Scan barcode
knockoutbooks's review against another edition
4.0
I really enjoyed all of Moore’s other books (The Dark Room, Blood Relations), but this one was a bit slower and didn’t connect as well. Caleb’s story didn’t seem to tie in as well and I had a bit more trouble connecting the dots with this one.
Dark Room is definitely still my fave! But this was still a great thriller with great imagery.
Dark Room is definitely still my fave! But this was still a great thriller with great imagery.
billymac1962's review against another edition
5.0
I'm shocked at the 3.56 average rating for this book.
This was a five star for me very early on but this low average kept niggling in the back of my mind, worrying me that as good as this was going, eventually Moore was going to crap the bed on this one.
Didn't happen.
I absolutely loved Jonathan Moore's writing. His storytelling has a lot of depth: a skilled mixture of plotlines, all the while brilliantly holding back some of Caleb's history, which made this such an enticing read right up until the last page. Man, so good.
I have to thank Kemper for his review of The Night Market, the third in this loose trilogy, for putting Moore on my radar.
I think the less said about this novel, the better. Suffice it to say, it's a psychological suspense crime tale, told with a nice San Francisco dropback. Mysterious, captivating, sexy, dark, all of these in high quality, and liberally garnished with obsessiveness. He knocked this out of the park.
Ignore the average rating if it's still below four stars.
Five easy stars from me, and highly recommended.
This was a five star for me very early on but this low average kept niggling in the back of my mind, worrying me that as good as this was going, eventually Moore was going to crap the bed on this one.
Didn't happen.
I absolutely loved Jonathan Moore's writing. His storytelling has a lot of depth: a skilled mixture of plotlines, all the while brilliantly holding back some of Caleb's history, which made this such an enticing read right up until the last page. Man, so good.
I have to thank Kemper for his review of The Night Market, the third in this loose trilogy, for putting Moore on my radar.
I think the less said about this novel, the better. Suffice it to say, it's a psychological suspense crime tale, told with a nice San Francisco dropback. Mysterious, captivating, sexy, dark, all of these in high quality, and liberally garnished with obsessiveness. He knocked this out of the park.
Ignore the average rating if it's still below four stars.
Five easy stars from me, and highly recommended.
beastreader's review against another edition
2.0
To be honest, I was not sure how I felt about this book until I put it down. This was probably one of the books I was really looking forward to reading after having recently experienced a book slump. However this book did not help with that. It started out slow but I forgave this factor because I thought it would pick up and the suspense and intrigue would stuck me in. I was expecting this book to be dark, which is what I was looking forward to the most.
I might have been able to get into this story more if I had found Caleb to be more engaging. I found him lackluster and depressing with all of traveling around town and drinking in bars. His obsession with finding the mystery woman, Emmeline was not creepy or suspenseful (in a good way). After about the half way mark, I jumped to the last few chapters of the book and the ending still left me a little unsatisfied.
I might have been able to get into this story more if I had found Caleb to be more engaging. I found him lackluster and depressing with all of traveling around town and drinking in bars. His obsession with finding the mystery woman, Emmeline was not creepy or suspenseful (in a good way). After about the half way mark, I jumped to the last few chapters of the book and the ending still left me a little unsatisfied.
jyaremchuk's review against another edition
3.0
Very original, very creepy, not my jam. Much preferred Five Decembers, which he wrote under another name.
emckeon1002's review against another edition
3.0
I was loving reading this book until the last chapter. It was one of those twists that was equally preposterous and frustrating. Stephen King professes to love that chapter, and I cannot agree. The story is amazing, and apparently well-researched on the topics of pain and poison, but the secret, held dear until near the end, and then the final twist, well it takes "unreliable narrator" to the sublime and disappointing heights of "I see dead people." I won't give up on Jonathan Moore just yet, since the rest of the book was so captivating, but I'm hoping he'll hold those "what did I just read?" twists in abeyance.
joweston's review against another edition
1.0
Absolute drivel. I only read it to the end to make sure it wasn't hoodwinking me, and just in the hope that it actually went somewhere. It seemed very obvious from the outset what was going to happen, but seeing that it jumped out so overtly and so early, I figured that there would be clever twists and turns to bring us to a different much less obvious conclusion. Sadly, that was not the case.
