Hard News

Hard News is written by Jeffery Deaver, who is probably best known for his Lincoln Rhymes series, the most famous of which was The Bone Collector which was made into a film starring Denzel Washington.

The book is about a young woman who is working in the news room of Network News, when she receives a packet containing a video from an inmate found guilty of a murder for which he has constantly pleaded his innocence. After watching the video Rune cannot help but believe the man, his plea has hit a nerve and she wants to tell his story to the world. In order to do so, Rune must convince the anchor of the station's current affairs broadcast that it would be a worthy cause. The anchor (Piper Sutton) is unimpressed at first, until she discovers the man in question is the very man who was convicted of murdering her boss and Network News executive.

Rune is instructed by Piper to being investigating the man's claim, however, she wants to keep it close to their chests due to the nature of the investigation. But of course nothing goes to plan, and Rune finds her own life in danger after a hitman comes to town, determined to stop the story going ahead.

I've read a couple of Deaver books, but this is the first one that didn't centre around Lincoln Rhymes. I found the writing to be some what below the standard I was expecting. At no point did I find myself vesting any interest in any of the characters, in fact I found all of them quite irritating in one way or another.

The plot also seemed a tad unrealistic, and several times I found myself thinking, 'yeah, like that's gonna happen' or something similar. I would say it is an adult book, but it's almost written on the level of a teenage writer, as if Deaver is trying to bring in readers from another dymanic.

All in all I was very disappointed, it was an okay story, but far from good and definitely not of the standard the Deaver can write to.