“Four friends, beautiful scenery,
and a high tech satellite weapon
in the hands of indulgent, maniacal teenagers.”

In “Comes a Horseman“, I was intrigued. In “Germ“, I was astonished. In “Deadfall (A John Hutchinson Novel)“, I am hooked. Robert Liparulo has become one of my favorite authors.

All three Liparulo’s novels have the key elements that make for a fine suspense thriller; thorough research, educating the reader as well as entertaining them; descriptive and engaging scenery as well as character dialogue; and a mind tripping plot.

In this novel, four friends arrive in Canada on a hunting trip. On route to the isolated area in Canada, all four men, save one, discuss their personal and professional problems and express their hope that this trip will be just what they need.

They no sooner arrive when they stumble upon a spoiled billionaire teenager and his band of misfits bent on capturing footage for a new video game. This group of teenagers know little and care less about the people in the nearby town of Fiddler Falls. Declan Page, their leader, is set on gathering real-life blood and gore footage to use in the new video game.

After capturing the town and killing two townspeople using a hightech GPS tracking system combined with a prototype military defense weapon called SLC, the militant teenagers discover John Hutchinson (Hutch) out hunting.

The race is on from this point and what follows is not stop action, a survival story at its best. Hutch and his friends, save one, head toward Fiddler Falls in hopes of finding help.

They find no help.

The townspeople are being held hostage and all resources either disabled or destroyed.They stumble upon the sheriff’s wife (now a widow) and her son as they attempt to escape as well. The small group is quickly separated when Declan and his group return.

The story develops on to a wonderfully enjoyable suspense thriller. I especially enjoyed the thought processes of all the characters. The part of the evil Declan and his bumbling gun-loosing girlfriend had me wondering how Declan ever swayed the others on his team to follow him. Then again, the Bible records the answer- “money answereth all things“.

I have no doubt that you will enjoy this book. I am certainly looking forward to reading the sequel “Deadlock“.

Keiki Hendrix
http://vesselproject.wordpress.com ( )

Deadfall is a well thought-out developed story. Liparulo obviously researched his ideas and wrote them well.
I had a little difficulty with this book despite its thought-provoking story. In places it seemed to drag a bit and I had to put the book down because I just couldn't seem to stick with it for too long. Sometimes it seems as though too much detail is given and there is just not enough plot movement.
I also had difficulty with the believability of the weapon. Although it is described in detail (maybe too much), I still have too many questions about it. Maybe it has to do with the industry I work in (I'm a systems engineer in the aerospace industry), but I was left wondering too many times how certain things were possible.
The ending was a little too abrupt following such a long drawn-out chase. It seemed like there should have been just a little more to it.
I do think this would make an excellent movie. It was written like a blockbuster movie.
This one sits in the middle for me...good story, but too much questioning and a little too much detail in descriptions. ( )

A well written thriller in which a band of six totally amoral young people take a small town hostage via their control of an astonishing space age weapon. A band of four hunters stumbles in and must fight them with nothing but a bow and arrow and their wits. ( )