Monday, May 21, 2012

"Do right. Fear Nothing."

I really like Andrew Klavan's thrillers, whether intended for an adult readership or for young adults. The Homelanders series was so good that I had some difficulty waiting patiently for each subsequent book to get published [but if you want to read them they are now available in a single volume]. His most recent young adult thriller is Crazy Dangerous. It is on my Kindle but I have yet to read it. John Nolte's review leads me to believe it won't take long to complete once I get started:
.... Sam Hopkins is a PK, a preacher's kid living with all the baggage that entails in a small town in upstate New York. Like many high schoolers, Sam has an instinct to rebel, and this instinct at first gets him into the kind of trouble many of us got into as youths when he falls in with a gang of thugs and car thieves. Quickly, though, Sam realizes he's made a mistake and that he has to get out of this situation without getting himself killed. Every day he's in deeper and eventually the solution comes along in the form of what you might call Sam's uncontrollable chivalry.

Jennifer is a classmate of Sam's, a strange but innocent girl who requires saving in so many ways. Above all, she's the victim of terrifying visions of demons and worse. But is she crazy? ....

But best of all, with Crazy Dangerous, Klavan remains an example of what an artist with something to say should be. There is no message in Crazy Dangerous, just a simple theme of "Do right. Fear nothing.," wrapped in an exciting, page-turning tale that extols the virtues of self-sacrifice, chivalry, honesty, and admitting you're wrong in a way that doesn't hide the fact that there's a price to pay in this world for believing such things or that the price is worth the ultimate reward. ....
'Crazy Dangerous' Review: Andrew Klavan's Latest Young Adult Thriller

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