PositiveThe Dallas Morning NewsThe First Conspiracy...about a scheme to kill Gen. George Washington during the early months of the American Revolution, reads like an imaginative thriller, but it\'s actually a work of painstakingly researched nonfiction. Even the parts that seem too good to be true check out ... The First Conspiracyshines a revelatory light on the treasonous plan that, if successful, would have altered the course of history. Washington, after all, was the glue holding the ragtag American army together.
Paul Kix
RaveThe Dallas Morning NewsOne of the most remarkable heroes of World War II, a French resistance fighter named Robert de La Rochefoucauld, is a virtual unknown in America ... But Paul Kix, in The Saboteur, is shining a spotlight on the man's larger-than-life secret exploits ...tells the true story of a young man from an aristocratic French family who became a thorn in the side of the occupying Nazis ... The result of his four years of labor reads like a too-good-to-be-true plot from an Alistair MacLean or Jack Higgins thriller. But the tales of derring-do all checked out as completely true.
Matthew Quick
RaveThe Philadelphia InquirerBy book's end, everyone will wind up loving the camouflage-wearing, knife-carrying sociopath ... When readers make it to the Capra-esque final pages, they are almost certain to shed a feel-good tear or two. Our hero would bust their chops for all the 'boo-hooing' and 'girly-man behavior,' but so be it.
Paula Hawkins
MixedTh Philadelphia InquirerThe problem with Into the Water is that, although it's creepy from the get-go, it's not the propulsive page-turner that The Girl on the Train was. It's a slow starter. Glacially slow. Hawkins eventually gets it into gear, dropping bombshell after bombshell, chapter after chapter. But it takes her more than 200 pages. If she didn't have such stellar credentials, maybe her publisher would have insisted on revisions to a sluggish opening. It would be a much better book if, instead of dipping a tentative toe in the water, Hawkins had just jumped right into the deep end.
Nicholas Petrie
RaveThe Philadelphia InquirerThe first quarter of the book is a roller-coaster adventure in an almost literal sense, a fast and dangerous chase that begins with a zip-line ride from tree to tree and ends with a wild auto pileup and shoot-out along a desolate forest road. It's what Peter thinks of as 'a pretty interesting day.' The story morphs into a complicated high-tech conspiracy thriller that fans will find both surprising and comfortably familiar. Child fans complain that we read his Reacher novels much faster than he can write them. So it's nice to have somebody new like Petrie, a very talented writer, who can help us endure the wait till our main man drifts back into our lives.
