Gregg Hurwitz

WE KNOW - Gregg Hurwitz

Author Information
Book Title: 
We Know
Author Name: 
Gregg Hurwitz
Author's Home Country: 
USA
ISBN: 
9781847441201
Categorisation
Category: 
Thriller
Publisher: 
Sphere
Year of Publication: 
2008

We Know who you are

Nick Horrigan thinks that he has his life back on track after a mysterious, traumatic incident that occurred just before his eighteenth birthday.  He has forgotten about the past, and lives contentedly in LA.

Book Review: 

WE KNOW is the second book from Gregg Hurwitz, which was released in 2008.  This is a review very much in the spirit of better late than never, as this is a book that is just the thing for fans of big, over-the-top, clever, pitch-perfect thrillers.

You really have to remember that WE KNOW is a thriller.  The central character Nick Horrigan obviously has a secret which is obviously going to be slowly revealed as the book progresses (well it becomes obvious after a seat of the pants opening scene).  Not everyone with a secret, however, gets a SWAT team descending from a Black Hawk helicopter in the middle of the night to smash their way into their apartment.  What on earth sort of a secret is it that would make Nick the sort of person that a terrorist, threatening to blow up a nuclear power station, ask to speak to?  Alone.

WE KNOW is quite simply a wow of a thriller.  It must be, as it does a number of things that normally would annoy this reader, and yet I was hooked.  The cliffhanger at the end of each chapter normally annoys.  There's a few completely unlikely scenarios (let's face it, for example, even with a HUGE secret, if the authorities wanted you to help out in a terrorist threat, they'd probably knock on the door before they sent in the Black Hawks).  But really, the point of a good thriller is that it shouldn't matter if things get a little squiffy plot wise.  If there's some obvious manipulation going on - well bring it on, pass the chocolates, pour a glass of wine and let's get stuck in here.

And this really is one of those tremendous thrillers.  Simply couldn't put it down.  Went out and bought the next book in the series the next day.  You can't get better than that.

Currently Reading - We Know, Gregg Hurwitz

Submitted by Karen on

Book Title: 
We Know
Author Name: 
Gregg Hurwitz

Okay, so I'm officially embarrassed.

I knew I'd had this book for a while, but I didn't quite realise how long.

Nor have I got a single good reason for why it took me so long to pick it up, because I liked the first book "I SEE YOU".

Lazy review housekeeping is the only excuse I've got which is why I'm so embarrassed.

I SEE YOU - Gregg Hurwitz

Author Information
Book Title: 
I See You
Author Name: 
Gregg Hurwitz
Author's Home Country: 
USA
ISBN: 
9781847441492
Categorisation
Category: 
Crime Fiction
Publisher: 
Little & Brown
Year of Publication: 
2007

From the Book:  Drew Danner wakes up in a hospital with an aching head and no memory of the past twenty-four hours.  Although he doesn't know it yet, he has suffered a massive brain haemorrhage.
 
An LAPD cop is standing over his bed; he hands Drew a photo showing the blood-spattered body of a woman.  The woman is Drew's ex-fiancee - and he is being accused of her murder.
Book Review: 

It's hard to read I SEE YOU and not care.  About Drew - waking up from anaesthetic to discover he'd had this growth in his brain, a growth that just may be the reason why he killed the woman he once loved.  But he doesn't remember anything...  yet.  About Junior, the wisecracking, hard boy, graffiti artist who probably saw a killer dump his second victim.  Junior's not as hard as he wants people to think he is.  About Lloyd whose wife is dying a drawn out, painful slow death.  About Caroline, whose horrific injuries obscure who she really is.  
 
Drew Danner is a novelist - he writes crime thrillers.  But nothing in his fictional imagination has ever given him a plot like the one that his life degenerates into after the death of his ex-fiancee.  Despite being the number one prime suspect, Drew's brain tumour casts enough doubt and he's free.  The second killing of a woman, with a crime scene containing his DNA convinces Drew that somebody is trying very hard to set him up for a murder charge - and despite a video that conclusively shows he was somewhere else when this second woman dies, the local cops aren't so convinced that he's being set up at all.
 
Not everybody in I SEE YOU is damaged though, Drew has friends with a happy (albeit somewhat crowded by children) home life - a haven from the frenetic pace of Drew's life, but in a strange way they also reflect how disconnected, lonely his existence really is.  Junior, the young boy who was a witness to the car that dumped the second victim, is a neglected and damaged kid who serves as a perfect counterpart to Drew's self-involvement.  And Xena - Junior's dog - dragged into Drew's home and life to stop her from being put down because there was nowhere for her to go - is a character in her own right.  I just wish somebody had explained to someone that you have to feed a dog - I spent most of the later part of the book seriously obsessed with when somebody was going to give that dog a decent meal!
 
There are some wonderful digs at shallow LA life, including a particularly hilarious serving late in the book that would make it worth reading for alone, not that the rest of the book wasn't worth reading mind you.  There's also a lot of descriptive detail about the landscape and the people but this doesn't slow the pace, which is typically thriller styled - moving the story along rapidly, but not sacrificing character development to the point where you don't care about these people.  
 
A final twist at the end which really worked and I SEE YOU lived up to the "Pure nail-biting, stay-up-all-night suspense" it was billed as.
 
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