Gecko by Jack Priest Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $6.61 You Save: $8.38 (56%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $1.19 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Gecko
Book Review: GECKO makes the Komodo Dragon look like a poodle.
Summary: 5 Stars
Horror, just the way I like it. This was the first of Jack Priest's books I have read and I was not disappointed. I won't go into a narrative of what the book is about, as several others have already done that much better than I. But let me say the creature of the title is a frightening, relentless monster that leaves a very bloody, and uncompromising trail of bodies as it is unleashed upon the unsuspecting characters, who find themselves in a maelstrom of intense terror.
There is one particular element to this book which struck me as one of the most original ideas I have ever seen (or read). I won't spoil it for you except to say it concerns the "connection" between the main character Jim Monday and Donna.
Jack Priest is a fresh and imaginative voice in the world of horror literature and I will be reading his books for many years to come. I hope you will too.
Book Review: Giant Gecko, Very Big, Very Bad
Summary: 5 Stars
Southern Californian real estate developer Jim Monday is a man with a woman in his head and a monster on his trail in this horror thriller that had me reading the night away. Young Donna Tuhiwai, held captive in New Zealand, leaves her body and her mind settles half a world away in Monday's head. She sees a speeding car, shouts "Jump Back." Monday hears the words in his mind, jumps back and watches in horror as his best friend is killed by a speeding Buick.Later she makes herself known to Monday, explains to him she is trapped in his body, tells him that she has been abducted and she needs him to go to her rescue. But Monday has problems of his own. His wife has been seduced by the man who Monday believes killed his friend and he believes she too, may be being held against her will. He is determined to rescue her, then he'll tend to Donna's rescue. However there is an ancient horror in the form of a Gecko beast, a mythical monster from Maori folklore, that wants to keep jim from saving his wife and it's just as determined as Jim and it's big, mean and almost impossible to kill.
I must say I really liked this book and like I did with RAGGED MAN and NIGHT WITCH, Mr. Priest's other two horror stories, I went right to Google as soon as I finished and did a search for the Gecko or the ngarara beast that the author has chasing around after the Jim Monday in this, his second horror story. As I mentioned elsewhere, I like my monsters, vampires, werewolves and such, to be drawn as accurately as possible from the folklore and legends from wench they came. In RAGGED MAN Mr. Priest used a little too much literary license for my taste. In NIGHT WITCH he was right on. So I was curious to see how he fared here.
I got a lot of hits when I typed in the words Maori and Gecko, but they were mostly tattoo sites and the like. I tried ngarara, got a zillion hits that were no help other that I figured out that ngarara can mean either gecko, monster or maybe monster gecko, so again I e-mail Mr. Priest and asked him what gives. He got right back to me and told me that the inspiration for the bad gecko beast thing came from a story written by Mohi Ruatapu in 1876. He then directed me to several websites, but unfortunately for me, they were all in Maori, Mr. Priest's little joke on me I think. Anyway, he got me and I can only assume that he's telling the truth, so no stars taken away for cheating on the folklore for GECKO. He gets all five for this one.
Reviewed by Stephanie Sane
Book Review: Half creature feature, half rogue-cop procedural
Summary: 4 Stars
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.
Book Review: Jim Monday vs. An Evil Villain, Lots of Cops and a Monster
Summary: 5 Stars
"Jump back!" the voice in his head says and Jim Monday jumps back as a dark Buick Regal comes flying out of nowhere, smashes into and kills his best friend. Had Jim not obeyed the voice, he too would be dead on the street. Above, looking down from a second story window is Dr. Kohler, the man who had stolen Jim's wife and now wants him dead. Jim is wealthy and the doctor wants his money.
The voice belongs to Donna Tuhiwai a woman over thirty years younger than Jim, who is being held captive in New Zealand, half a world away. In desperation she cast her mind out of her body and it settled in Jim. Donna is in mortal danger and desperately needs someone to come to her rescue, but Jim attacks Kohler as he blames him for his friend's death and that gets him arrested. He kills a couple of Kohler's henchmen while escaping, runs into his wife's twin sister as he's fleeing the police station, persuades her to help him with his getaway and learns that his wife is being held captive in Kohler`s mansion in Northern California.
Police Sgt. Hugh Washington, recently busted down from homicide is hot on Monday's trail with his daughter Glenna, a police science major at Long Beach State College. Washington believes Monday is innocent, Glenna pressures him to let her help him in his quest to prove it.
Donna comes from a Maori family that is buried deep in tradition. One of her ancestors shunned a legendary Gecko beast and it has followed her mind to California and somehow has come under the power of Doctor Kohler. Every cop in California is on the lookout for Jim as he runs to save his wife, if he survives the gauntlet, the Gecko beast is waiting. And if he survives that, he has to get to New Zealand and save Donna before her captor kills her. And through it all he has the help of Donna, the voice in his head, who at times seems to be more in control of his body than he is himself.
Jack Priest has written a horror story thriller that had me biting my nails throughout the night as my fingers blistered through the pages. There is a Dean of horror and we all know who that is. There is a King of horror and we all know who that is too. Well now it appears, there is a Dark Priest of Horror. I didn't make that last part up, I read it in another review, but I agree with it whole heartedly. This scary horror thriller gets five stars from me. I loved it and I think you will too.
Reviewed by Vesta Irene
Book Review: Leaping lizards!
Summary: 4 Stars
One of the more ill-advised new TV shows of the 2007 season was Cavemen, based on the idea that what was amusing in a thirty second Geico Insurance commercial would hold up in a standard sitcom program. Perhaps the networks would have been better off going with Geico's previous mascot, a gecko. The Geico gecko was a nice enough reptile, but the ones in Jack Priest's novel Gecko have a much more malevolent quality.
Gecko opens in Long Beach, California with Vietnam-vet-turned-millionaire Jim Monday about to finalize a divorce with his wife who has left him for Bernd Kohler, a doctor who Monday is convinced is no good. This feeling is reinforced by an attempt on Jim's life that winds up killing lawyer and friend David. When Monday attacks Kohler, the police intervene and Monday winds up briefly in jail. This doesn't stop the murder attempts, and soon Monday is a fugitive, on the run from the cops as well as what he believes are Kohler's killers.
Despite a broken arm, Monday is capable enough in life-and-death situations (thanks to his Vietnam experience); this, however, is more of a challenge than he is used to, even when a cop who believes in Monday's innocence gets into the mix. Perhaps it's because in addition to human killers, Monday is being pursued by a vicious creature that seems somehow linked to the geckos (not native to California) that are suddenly appearing everywhere. Or maybe it's because of the uninvited voice in his head, the voice of a girl in New Zealand who is being held prisoner by a sadistic killer.
By the end, it does all come together, and overall, it's a fun ride getting there. Priest is a good storyteller, with a good sense of how to keep the reader turning pages. It is not a perfect novel, however, so I am rating it only four stars. Occasionally, the dialogue seems rather stiff and there a couple more coincidences than necessary. I think the story would have also been strengthened by an early scene showing Kohler's evil nature. For a long time, we are merely told Kohler is bad without actually seeing it, although we do eventually see that Kohler is a truly nasty character.
Like any good story, however, any little problems you encounter don't really impede your enjoyment of the tale. For those who want to expand their horror reading beyond King and Koontz, Priest offers an entertaining alternative.