I'm in two minds as far as this story goes: good story with rotten characters; good story that suffers from incredible characters or just a daft romp?

Basically, as it says on the dust cover, In New York, Denver, Paris and Berlin, four people have died separately in apparent accidents.

You can see immediately that they probably weren't accidents and so it turned out to be.

What got me was that Sheldon, whose book Bloodline I thought was great, has put two goofy women centre stage and allowed them to overcome some huge obstacles relatively unscathed. I'm afraid it just didn't work for me.

To cap it all, when the women originally were thrown together with the common bond of having lost their respective husband or partner, one of them can't stand the sight of the other one. I didn't like that part of the book at all as I didn't feel that it worked for me.

As for the rest, the storyline isn't too bad: a bit James Bond with some megalomaniac trying to take over the entire world mind but a bit of a rattling story nevertheless.

Sheldon does set up a few incidents throughout the book with the two women: the one in the back of the car in Berlin when one of the heroines is CERTAIN to be doomed but survives is a good one.

How the women get out of a couple of tight scrapes when using their guile are good. On average though ordinary men couldn't do half of what these women did let alone ordinary women. You need to know that they came up against professional assassins several times and yet they managed to walk away. Unreal.

The book's easy to read and I realise that even though I wouldn't recommend it, I think a lot of people will like it so don't let me put you off!

 

© Duncan Williamson
10 December 2004

© Webmaster Duncan Williamson 2004