Search - The Book of Fate

This book is a hunderd pages too long -- I felt like it would never end. The premise is something you would think would be a great book or movie, but man -- didn't feel like it was going anywhere at certain points. Sometimes it felt like every single moment had to be reviewed in painstaking steps, and then towards the end, it got sloppy with so many details that were brought up towards the end, but were never really resolved. Best part of the book -- Nico in the truck. Those who have read it know what I'm talkin' about.

It's a decent book to take with you on a trip, but overall, I would say not one of Meltzer's better stories.

Very boring. I stopped reading about halfway through. The main characters had no personality and were very hard to emphasize with.

I thought this was another good book by Meltzer. I really liked the characters of Wes, Rogo, and Lisbeth. The plot unfolded in a way that was easy to follow and questions were answered throughout instead of all at the end, which I liked. I do wish there would have been more about Freemasonry, but otherwise, I think it was a good read and would recommend it.

This is a good read and has some surprises. If you like Dan Brown you will likely be pleased with this one.

Set against a backdrop of Oval Office corruption, bestseller Meltzer's overblown thriller opens with a frantic assassination attempt on President Leland Manning, who manages to elude the gunfire. Manning's deputy chief of staff, Ron Boyle, is killed, and his top aide, the cocky, ambitious Wes Holloway, is left facially disfigured. Eight years later, his motivation and confidence drained by his handicap, Holloway still toils away for the out-of-office Manning, fetching refreshments and handling the daily social calendar. On a goodwill junket to Malaysia, however, Holloway spots Boyle, surgically altered, but unmistakably the same man who was supposed to be dead and gone

GREAT STORY A REAL PAGE TURNER

not too bad. awful long and drawn out. characters are only so-so. But decent plot. At times when Nico was in full pursuit I felt I was reading DaVinci code again.

Boring! I've read most of Brad Melzer's books, but this one was the worse. Boring characters, convoluted plot, ridiculous dialogue. Don't waste your time.

From Publishers Weekly
Set against a backdrop of Oval Office corruption, bestseller Meltzer's overblown thriller opens with a frantic assassination attempt on President Leland Manning, who manages to elude the gunfire. Manning's deputy chief of staff, Ron Boyle, is killed, and his top aide, the cocky, ambitious Wes Holloway, is left facially disfigured. Eight years later, his motivation and confidence drained by his handicap, Holloway still toils away for the out-of-office Manning, fetching refreshments and handling the daily social calendar. On a goodwill junket to Malaysia, however, Holloway spots Boyle, surgically altered, but unmistakably the same man who was supposed to be dead and gone. From this turning point, Meltzer (The Zero Game) follows Holloway step by excruciatingly slow step as he tries to find out what really happened eight years earlier. Authentic details about Washington politics and historical mysteries enliven the predictable path. While readers looking for efficient plotting may be disappointed, Meltzer's many fans will enjoy this substantial meal of a book. 15-city author tour. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
Wes Holloway, a hotshot presidential aide, is wounded in an assassination attempt that kills the president's close friend. Eight years later, the dead man reappears, disfigured but very much alive and apparently stalking the former president. Wes thinks he can figure out what's going on, but to do so he must decipher a two-century-old code and penetrate the secrets of Masonic history. From his first novel, The Tenth Justice (1997), through his sixth, Identity Crisis (2005), Meltzer has served up exciting thrillers that take readers behind the scenes of American politics. The pattern doesn't change this time. Like the television series The West Wing, Meltzer's novels focus on the political people the public never sees and tells the stories we never hear. He could be accused here of jumping on the Da Vinci Code bandwagon, but that wouldn't really be fair. He's too good a writer to waste his time imitating someone else's work, and this novel is much more skillfully written--and far more plausible--than Dan Brown's tedious best-seller. The characters are genuine human beings--not all that common in the world of high-concept thrillers--and the plot fluidly integrates historical fact and fiction, which is even less common. Fans of thrillers that reach far back into history will be, well, . . . thrilled. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

NYT Bestseller. A very readable thriller about new revelations about a shooting eight years before that disfigured the protaganist, the President's aid.

This well-researched book is a scary scenario of what happened when corrupt, power hungry members of three of the nation's major security agencies hatched a devious scheme to achieve great wealth at the taxpayers' expense. For their plan to work, it required complicity that reached the nation's highest office. Lots of complex characters and nail-biting action.

Vintage Meltzer. Character development and plot finely drawn.

"Washington DC has a 200 year old secret. '6 minutes from now, one of would be dead. None of us knew it was coming.' So says Wes Holloway, a young Presidential aide, about the day he put Ron Boyle, the chief executive's oldest friend into the president's limousine. By the trip's end, a crazed assassin would permanently disfigure Wes and kill Boyle. Now, 8 years later, Boyle has been spotted alive. Trying to figure out what really happened takes Wes back into disturbing secrets buried in Freemason history, a decade year old Presidential crossword puzzle, and a 200 year old code invented by Thomas Jefferson tha conceals secrest worth dying for."

Good political thriller - twists that you never see coming.