Book Reviews by Elizabeth A. White

Trying to summarize The Thousand would be only slightly easier than attempting to herd a pack of cats across a rushing river. How can one adequately summarize a book that includes as major plot points Mozart’s infamously unfinished Requiem in D Minor, Greek mathematician / philosopher Pythagoras, experimental brain implants, a ten-year-old murder case, a manufactured blackout of Chicago, and an ancient conspiracy guarded by a secret society known as the Thousand?

Right, you can’t. So let’s just get on to why it all works. Brilliantly. Author Kevin Guilfoile has the amazing ability to create perfect order out of what should rightfully be utter chaos. He takes multiple, complicated plot lines and seamlessly weaves them into an almost suffocatingly intense blanket of action and suspense.

He does this in large part with his absolutely pitch-perfect characterizations, both of the people and locales. The story takes place in Las Vegas and Chicago, both of which are described with such vivid detail the reader feels as if he was actually there. The descent of Chicago into rioting and disorder during a blackout manufactured by the Thousand as cover for their activities is particularly harrowing.

But there is no question that the star of The Thousand is Canada Gold, Nada to her friends. As a young teenager Nada was the recipient of an experimental neurostimulator implanted directly into her brain as a last ditch effort to control her severe attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Not only did it cure her, it left her with some powerful unintended side-effects which the adult Nada learned to use to her benefit, first as a gambler then as a private investigator. As described by an attorney whose client is on the wrong side of a Nada investigation:

Ms. Gold, who grew up in the same house as a cold-blooded killer, possesses a unique set of abilities. She reads lips in two languages. She can hear conversations from across a crowded room. Allegedly she has a photographic memory, and I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that her idle thoughts can bend spoons. She’s a freak of nature, and my firm has been burned by her so many times we seriously discussed conducting all our business in Navajo.

Unfortunately for Nada, because of the unique abilities it has the power to bestow there are members of one faction of the Thousand who want her implant – over her dead body if necessary – so they can give it to someone handpicked by them who will use its enhancing powers to help the Thousand achieve their goals. The resulting race between the two factions to get to Nada first, and her dawning comprehension of the true power of her implant, make for 350 pages of conspiracy-fueled, page-turning plot twists and turns.

Guilfoile has created something truly special in The Thousand. He’s managed to take heavy-hitting concepts like the relationship between math and music (indeed, math and the nature of the universe itself), as well as the moral implications of advanced scientific research and testing and wrap them up in a package as enticing and thrilling as any Hollywood blockbuster; but much more intelligent.

Quite simply, The Thousand is amazing! It’s what The Da Vinci Code wants to be when it grows up… and it still won’t be close.

P.I. Michael Kelly most definitely needs it, as there is all kinds of trouble afoot in Chi-town. Starting with an execution-style murder on an L (elevated train) platform that Kelly witnesses, followed by a second L related shooting across town barely an hour later, The Third Rail quickly pulls the reader into the sense of panic that sweeps through the city of Chicago as it realizes there is a spree killer on the loose.

At first thinking he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, Kelly receives a call from someone claiming to be the shooter who indicates that Kelly’s presence at the scene of the first killing was no coincidence. Though dubious that Kelly is somehow the ultimate target in what appears to be a string of random shootings, the FBI / Chicago PD task force working the case reluctantly brings him into the investigation.

And that’s about as much as can be revealed without spoiling what is a spectacularly well plotted thriller. Suffice it to say that before all is said and done the investigation, which seems to get wrapped up about halfway through, actually downshifts, makes a hard turn and rockets off again in another direction that brings Homeland Security, the Archdiocese of Chicago, and Kelly’s old frenemy the Mayor of Chicago into play.

As with the first two installments of the Kelly series, the city of Chicago itself is a central character. From the L trains to the Irish pubs, from the opulence of the Archdiocese to the ominous semi-derelict buildings of the Cabrini-Green public housing development, from Chicago’s infamous brand of ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ politics to everything in between, Harvey effortlessly brings the city to life. Though it’s normally ill-advised to do so, this is one time when you definitely should grab onto The Third Rail.

- The Third Rail: Book Trailer -