading...Beltway thriller in near future

Surprisingly, I've not read the other Prey novels...how I could not is rather amazing. This book "Dead Watch" had a first printing of 500,000 -- 1/2 million wow. John Sandford as many of you may know is the pseudonym of the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist John Camp. This book is a political thriller -- it appears to be set in the near-future with a group of antagonists called the "WATCHMEN". Topline summary -- Lincoln Bowe a former US Senator has been missing...his Madison Bowe, wife is on the run...she thinks she may be next...Jacob (Jake) Winter's phone rings-- former Army Intelligence dude specializes in what he calls 'forensic bureaucracy-- he's the guy to call when Congress, the Pentago, FBI, CIA Homeland Security etc-- something goes wrong- kind of like a 'ghost-buster' character...The White House is is main cilent...Madison and Jack make a great duo in their quest for the killer (or is Bowe really dead-- you have to read it to discern)....and it's a cat and mouse chase with a snakepit thrown in-between....homosexuality, graft, torture, fraud, spying and more tossed in to the mix...Jack is a one-of-a-kind and Madison is too..so that adds a bit of romance to the quest....just when it seems to get a little slow reading, Sandford pulls out the stops and it takes off...zooming into another dark corner...jetting across the country...and twisting another way...I found it a compelling read...and an easy diversion on a long weekend....and was very intigued by the Watchmen concept/organization....in this day and age of super-security and cameras everywhere...maybe there are watchmen and women...out there anyway...maybe this book hints at more of the truth than we'd like to know -- or they'd like us to know?

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A better than average suspense novel, but be advised - this is not Dead Prey

I suspect a lot of Sanford fans will be thrown off by Dead Watch. Readers who like surprise twists in their crime fiction are likely to be disappointed. Jake, our hero, figures out who is responsible for the death of the missing former senator half way through the novel. His real objective isn't to find the killer - it's to protect the White House from scandal.

Some readers may be turned off by the political elements of this novel and complain that it moves too slowly. I didn't find that myself. Personally, I would have preferred a little less gunplay and a little more cerebral gamesmanship. I would have liked to have seen Jake (a political fixer) use his brain to bring down the bad guys, protect the interests of the President, and win the girl. Instead, he strong-arms a witness using the `Russian Roulette gun-to-the-head' technique and then stages a vigilante ambush, shooting a man in the back.

Sure, the shoot-out was action-packed but I think Sanford compromised a little, giving us a character that supposedly thrives inside the political system but then reverts to violence (presumably to satisfy readers who expect some action in the final pages).

The ending ties up a little too neatly and improbably but all-in-all, a better than average suspense novel. Fans of Lucas Davenport should beware though- this is not Dead Prey.

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Political enhancement

Ok but not a "Prey" which is what attracted me from the first book I read. Politics are OK but I feel Mr. Sandford is way above that barrel of rotten apples. I guess the story line was fine and did all the spin and rotation that is part of that world but I prefer his other genre. I will hope he will head back in that direction soon. I love his writing.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, page 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

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