Killing Red by Henry Perez

Fantastic thriller!!by Anonymous

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October 13, 2009: I loved this book! It is fast paced, thrilling and a very exciting read. I connected with the main character, Alex Chapa, from the very beginning and found myself rooting for him all the way to the end. Chapa's strained relationship with his daughter tugs at the heart strings and his comical banter with his detective friend is funny and real. His determination to wrong a prior mistake and save a victim of a killer's rampage makes this a page turner that is hard to put down. It's a great debut for what appears to be an author who knows how to capture an audience. Hope the next installment of Chapa is not too far behind!

Flawed Mediocre Debutby Brewer

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October 13, 2009: Initially I thought Perez was on the right track. It is, with rare exeception, absolutely necessary for Mystery/Crime/Thrillers to be written in the third person. With the narrator doubling as protagonist and tripling as hero, a first person account mutes all of the thrills. We know the narrator cannot be killed during his/her deathly encounters or he/she cannot finish telling the story. So Perez gets that. He starts off writing in the third person, but there is absolutely no separate, independent character development of anyone other than protagaonist, Alex Chapa, a newspaper reporter. Not a single paragraph was written without "Chapa this..." and "Chapa that...". After the first hundred pages you no longer want to see the word/name, "Chapa". There are at least 8-10 characters in this novel,including a serial killer, surviving victims, law enforcers, co-workers, girlfriends, witnesses, all who have their own potential stories, viewpoints and possible action scenes. But none of these characters ever really come to life and we never learn enough about any of them to really care about their fates. All we get is Chapa, Chapa and more Chapa. He is the only character in this entire book that Perez develops. It becomes way to easy to predict the story's outcome, which told in the third person actually reads as if it is being told in first person. Additionally there is a mystery within this story about a death row inmate's upcoming execution and his influence on events taking place outside of the prison over which he should have abolutely no control. The mystery is a huge "how?". But the book ends without the mystery being solved. One or more identified or possibly unidentified characters has or have some responsibilty for everything that that happens in this book. But when the final page is turned the reader is left with our hero Chapa's mission coming to a predictable end, we still do not know how the villain accomplished his misadventure or who his additional assistants are. This is not simply a loose end left untied. A missing piece this big in a jigsaw puzzle and you would never know the picture. Sorry I can't be more specific but for those of you who will go on to read this book I do not want to give anything away. My recommendation, however, is to find a different read. Perez can write. He can also devise characters that should fit a good thriller. He just does not know how to take advantage of his writing ability, make those characters come to life or thrill the reader. Eeven worse, he gave up on his own story, bringing it to an end before making it come together.

I Also Recommend: The King of Lies, Child 44, The Faithful Spy.