This was an interesting book with a lot of intersecting story lines.
it is not my favorite Jeffery Deaver novel. I prefer the focus on evidence collection and analyzation in the Lincoln Rhyme novels. ( )

Nice concept, good read, but not as good as I had hoped. The ending was a surprise, but somehow also not a surprise. Nice to read but not a must read. ( )

Very annoying to get into the "written backwards" style of this book. The true Deaver style is minimal, probably due to the difficulty of writing a novel like this. 80% through, the twist appears and then things start moving fast...and then comes to a grinding, unsatisfying, ending.

At least I only wasted a few hours of my life reading this. Ugh. ( )

Fascinating take on telling a story backwards. Deaver succeeds in keeping the suspense taut as the story unwinds from the end toward the beginning, although I felt the ending (which would have been the beginning) was stronger than the beginning (which was the end). A must read for those interested in something different. ( )

This audiobook, narrated by Todd Boyce, follows an unusual format, in that it starts at the end of the story and then goes backwards in time, with each chapter being set earlier than the previous one. It’s an interesting idea, and I’m not sure that it completely worked. The ending (or the beginning, as it were) was very satisfying and provided lots of ‘aha!’ and ‘wow!’ moments, but for the first few chapters (or indeed the last few!) it was confusing and somewhat frustrating. Jeffery Deaver has written some excellent books, and I don’t think this is one of them. It was good in the end, but I was tempted to give up on it after listening for the first hour or so.

Anyhow, the story revolves around a woman named Gabriella MacKenzie, sitting in a room with a man who is obviously there to look after her, while she anxiously awaits to hear if her kidnapped daughter Sarah has been rescued. Sarah was taken by a mysterious man named Joseph, who demands a huge sum of money and a mysterious document called The October List, which Gabriella’s boss has ownership of, and which contains details of people he had been dealing with in criminal financial activity. The boss has disappeared with the list and with Joseph’s – and several other people’s money – and Joseph wants it back. The story covers Gabriella and her new boyfriend Daniel’s attempts to retrieve the mysterious list and get it to Joseph before her daughter comes to any harm.

The narration was fine and the story was clever, but as mentioned above I’m not sure I would read something else written in this format. Normally when people are introduced into a story, there is some background or information provided about them which gives the reader an idea of the role they are going to play. Not so here however; characters are introduced with no explanation of how they fit into this story. It’s kind of like piecing together a jigsaw without ever having seen the picture you’re trying to make.

So a bit of a mixed bag. If you manage to get halfway through then it’s definitely worth sticking with it, but be prepared to be a bit lost at first. ( )