The review about this product
I'm shocked that this book made it to press. It starts out with the hero "Darwin Minor", crack insurance fraud investigator, looking into an "accident" that turns out to be the result of some idiot who strapped a couple of solid fuel rockets to his 1982 El Camino out in the middle of a long stretch of road, lit the match and flew several thousand feet into the side of a mountain (get real). How did "Dar" figure this out when there was nothing left but a hole in the ground and an El Camino door handle? "A simple matter of friction coefficient" and some asphalt that had melted and resolidified. The weird part is that you don't know if the author is pulling your leg or not. I mean, the book cover says it's a "Novel of Suspense" but I'm thinking comedy at this point. It turns out the cover and I were both wrong. The only suspense in the book is around the question "How bad can the humor get?"
You know the list of old insurance jokes that keeps recycling every few years? There's half a chapter devoted to retelling every one of them and another WHOLE chapter whose only purpose is to tell an old courtroom joke. It felt like Simmons just decided to tell some jokes in the middle of a book. Maybe he was hoping he could distract the reader from the fact that he had no story to tell.
In another chapter we get a lesson in physics where several pages are filled with mathematical equations (square root signs, subscripts, really cool math stuff), drag coefficients of asphalt versus concrete, bumper heights versus center of gravity for a man. All of these senseless values are calculated and recalculated until we get some van's speed at the point of impact down to the nearest tenth of a mph. You have to go back several pages and reread to remember why you were put through this mind numbing exercise. This is about halfway through the book and you're still left wondering when there's going to be a story.
The editors at HarperCollins must have been asleep when they read this book. It drags on and on without a decent plot. Characters say one thing, then contradict themselves a couple of paragraphs later. Not a single character in the book has an ounce of intelligence (because they don't know what they're supposed to be doing in the story). There's no cohesiveness from chapter to chapter, characters change personalities, everyone is driving from one end of California to the next every day until you don't know where they are or why they're there...
Hey, you know what, I'm done. This book is just plain BAD. !
Simmons has written some of the GREATEST FICTION EVER (try the Hyperion trilogy). It would be a real shame if this book formed your impression of a truly great writer. Those of us who have been following Simmons will no doubt be forgiving (really forgiving).
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