Book Review: Apocalypse by Dean Crawford

Apocalypse (Ethan Warner #3)

by Dean Crawford
Thriller
Simon & Schuster
3 Stars

Blurb:

In the notorious Bermuda Triangle a private jet vanishes without trace, taking with it scientists working for world-famous philanthropist Joaquin Abell.

In Miami, Captain Kyle Sears is called to a murder scene. A woman and her daughter have both been shot through the head. But within moments of arriving, Sears receives aphone call from the woman's husband, physicist Charles Purcell.

"I did not kill my wife and daughter. In less than twenty-four hours I too will be murdered and I know the man who will kill me. My murderer does not yet know that he will commit the act."

With uncanny accuracy, Charles goes on to predict the immediate future just as it unfolds around Sears, and leaves clues for a man he's never met before: Ethan Warner

The hunt is on to find Purcell, and Ethan Warner is summoned by the Defence Intelligence Agency to head up the search. But this is no ordinary case, as Warner and his partner Nicola Lopez are about to discover, and time is literally everything.

Review:

For the post part, this book succeeds at what it's supposed to be - a race against time thriller where the good guys have to chase the bad guys, but this time the bad guys have the ultimate weapon, time itself - they know what the future holds and our good guys don't.

Ethan Warner, our main hero, is a likeable enough character, but there was nothing that stood out in my mind about him and made him different to other heroes from other books. He could have been called Joe Bloggs and it wouldn't have made much difference. The only thing I could really say for certainty was that Ethan is still hung up over his missing girlfriend from a few books ago. Don't worry if you haven't read the others in the series, it still works as a stand-alone novel. What is it with detective and thriller novels? Why does there also have to be some secret angst in their past? Can't we just have one who does his job and get on with things?

For such an interesting premise, the pace of the book slowed to a crawl from some parts and the reader gets bogged down with a lot of scientific jargon. I have no idea whether the science is this book was accurate or not. The characters seem to think so and it seems plausible enough within the plot. But being married to a scientist meant that I was questioning a lot of things and couldn't get my brain to switch off and just enjoy the story. My husband's a physicist and I think he would have picked out a lot more plot holes than me, but he did say once that time travel was theoretically possible - but only to the past.

I did like the book's explanation for the Bermuda Triangle, that seemed that it could well be true. So if you can suspend your disbelief for a few hours' adventuring, you could enjoy this book.

Reviewed by Annette Gisby