Dead Game
An Emily Stone Novel
Jennifer Chase
Outskirts Press, Inc 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4327-5128-9
Trade Paperback
370 pages
Thriller
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The Story
Dead Game. Behind the wildly successful video game EagleEye hides a monster who uses the players as a pool of victims for his horrific hobby.
When Rick Lopez discovers his former mentor (Milt) has apparently committed suicide, he and Emily Stone take a break from their full-time occupation of hunting pedophiles. Both are former police officers who, without a bureaucracy to answer to, have become scary good at what they do. So, it doesn’t take the vigilant duo long to figure out Milt has been killed by a local madman who video-tapes his victims being slowly strangled to death by a home-made horror machine. What they don’t know and won’t realize until the team is marked for death themselves, is that Milt’s murder was the direct result of his discovery that the monster they all want to capture is using a worldwide network of serial killers to play his game. This network, a hidden internet site that functions much like Facebook, connects the professional killers of the world, offers them opportunities for socializing and even provides them with work. Rick and Emily and some of the other characters you’ll meet along the way are now in the sights of a deadly team of these killers. The impending showdown will teach Emily Stone she has a dark side which is quite eager to be released.
The Review
My format for today’s review is to address the detractors who have slammed Dead Game as being flat, guilty of jumping back and forth between different viewpoints and even harbouring too many spelling mistakes.
As the review pool for this novel is small, a collection of such opinions can be quite damaging. So let’s deal with each in its turn and see what we come up with.
1. The Novel was flat, the main characters had flexible morality at best and it was hard to care who died at the end. I cared very much about the possibility of Rick Lopez being killed. He provides balance and insights into the Emily Stone Character, who is, indeed, emotionally flat. Emily is a damaged individual, which is easily shown by and through the work she does; Stone doesn’t spend a lot of time on reflection. If this is all you look at and for, then you will be unhappy with the book. It is only through Rick that we see what Emily could be and is becoming. We are also shown how closely she walks the line between asset and liability to the law.
2. Multiple viewpoints spoil the novel. Yes, multiple viewpoints can be confusing. They definitely require more effort from the reader. This alone does not spoil a novel. It’s my opinion in a fast moving thriller like Dead Game, multiple viewpoints allow the author to introduce critical information that, you, the reader needs to have. Was this done in a heavy handed way? I didn’t think so: but the evaluation would be something each reader has to make himself.
3. Spelling mistakes. I became involved enough in the story, I didn’t notice any spelling or grammar errors. This is one of my important tests. If the author does something to pull me out of the story, then I’m going to nail her for it; disturbing or ruining the suspension of disbelief is an error no author should make.
So, the only thing that stood out for other reviewers and myself was a certain flatness experienced by the reviewer as reader. I’ve given you my take on this. Anything else you’ll have to decide on your own.
But let me put this an other way: Dead Game is a self-published book, even though the publisher is listed as Outskirts Press, Inc. Considering all a self-publisher has to deal with, I say this is a thriller well done and worth reading.
Copyright, Clayton Clifford Bye 2011
This was one of those books that has been sitting in my “to read” stack for a long time–several years, in fact. While I really enjoy Tana French’s style, this, her debut novel, doesn’t get more than three stars from me.
