Venom: A Novel of Suspense [Hardcover]

This is an outstanding novel. I have always been an admirer of Joan Brady since I encountered Theory of War - the first Whitbread Prize winner and still one of the most stunning and moving novels I have ever read. OK - this is a different sort of book and maybe appealing to a different reader but it is an excellent read and held me throughout. The conclusion was a complete surprise - as it was in Bleedout her earlier thriller - and I read a lot of this type of fiction and usually expect to guess the ending before I finish. Not this time. Extremely competent writer and with themes one can identify with - the evils of giant corporations for a start. Highly recommended.

A respected scientist and an ex-con follow a trail of death across London and Belarus against a backdrop of industrial espionage, corporate greed and genocide.

David Marion is a very well-connected ex-con. An attempt is made on his life, he obtains a new identity and goes on the run. UCAI, a corporate giant are behind the attempt of David's life. David adopts the persona of a homeless drifter. `Googie', head of a section of the NSA associated with corporate assassinations, assigns an operative to track David and kill him. The plan backfires. In the aftermath, Googie discovers that David was a suspect in the murder in prison of his brother, the corrupt cop who arrested David in the first place, later imprisoned in the same penitentiary for torturing suspects.

Helen Freyl, respected physicist and American aristocrat, is the absentee owner of a farm in Illinois where poor farmer Joshua scrapes a living collecting bee venom. Helen's recently murdered father Hugh, a corporate lawyer and philanthropist, was responsible for David's release, rehabilitation and education. On David's release from prison, Helen fell in love with him. Helen receives some outrageously high offers for the farm and venom business, which she refuses. She accepts an academic fellowship at the Follaton Foundation in London, a centre of nuclear medicine research with extensive operations in Belarus. Her grandmother Becky, wily matriarch of the Freyls, establishes that both the offers on the farm and the fellowship originate at UCAI.

VENOM is an attempt to write a Michael Crichton thriller in the style of CONGO or THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN. It is a feminised James Patterson type of book, with all of Patterson's far-fetched plotting but very little of his trademark slickness. `Good' scientists and reformed criminals pit their wits against the evil forces of government and business. Massive acts of devastating immorality are perpetrated.

VENOM has some very good things going for it, which should not be ignored. The author has a good reputation and sales history. There is potential for excellent blurb. The first hundred or so pages set up an intriguing and original thriller. The central character Helen Freyl is very well conceived and convincing portrayed. Overall, VENOM has the feel of a `woman's book'.

Everything else about it is utterly dreadful.

The plot is sprawling: needlessly complicated, far-fetched and almost farcically executed. It is held to together by a series of stomach-churning coincidences that would make Dickens blanch. There are loose-ends dangling everywhere. It is very hard to believe that this was written by a successful writer capable of work like THEORY OF WAR, and harder yet to believe that it has been worked over by an experienced editor. It would greatly benefit by the loss of 200 or so pages, perhaps by the simple expedient of ripping them out and throwing them away.

The descriptions of London and life in England could have been copied from an in-flight magazine, and will displease many English readers, though they may go down well with Americans or other foreigners. There are occasional factual and geographical errors. No one actually says, "cor-blimey, luv-a-duck," but we come perilously close to it. Most of the science is simply made-up.

The relationships in the work have more of the texture of a bodice-ripper than a thriller. Transparent, dull and unbelievable male characters either twirl metaphorical moustaches roguishly, or behave like matinee idols. All of them are stupid. None of them is convincing. David Marion is particularly ridiculous. The only satisfactory action sequence is a car chase (which ultimately makes no sense) that feels out of place in a `woman's book'. VENOM may be more attractive to those already familiar with David Marion from BLEED OUT, but has not given me the slightest desire to investigate it.

Brilliant! Joan Brady kept me riveted to the end and oh boy what an end. Totally unputdownable so beware, make sure you have the time to finish it before you start.
I love thrillers and this is one of the best I have read. She is such a talented and intelligent writer. I simply cant wait for the next novel, PLEASE!?!