GOOD AS GONE (Simon Fisk #1) by Douglas Corleone-a review
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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date August 20, 2013
Former U.S. Marshal Simon Fisk works as a private contractor, tracking down and recovering children who were kidnapped by their own estranged parents. He only has one rule: he won’t touch stranger abduction cases. He’s still haunted by the disappearance of his own daughter when she was just a child, still unsolved, and stranger kidnappings hit too close to home.
Until, that is, six-year-old Lindsay Sorkin disappears from her parents’ hotel room in Paris, and the French police deliver Simon an ultimatum: he can spend years in a French jail, or he can take the case and recover the missing girl. Simon sets out in pursuit of Lindsay and the truth behind her disappearance. But Lindsay’s captors did not leave an easy trail, and following it will take Simon across the continent, through the ritziest nightclubs and the seediest back alleys, into a terrifying world of international intrigue and dark corners of his past he’d rather leave well alone.
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REVIEW: GOOD AS GONE is the first storyline in Douglas Corleone’s new murder, mystery, thriller, contemporary suspense series aptly named Simon Fisk. Simon Fisk is our ‘reluctant’ hero; a former US Marshall now working as an independent contractor who searches for missing children kidnapped by estranged parents or vengeful family. But Simon also has experience when it comes to missing children, and it will be his most recent assignment that forces Simon to look deep into the eyes of every child and young teen who crosses his path.
The storyline focuses on Simon’s hunt for six year old Lindsay Sorkin-who has disappeared during a family vacation in Paris. Simon is called into investigate the child’s disappearance and the search will take him through the gritty and murderous underbelly of post-communist Russia, Ukraine and Romania and up close and personal with the potential for treason against the US of A.
The storyline reads similar to a Bourne adventure as our hero encounters mobsters, murderers, thieves, drug dealers and corrupted law enforcement and government officials. Yet throughout the story, Simon Fisk has the uncanny ability to find the right people at the right time while stirring up a bee’s nest of murderous and vengeful hit men. He is a man on the hunt and a man who is hunted.
The storyline is fast paced as the reader is taken on a whirlwind tour of the ‘not so glamorous’ side of the former Eastern Bloc and communist countries. At this point I had quite a number of questions with regards to one man’s ability to get in and out of these heavily guarded countries without so much as presenting a pass port or id, but on many occasions his whereabouts and entry points were known to those in charge. Although this is a fictional storyline, the believability of a good portion of the hero’s abilities remain questionable but everyone loves a great hero.
The writing is simple. There is more narration than dialogue as the storyline is told in first person POV from Simon Fisk’s perspective and much of the detail and investigations are wrapped up via Simon’s recounting of the events.
The main characters are likeable. Simon is a man truly possessed by a past mired in the guilt of another missing child and it is with this guilt that he is pushed into uncovering those responsible for the missing and exploited children. A small romance is building between Simon and Ana, a Polish lawyer whom Simon meets while investigating the missing child. But this is not a romantic storyline and their one on one time in the bedroom is glossed over.
The world building includes mention of many of the most famous and infamous missing and exploited children from recent headlines and the news; in this it gives the storyline a more plausible connection in reality but saying that, there is still plenty to question about the hero’s overall ability to find and locate one missing child among millions when the authorities themselves are lost to the investigations-but again, this is a story of fiction, mystery and suspense. At times we have to believe the unbelievable.
Overall, GOOD AS GONE is an interesting storyline; an adventure of one man’s hunt for a missing child among millions and the guilt that drives him forward with every child that is never found. Douglas Corleone has introduced the building blocks to a new series that is sure to please the mystery and suspense lover in everyone.
Copy supplied by the publisher through Netgalley.
Reviewed by Sandy
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DOUGLAS CORLEONE is the author of contemporary crime novels published by St. Martin’s Minotaur. His debut novel ONE MAN’S PARADISE was a finalist for the 2010 Shamus Award for Best First Novel and won the 2009 Minotaur Books / Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Award. Doug’s third novel LAST LAWYER STANDING is in bookstores now. His first international thriller GOOD AS GONE, introducing former U.S. Marshal Simon Fisk, will be released on August 20, 2013.
A former New York City criminal defense attorney, Doug now resides in the Hawaiian Islands, where he is currently at work on his next novel.
