The Escape Artist

Brad Meltzer certainly knows how to write a thriller. He does his research and makes every detail feel relevant and not part of an info dump. And he introduces each character with a quirk or personality trait that we immediately identify with. He immediately hooked me with the main character, Zig, by making him such a family man that he even censors bad words in his thoughts. Amy Waggs we first meet only in a phone conversation, but we hear about how she watches bad TV shows to combat loneliness and we immediately sympathize with her.

And I really get now why people will read thrillers all in one sitting, because I took a break after chapter 2 and now all sorts of things that seemed exciting at the time are starting to bug me now that I've had a chance to think about them. The mystery lady in the plane crash was able to count down the seconds until she crashed? Yeah, that was exciting, but how would she know how many seconds were left?  And why leave a note behind that outs the person you've been trying to help hide (other than that it moves the story along)?

So, yes, read this for sure if you can get through it all in one sitting. Just don't take breaks to think about it!  (By the way, this book came from the new book shelves at the Carol Stream Public Library.)