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A review by weaselweader
Edge by Jeffery Deaver
2.0
Deaver has created a topological impossibility! Sadly, EDGE comes up flat!
In the field craft parlance of personal protection – professional bodyguarding, if you will – “principal” is the person whose body or life is being guarded; “primary” is the person who the principal is being protected from; “shepherd” is the person doing the guarding; “lifter” is a person whose objective is obtaining information from the principal (at all costs and with extreme prejudice, if it comes to that); and, “hitter” is a person whose sole objective is the extermination of a principal. Corte is a shepherd and Henry Loving is a lifter. They’ve encountered one another before and each knows that the other is a worthy opponent. EDGE is an extended (in fact, very extended … indeed, OVER-extended) series of encounters between them as one tries to out-think the other in a deadly contest whose end-game will almost certainly exact the ultimate price from one of the players.
EDGE is reasonably well-written. It’s difficult to imagine an accomplished master of the thriller genre like Jeffery Deaver doing anything else. There are lots of twists and turns, blind alleys, red herrings and plenty of high-speed action but the fact is that, compared to his superb Lincoln Rhyme series, EDGE is repetitive, tedious and approaches downright boring. And that final revelation of the identity of the primary, to be completely honest, is so possible and so realistic in the climate of today’s sad realities that it becomes disappointingly banal and quite worthy of a ho-hum shrug!
Fans of Jeffery Deaver’s amazing body of work will want to read it for the sake of completeness but potential new readers should give this one a wide pass.
Paul Weiss
In the field craft parlance of personal protection – professional bodyguarding, if you will – “principal” is the person whose body or life is being guarded; “primary” is the person who the principal is being protected from; “shepherd” is the person doing the guarding; “lifter” is a person whose objective is obtaining information from the principal (at all costs and with extreme prejudice, if it comes to that); and, “hitter” is a person whose sole objective is the extermination of a principal. Corte is a shepherd and Henry Loving is a lifter. They’ve encountered one another before and each knows that the other is a worthy opponent. EDGE is an extended (in fact, very extended … indeed, OVER-extended) series of encounters between them as one tries to out-think the other in a deadly contest whose end-game will almost certainly exact the ultimate price from one of the players.
EDGE is reasonably well-written. It’s difficult to imagine an accomplished master of the thriller genre like Jeffery Deaver doing anything else. There are lots of twists and turns, blind alleys, red herrings and plenty of high-speed action but the fact is that, compared to his superb Lincoln Rhyme series, EDGE is repetitive, tedious and approaches downright boring. And that final revelation of the identity of the primary, to be completely honest, is so possible and so realistic in the climate of today’s sad realities that it becomes disappointingly banal and quite worthy of a ho-hum shrug!
Fans of Jeffery Deaver’s amazing body of work will want to read it for the sake of completeness but potential new readers should give this one a wide pass.
Paul Weiss