Half creature feature, half rogue-cop procedural

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	• Gecko Jack Priest Bootleg Press, 2003 - 340 pages average customer review:based on 30 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Ludlum meets King meets Rollins

Priest has some real strengths as a writer. First, he writes sentences that keep moving forward; that may seem like a small thing, but it sure beats ploughing through the tortured hamstrung prose of someone like Dan Brown (though Priest is fond of comma-spliced run-ons).

Second, he has a fine sense of pace. This story gets moving instantly and keeps moving at a rapid clip. There isn't an ounce of padding in this book.

That's probably just as well, because some portions of the plot don't really connect the dots all that well. Timing is a bit mysterious, and some plot elements are instantly discarded once they've served their purpose (our hero's best friend is killed early on, but two minutes later, he's out of the story).

Some of this is entertainingly silly; our hero is a Vietnam vet, successful politician, well-trained sailor-- clearly he's 55 years old because he has to be that old to fit in all his backstory. Some of it borders on insulting; a twenty-year-old woman who was raped at sixteen decides that having sex with this fifty-five year old man whom she just met will make her whole again.

It's the breath-taking chase fiction of Ludlum with some creepy King supernatural, crossed with the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink of Rollins. This is not a book likely to create readerly deja vu (ex-POW with psychic link to Maori woman? yeah, I've so seen that before). Not deep, not serious, but well written and fast-paced enough to skate over its own thin ice.

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Beware the cute little gecko...

Via another request direct from the author, I was mailed a copy of Gecko by Jack Priest. As it was described as a horror story in the tradition of Dean Koontz, I was predisposed to like it already (yes, I'm a warped fan of Koontz's earlier novels). Gecko holds up well to that description, and I don't think I'll stop at this being the only Priest novel I'll read...

Jim Monday is walking along the street with his lawyer and friend David Askew. But as they start to cross the street, Askew is nailed by a hit-and-run driver. Monday is convinced he was the target when a doctor, Bernd Kohler, immediately shows up on the scene. Why? Because Kohler has stolen Monday's wife, will get half of his money in the divorce settlement, and likely wants the other half of a large life insurance policy on Monday as well. He physically assaults the doctor, and is restrained by a couple of cops. But something in Monday's story gets the cops thinking that Monday might just be right about the attempt on his life, and they start digging around privately on the side. Turns out there's far more sinister elements at play in the doctor's life, and everyone close to Monday and the investigation ends up confronting a nasty gecko-like monster that hunts humans for food. Monday has to dodge all the other cops who think he's a serial killer based on the mayhem left behind by the gecko creature, while trying to rescue his wife and save the daughter of the cop who's trying to help him. Oh, and there's that matter of the voice in his head belonging to a woman in New Zealand who is also being held captive and needs Monday's help to escape...

Priest's style most definitely reminds me of the early Dean Koontz books. Plenty of graphic gore playing out on a supernatural stage. I'll admit that on the first read of the novel, I missed the pages that explained the voice in the head. Perhaps that was when the Ambien was taking effect that night. My gripe was that we really needed to know more about the reason for the voice earlier in the story. But as I write this review, I went back into the book to get a name and found the four pages I missed at first. Having read that, things fall into place much more readily now. As such, I have to say it was a very well done horror novel (if that's a genre you like), and I will be checking out a few other Priest titles when time permits...

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Half creature feature, half rogue-cop procedural

The protagonist of Jack Priest's thriller Gecko is fifty-five-year-old Jim Monday--a real estate developer and former congressman and a decorated Vietnam veteran who finds that, even after decades without practice, killing comes easy. Which is good, because Monday has a number of problems to deal with in Priest's story, not least of which is that he's being stalked by a giant, noisome, man-eating gecko. A bunch of humans are trying to kill him too, and he's hearing voices in his head, and, to top it off, his wife wants a divorce. But all of his difficulties turn out to be related to one another, so, in theory, the whole mess could be solved very tidily.... Not that it turns out that way.

