Under Pressure most certainly will have you guessing right up to the big finish. Just like its predecessor, it moves at a breakneck pace that barely allows you to catch your breath as the action moves from one edge-of-your-seat moment to the next. Pobi has a great thing going here, and Lucas Page is quickly becoming one of my favorite characters in modern thriller fiction.
Pobi does an excellent job of reminding us as the story progresses what it must be like to live with multiple prosthetics, let alone explore crime scenes with such physical complications, but he coyly withholds the full back story that would provide specific details about The Event ... Pobi’s storytelling abilities come close to those of Hurwitz and Deaver, and Page is a rough-edged know-it-all reminiscent of Rhyme (a quadriplegic) and the contemporary Sherlocks. The chapters are very short—there are 106 of them altogether in Under Pressure—and Pobi takes full advantage of this growing trend in popular fiction to keep the pages moving under our fingers ... The drawback to this novel, however, lies in its writing style ... We sense an unrelenting pressure to crank out snappier prose, pressure to zing the reader with an endless stream of clever similes, and pressure to bombard us with insider allusions and product esoterica ... Nonetheless, Under Pressure is a thriller that’s fun, entertaining, and challenging.
... a diverting read, but the plot stretches credibility. There are too many points where it could have gone wrong for the malefactor but doesn't. Still, Page is an appealing hero and the story is filled with action and suspense ... For lovers of puzzle-solving detective fiction in the style of Kathy Reichs.
The first thing one notices upon entering this thrill ride of a novel is not the violence or the characters but the startling, organic language ... There’s a classic puzzle at the core of this flamboyant thriller, with clues and misdirection cleverly laid out for Page and the reader to spot and figure out.
Page stands out as a highly unusual lead in a crowded genre, and Pobi combines a razor sharp sense of humor with surgical use of political and social commentary throughout. This is a must for fans of sophisticated crime fiction.
