Diwakar's Reviews > Only the Dead

Finally I’ve finished Only the Dead novel by Jack Carr. This novel starts with the aftermath of US president getting assassinated by unknown individuals and falsely framed James Reece getting arrested for that. In my opinion this is one of the weakest novels of the author because I always enjoyed his work and constantly recommends to many people who are new to this genre. He knows how to make us readers to get involve with the characters and their plight but at the same time to rip roar to the violence dished by that same character which in normal life we’ll be horrified to even think about it. Me as an avid reader of special operation missions and history always love the way the author used to combine it with his story or sometimes just write a small description about that in middle of the novel just to take that story to the next level but in this novel he kind of mishmashed everything in a single book which becomes tiring and tough to recollect back while reading crucial scenes. As I said as always he combines the history to this story also but this time it’s been tough for me to follow up as he jumps for one conspiracy to another. I know conspiracies are part and parcel of the fiction genre but he always took his time to have believable yet compelling edge of the seat Hollywood action thriller movie kind of novel but not this time. In this novel what I enjoyed most was the way he wrote the dialogues that happens with himself while he was in solitary confinement which you could’ve heard in the preview and the way he carried that mental scar for the whole novel was commendable. Also in this novel the author has given more attention to the Hand to Hand combat scenes that involves bladed weapons more than the Guns and this elevates the combat scenes to the next level and eagerly I’m waiting to see how he’s going to top this of in his upcoming novel. This is one of the most violent, bloody, gory novels written by him and I’m eagerly waiting to see how they going to deliver it's depiction in the TV series. A common joke that I always tends to see in our thriller circles was how the author writes about the gear and knickknacks in a very descriptive way in his each and every novel but personally I always enjoyed it because aside from the brands I came to know what that individual gear gives an edge to the character or how it overall helps in the heat of the combat for the character in that novel or maybe in real life also but In this novel that scene was highly unnatural and totally kind of shoved in our throat in a sudden manner so you’ll be questioning yourself why there is a catalogue in middle of the novel and this time only after the 5 novels I understood some of the frustration behind that joke. Women in thriller genre was always made to play the second fiddle during 90s till early 2000s novels at least in the majority of books I’ve read but it slowly changing right now especially authors like Brad Taylor, Don Bentley, Gregg Horowitz were not only write kickass women characters but the way they write it makes us root for them no matter that they maybe a friend of foe. Even Jack Carr started this series with awesome female characters like Katie and Hastings mother but I think just like one of his favourite authors Tom Clancy he too began to take his female characters for granted like in this novel Katie comes in very few places she was written like a filler character to me rather than an important one as she is . Overall this novel is kind of felt rushed to me in terms of story and character development and definitely a very new take in combat department but this is not the usual kickass novel I expected from the author. I dunno maybe I was expecting too much from him so I give only 3/5 for this novel. As an end note I like to add that above review of mine may offend some of you guys but like you guys I’m also a big fan of his works but this isn’t his best and it’s obvious for me.So tell me your view in the comments if you’re interested and thanks for reading this whole review. Have a nice week ahead.