It successfully demeaned both its main male and female characters (when I suspect it was meant to do neither). He was a sad loser joke and she was ridiculous in the extreme. Both bland caricatures.
Boring, pointless, and I am certain that my copy must have been missing whole chapters as it really made no sense at all. Lots of non sequiturs, and irrelevances.
It read like the worst B movie you ever saw.
Thank god it's over, things can only improve from here.
It successfully demeaned both its main male and female characters (when I suspect it was meant to do neither). He was a sad loser joke and she was ridiculous in the extreme. Both bland caricatures.
Boring, pointless, and I am certain that my copy must have been missing whole chapters as it really made no sense at all. Lots of non sequiturs, and irrelevances.
It read like the worst B movie you ever saw.
Thank god it's over, things can only improve from here.
dantastic's review against another edition
4.0
After having a fight with his girlfriend, toxicologist Caleb Maddox meets an alluring, mysterious woman in a bar and becomes obsessed with her. As he tracks the woman down, he gets entangled in a case involving people being poisoned and dumped in San Francisco bay. But what was his fight with his girlfriend about and what dark secret is he hiding? Will his obsession get in the way of solving the case or will he find himself trapped in something a thousand times as sinister?
I got this book from the publisher and sat on it for about a month. Honestly, ARCs feel like homework a lot of the time and I'm getting to be more choosy with my reading time. However, Kemper said it was good so I finally knuckled under and gave it a read.
Well, that hoople-head was right again. I should have cracked this open as soon as it arrived on my doorstep. The Poison Artist is a creepy thriller that wrapped around my brain stem as soon as I read a few pages.
Caleb Maddox is a man running from a dark and damaged past. It seemed he had everything together until a fight with his girlfriend. While trying to wash himself down the drain with alcohol, he meets a sexy stranger and becomes entranced. Couple that with a serial killer and a lot of absinthe, and there are a lot of balls in the air.
As I said before, this was one gripping read. As Caleb went further off the rails trying to find Emmeline, I couldn't set the book aside. The Poison Artist was my absinthe.
The tales of Caleb's break-up, his obsession with Emmeline, and his mysterious past converge in a horrifying fashion. I thought I had a pretty good idea how things would go after the initial setup but I was wrong. Turns out Jonathan Moore can weave a pretty fucked up web. He had me second-guessing myself quite a few times.
Jonathan Moore manages to weave obsession, hard science, murder and into an absinthe-fueled thriller. Four out of five stars.
I got this book from the publisher and sat on it for about a month. Honestly, ARCs feel like homework a lot of the time and I'm getting to be more choosy with my reading time. However, Kemper said it was good so I finally knuckled under and gave it a read.
Well, that hoople-head was right again. I should have cracked this open as soon as it arrived on my doorstep. The Poison Artist is a creepy thriller that wrapped around my brain stem as soon as I read a few pages.
Caleb Maddox is a man running from a dark and damaged past. It seemed he had everything together until a fight with his girlfriend. While trying to wash himself down the drain with alcohol, he meets a sexy stranger and becomes entranced. Couple that with a serial killer and a lot of absinthe, and there are a lot of balls in the air.
As I said before, this was one gripping read. As Caleb went further off the rails trying to find Emmeline, I couldn't set the book aside. The Poison Artist was my absinthe.
The tales of Caleb's break-up, his obsession with Emmeline, and his mysterious past converge in a horrifying fashion. I thought I had a pretty good idea how things would go after the initial setup but I was wrong. Turns out Jonathan Moore can weave a pretty fucked up web. He had me second-guessing myself quite a few times.
Jonathan Moore manages to weave obsession, hard science, murder and into an absinthe-fueled thriller. Four out of five stars.
hithereimleah's review against another edition
5.0
This book was insane. I want to recommend it to every single person I know. I don't normally enjoy crime, but wow. Moore writes with such amazing precision that really engages the reader and I felt myself falling deeper and deeper into the story to the point where I couldn't put it down.