Allan Folsom (1941–2014)

Day After Tomorrow by Allan Folsom
5 Stars

Day After Tomorrow begins in a Paris cafe where an American surgeon named Paul Osborn looks across the room and sees the man he thinks murdered his father thirty years before. Meanwhile, in London, a former Los Angeles homicide cop named McVey joins Scotland Yard to look into a series of decapitations involving a severed head and seven headless corpses. Osborn decides to hire a private detective to help him find the man he saw in the cafe. Eventually show more Osborn becomes a suspect in the decapitations. He and McVey also become involved with a powerful secret organization which seems to reach into every corner of Europe. The two plots (Osborn's father and the decapitated bodies) converge into a thrilling finale.

The action starts immediately and in many ways this book reminded me of a Robert Ludlum or Frederick Forsyth style of novel. The author weaves together a wide array of well-developed, interesting characters in an international murder mystery in a WWII/Nazi/modern-era setting.

I absolutely loved "The Day After Tomorrow". I was completely engrossed. It is action-packed for sure. The plot is carefully laid out so you find yourself guessing throughout the book as to who you want to trust and who you can't trust. The bad guys are truly evil.

On the down side, there is so much action and plot that sometimes it seems like there are too many characters and it can be a bit confusing. The plots are complicated but Folsom is able to connect them over the long run.

It was excellent story and had everything I look for in a suspense novel. It was well written with interesting characters. I had no problem with the length of the book and was sorry when I reached the end. show less

As I was cruising through book choices from my library, this book was listed as a mystery thriller, and while I hate to admit it, when I first downloaded it, i thought it was the book that the movie that came out a few years ago was--how wrong I was (and happily so)!

This story is the story of how being in the wrought place at the right time can drastically change your life. For Paul, an American doctor from LA who is visiting Paris for a conference, it is the right time and place. However, show more for the contract killer who killed Paul's father years ago, who is having a cup of coffee after work in the same cafe as Paul, it is definitely the wrong time. Paul recognizes this man who killed his father in front of him and immediately attacks him. The waiters obviously don't know what provoked this attack, and stop him long enough for the killer to escape.

This is merely the beginning for Paul, however.

He hires a detective to find out who this man is and vows to kill him. What he doesn't know, however, is that there is way more to the story than just this man. There is a conspiracy afoot--that will cause Paul, his newly found love interest, international police, a lot of heart pounding excitement. This was a book I didn't want to put down. A very good read! show less

A story of corruption, greed, conspiracy, and the lone hero out to save the world from it all. There were some well-written action packed scenes that left me wondering what was going to happen. Likewise, the uncertainty of whether his uninvited female traveling companion was on the side of good or evil kept me guessing throughout the book. Yet, there were also a tad too many narrow escapes from close call situations that it began to border on the unbelievable. There is a fine line for each show more reader regarding how much suspension of reality can be tolerated, and for me that line was crossed. Additionally, the mention of a memorandum arrived so late in the book, that I spent more time than I cared to trying to reconcile the title of the book with what I was reading. Overall, I would not discourage someone to read this book, but it would not rank high on my recommendation list. show less

Stupid. That sums up, fairly succinctly, the entire theme of the story and this book. I'd be shocked if someone could provide an example of a literary cliche common to the thriller genre that wasn't included in this book. Every problem and mystery is conveniently solved by a friend in some random police force somewhere in the world. Every risk is resolved, no matter how dangerous, with barely a scratch (well, there was one broken leg). People are killed with hardly any consequences and the show more obligatory sex scenes are about as romantic as the average soft-core porn movie.
All that being said, the book is fairly compelling. It's a lot like your favorite bad movie, something that you intrinsically realize, by all objective measures, is a bad film, but you still enjoy watching (Mine is Point Break. I know it's a horrible movie, but come on, Keanu Reeves as an FBI agent?!). This is a bad book, it takes a decided turn for the stupid fairly early on and the ending (something you could predict before the halfway point of the book) is just damn silly. A dumb book, but didn't feel like it was a waste of my time. show less