Guest Review: Killer Move

Summary: Bill Moore already has a lot, but he wants more . . . much more.

He's got a lucrative job selling condos in the Florida Keys, a good marriage, a beautiful house . . . and a five-year plan for super-success that he's just kicked into high gear. Then one morning he arrives at work to find a card waiting for him with a one-word message:

Modified

And Bill's life begins to change—small, barely detectable differences at first, but soon things begin unwinding rapidly.

Then people all around him start to die.

Someone, somewhere, has a very different plan for Bill's future. And as he's about to learn, fighting back may prove futile, even deadly. Because once your life has been modified, there's no going back. -- Harper

Booking Pap Pap is back with another great review. This time it's for the thriller KILLER MOVE by Michael Marshall. I owe my dad a little apology for passing this book along to him because he usually doesn't enjoy anything creepy, and well it sounds like KILLER MOVE had a horror element to it. Here are his thoughts:

Author Michael Marshall begins KILLER MOVE by introducing the reader to convicted murderer John Hunter on the day he’s released from prison. John didn’t commit the crime and plans to find the people responsible for the murder. This sets him on a collision course with Bill Moore, the main character in the novel.

Bill Moore seems to have everything going for him. He’s a successful realtor in Sarasota, Florida, is happily married and lives in a beautiful home. But Moore is not totally satisfied with his life and has put together an ambitious plan for getting further ahead. Apparently his plan and attitude has rubbed some people the wrong way.

Bill arrives at work one day to find a card on his desk with only one word – MODIFIED. Soon after, strange things begin to happen in Bill’s life. First he receives a suggestive book he didn’t order, then a racist joke is sent from his email address, a reservation is made at an expensive restaurant under his name and partially nude pictures of his female co-worker show up on his home computer. Then things get more serious. His wife disappears, a wealthy client goes missing and people around Bill begin to die. Moore becomes a suspect in all the strange happenings and begins to fight back. He has difficulty separating those that are responsible for the strange happenings from those who are not. He soon realizes that his life has been inexplicably changed forever.

Marshall runs the lives of Moore and Hunter on parallel paths and utilizes an interesting technique by alternating chapters between Hunter and Moore which gives the reader two distinct viewpoints of the storyline. The author generates further interest by telling Hunter’s story in the third person and Moore’s in the first person.

Marshall combines a high tech plot with a high dosage of horror to keep a believable story suspenseful until the very end. If I have any criticism of the book it would be that Bill Moore is the only character that was developed to any extent. The other characters, including John Hunter, were hard for me to visualize. Additionally, not being a fan of horror books, I found it a little gory.

If you enjoy psychological thrillers, you will enjoy KILLER MOVE.

Thanks to Booking Pap Pap for his review and thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.