Gideon's Sword

May 2, 2011
John Glover's hard-edged, slightly sinister voice (familiar to fans of television's Smallville) sustains Preston and Child's entertaining but slight thriller. In this installment, Gideon Crew, whom Glover imbues with more depth and humanity than the text itself suggests, is seeking revenge for the murder of his father, an Army intelligence officer. But he's interrupted in his mission, conscripted by a clandestine agency to perform a near-suicidal task: to steal the plans for a Chinese WMD. Crew exhibits extreme versatility in accomplishing his task, for when it comes to an impossible mission successfully performed, a better example is the way Glover adds dimension to the novel's cardboard characters and vitality to its overly long backstory. A Grand Central hardcover.

November 15, 2010

A shadowy quasi-governmental organization hires a highly resourceful art thief-turned-physicist to obtain plans for a mysterious weapon in the first book in Preston and Child's (Fever Dream, 2010, etc.) new series.

Gideon Crew was a successful art thief until his mother, on her death bed, informed him that his father had not been the failure he'd always assumed he was, but was in fact set up to take the blame for the mistakes of his superiors. She urges him to seek revenge. After years of preparation—including getting a job as a physicist at Los Alamos—he enacts his revenge and prepares to devote his newfound free time to fly-fishing. His plans are interrupted by the appearance of a mysterious man in his favorite fishing spot, who offers him a large sum of money to take on a dangerous mission. It seems a secretive organization that does work for the Department of Homeland Security took notice of the work to avenge his father and wants to enlist him to procure the plans to a mysterious weapon being brought to New York by a possible defector from China. As part of his recruitment "pitch," Crew is informed that he suffers from an incurable disease and has a short time to live. Faced with a dwindling set of options, Crew takes the mission and spends the next several days desperately trying to get his hands on the plans without falling into the clutches of Nodding Crane, a deadly operative sent by the Chinese to retrieve the plans—and kill anyone who gets too close to them. No reader expects Preston and Child to let too much realism get in the way of a good story—nor should they—but there are limits, and the authors sometimes exceed them.

While the fun is, for the most part, worth the outlandish coincidences, exceedingly stupid adversaries and/or superhuman feats, it is not worth it by a large margin. Still, Crew is a great character, and this series holds promise.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Starred review from January 1, 2011

Preston and Child have written 14 thrillers featuring somewhat restrained investigators (FBI Agent Pendergast and Lieutenant D'Agosta). Here, the duo kick off an action-packed new series introducing Gideon Crew, a brilliant young physicist and con artist on a mission to avenge his father's murder. Upon earning his doctorate, Crew works at the Los Alamos Labs as a high-explosives engineer. Simultaneously, he designs and executes a cunning plot to vindicate his slain father. Eli Glinn, the director of an engineering firm, recognizes Crew's skills and hires him as an independent contractor to analyze and prevent dangerous problems. For his first assignment, Crew must find a Chinese scientist soon to arrive in the United States with plans for a powerful and dangerous weapon. Crew must legally steal the plans for Glinn. The entertaining and engaging plot showcases Crew's sarcastic wit, impulsiveness, and unpredictable luck. VERDICT This exciting action/adventure with a hero reminiscent of Indiana Jones will be a treat for adventure/thriller fans. Paramount Pictures and Michael Bay will produce the movie version. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/10.]--Jerry P. Miller, Cambridge, MA

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2011
Gideon Crew, the hero of Preston and Childs new novel, has a complicated backstory. As a boy, he watched as his father, who had taken a man hostage, was shot down by a sniper. Less than a decade later, he learned from his mother that his father had been used by the U.S. government as a scapegoat for a failed intelligence project. After dispatching the man responsible for his fathers murder, Gideon is offered a job with a private contractor that does hush-hush work for the government. Gideons mission: to intercept a Chinese scientist and relieve him of the plans for a top-secret weapon. The mission doesnt go as drawn, however, and Gideon is left with a mysterious string of numbers. Now, working mostly alone, he must determine what the numbers mean. This novel (which is apparently the first installment in a new series) isnt as elegantly written or constructed as the authors popular Special Agent Pendergast novels, but it doesonce you get past the backstoryhold the readers interest, and Gideon is undeniably a big-shouldered character, capable of supporting a series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)