While Monday is trying to solve his melange of problems and to save the life of the disembodied voice sounding in his head, he's helped by a number of other characters: the disembodied voice itself, his wife's twin sister, a pair of policeman who stake their careers on Monday's innocence, and the daughter of one of the policemen. The policeman and his daughter, Hugh and Glenna Washington, in fact figure very prominently in the book, such that the story is arguably half creature feature and half rogue-cop procedural.

Priest's book is not keep-the-lights-on scary, but he does manage to make small moments suspenseful because, as he proves more than once, he's not averse to killing off major characters. So it's never safe to assume that any given character won't die--horribly, with great loss of blood--in any particular scene. The book certainly held my interest. Sure, one has to suspend one's disbelief about the whole giant gecko thing. I had no problem doing that, but I did find it hard to believe that Jim could rack up so many intense relationships with gorgeous women during the brief period covered by the book. I also think that the book's storyline could be tightened up. I wouldn't say that the fate of the Washingtons is a loose end, for example--we know more or less what happens to them--but they exit the story surprisingly early given how important they are to it, never to be heard from again. It is surprising in particular given that the daughter is one of those gorgeous women with whom our hero so quickly forms an intense bond. A number of small scenes could probably be excised from the book as well to make it a tighter read.

Despite these complaints, I enjoyed the book. It's a fast read, with a quite unusual premise.

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These little lizards are definitely not cute!

Jim Monday, a retired Vietnam veteran, thought he was happily in love. He was wrong. His wife has left him for Bernd Kohler, a rather slippery German doctor; they're suing him for all the money and property in sight; and his best friend and lawyer has just been killed by a hit and run driver. Monday, convinced that the accident was a set-up intended to kill him, attacks Kohler and finds himself in jail for his trouble. When the murder attempts continue inside the jail, Monday knows he was right. He escapes calling on his long dormant but now instinctive Vietnam survival and killing skills.

In the opening paragraphs, Jack Priest shows himself to be a pretty darn capable spinner of that typical fast-paced police procedural or suspense thriller. But then Monday hears voices in his head. Somehow he's in communication with the spirit of Donna Tuhiwai, a young Maori woman who needs to be rescued from the same evil doctor who stole Monday's wife. As Monday searches for Donna and evades the ongoing police search, the killings continue and Priest begins to litter the landscape with a series of odd gecko sightings, brilliantly foreshadowing the really creepy stuff that has yet to happen. But, come it does, and "Gecko" makes the transition from suspense to horror.

"Gecko" is an ambitious horror novel and covers a lot of ground in a relatively small number of pages - pornography, murder, rogue police officers, white slave trade, mental telepathic communication, gruesome oversized lizards, Maori legends and more. Priest has certainly succeeded to the extent that he's produced a fast-paced enjoyable goose-bumper that will put a smile on the face of anyone who enjoys a good horror story but "Gecko" does have a couple of noticeable shortcomings. Unresolved loose threads at the end of the novel will leave the reader frustratingly puzzled about what happened to two major characters that simply disappear from the plot line with nary a trace. Monday's ability to move from one seemingly perfect romantic relationship into another without a shred of remorse or concern could most charitably be called unrealistic.

That said, "Gecko" was enjoyable and Jack Priest has made it onto the list of authors that I'll look for in the future. Recommended.

Paul Weiss

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

He knows the doctor did it, but has no proof and can't get any behind bars. While in jail he learns about Donna, a woman in trouble who desperately needs to be rescued. She is the victim of the same doctor who has stolen his wife. It has been a long time since his days in the violent Vietnamese jungle, a long time since he's had to call on skills he'd put to rest. He's rusty, he tells himself, but not useless. He has to escape, has to rescue both Donna and his wife, has to save them from a horrible fate. However the doctor is as evil as Lucifer himself and calls forth an ancient horror to end Jim's life, once and for all. Jim escapes from jail and goes after the doctor with the police hot on his trail. He knows what's after him, but he has no idea about what's waiting ahead.

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