Ed McGinnis
File Size: 442 KB
Print Length: 263 pages
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B00LBVPIYU
BOOK BLURB: Jack Harrington—actor, Vietnam veteran, business associate of Los Angeles underworld figures–finds himself in a precarious position: at least two people are trying to kill him. He knows who one of them is. But the identity of the second would-be killer is shrouded in mystery and that killer is targeting others as well.
The deaths seem unrelated to one another and to an earlier attempt on Harrington’s life…at first. Until Jack Harrington connects the crimes and races against time to follow the bloody, serpentine trail back to its very unlikely genesis: the chaotic Southeast Asia of nineteen years earlier and the involvement of Harrington and others in a fateful–and fatal—subplot of the Vietnam War.
The Night Train Express, carrying a bizarre cast of fellow travelers with fatally conflicting agendas, is gathering speed. Jack Harrington will require all of his intelligence, charm and acting skills, his connections in both high and low places and his hard-earned street smarts—as well as a great deal of luck–to avoid being crushed beneath its wheels.
As long as the story stayed with Jack, I really enjoyed it, but the POV switches a lot and it takes a long time to meet all the characters in the story. Then keeping them straight is a bit of a challenge.
Once I got the characters all straight in my mind, I realized that I was really not liking some of the characters. I know the bad guys are the bad guys and we are not always supposed to like them, but the rogue police officers were way too ruthless for my taste and their scenes were so lengthy that I skip read a lot of those. Other readers might not have a problem with the graphic, ruthless scenes. What we enjoy reading is just a matter of personal taste, and the book is well-written.
The mystery and intrigue were compelling, and I did like some of the secondary characters. Penny the District Attorney was a complex personality, as was Anne, the neighbor who isn’t as harmless as she first appears. There are touches of humor throughout the story, mostly from Jack’s POV, and that made him an even more endearing character.
I found the genesis of the title a most interesting plot line, and wanting to know what the Night Train Express meant to Jack kept me reading.
I think folks who like a sweeping story with lots of characters, several plot lines, and on-the-page violence, would enjoy this book.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ed McGinnis is the author of the novels Night Train Express, The Blue Route and Wildwood. He grew up in the shadow of the Blue Route, on the deceptively mean streets of suburban Philadelphia, where he encountered the sort of real-life characters that inhabit his fiction: shady politicians, pragmatic cops, outlaw bikers, drug dealers, gamblers, mob figures, murder victims and killers. He has worked as an ad agency copywriter, technical writer and editor, in market research and in various capacities in the hospital and health care industry. Ed lives in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. You can connect with Ed at his Facebook author page his personal website or his Amazon author page and follow him on Twitter