Richard Doetsch

I did not realize that this is book two of the Nick Quinn thrillers. Yet, I had no issues jumping right into this book. Mr. Doetsch sures knows how to up the ante with the reading experience. I mean while reading this book, it was like a major motion picture movie playing into my head! I could not stop reading. Literally read this book in one day, it was that good. The 13th Hour: Chaos took me on a roller coaster filled with tons of action, intrigue, twists and turns with engaging show more characters.

What made this reading experience even better was that the whole format of the story is meant to be read backwards. So, you start out at the end and work your way to the beginning. So perfect for who readers who like to read the ending first. While, I knew the endgame, it did not less my excitement as I was kept on my toes to how the story would play out. I will be reading more books by Mr. Doetsch. show less

From Amazon:

Between life and death, between the deepest dark of night and the first rays of dawn, in that moment where we begin to drift from sleep to wakefulness, is where anything is possible . Jack Keeler wakes up one bright June morning to the shock of his life. He gazes in the mirror and sees a half-healed gash over his right eye and a hastily stitched-together wound in his shoulder that looks suspiciously like the result of a bullet. He also notices an intricately designed show more tattoo—words written in a foreign script—covering the length of his forearm. He’s alone, his house eerily silent without the delightful chatter of his wife and two daughters. He has absolutely no memory of how, when, or why he ended up in such gruesome physical condition. Jack gropes his way down to the kitchen to call his wife, Mia—an FBI agent—and to find some answers. But before he can pick up the phone, his eyes are drawn to the front page of that morning’s paper. He takes in a large photo of a bridge, the guard rail missing, a skein of tire marks on the roadway. Above the photo, in large black type, a headline that simply reads NEW YORK CITY DISTRICT ATTORNEY JACK KEELER DEAD.

My Thoughts:

A few months ago I had the extreme pleasure of reading The 13th Hour by this author and found that it was one of, if not the best book I have read this year. Now comes Half Past Dawn to take it's place right along side of it. This book allows us to travel with Jack as he tries to bring together the pieces of what has happened, who is responsible and where this is all headed. Along the way we get to see him tackle his own demons, question the ability of good overcoming evil and even see how far he is willing to go to protect what is his. Unfortunately for him, there is someone else who is equally as determined to see that the truth and Keeler don't see the light of day. In true Richard Doetsch fashion we are drawn into the characters and the action that ensues. We are also allowed to see the lessons that are being learned by those we meet in the book and see how we can apply them as well. "Death is not always final," we learn," not always permanent; death is never the end."

What is true, though, is that the storyline weaved by the author will keep you tangled in the pages until the very end. Ready for a puzzle with life and death implications? Then get this one. show less

When Nick Quinn's wife is murdered and he's arrested for the deed, a strange man shows up at the police station and gives him a pocket watch that somehow sends Quinn back in time two hours, leaves him there an hour, then repeats the process eleven more times. Meaning, basically, that Quinn gets to live twelve hours of his life over, in reverse order. And in those backwards hours, he needs to figure out who killed his wife and why, and find a way to prevent it from happening.

If you can manage show more the necessary suspension of disbelief, which I was entirely happy to do, this is an incredibly cool premise, promising a clever, unique story structure and the potential for an intricate puzzle of a plot. Unfortunately, the execution is disappointing. Mostly, it's just not very well written. The prose is flat and often repetitive, and far too often uses exposition as a substitute for characterization and drama. And Quinn's life and his relationship with his wife are presented as so schmoopily perfect that I found myself struggling against an impulse to hate both of them. Worse, most of what's going on is revealed by about halfway through the story -- again, via large amounts of infodumping -- thus leaving too little mystery to sustain the second half, especially as the backstory behind the murder turns out to be complicated but not terribly interesting. The suspense also got less as the story went on and I realized that as long as Quinn is able to hang on to his magic watch and not get killed, whatever situation he's managed to get himself into will automatically resolve itself at the end of the hour when he disappears back in time. And, of course, anything that he manages to accomplish, other than information-gathering or occasionally picking up small objects, is also pointless, since it's immediately undone as soon as he jumps back and starts messing with the timeline of the previous hour -- something it seems to taker him entirely too long to fully realize. At some point in the novel you just know that absolutely nothing he does is going to have any lasting consequences at all until he hits that final hour, so that until then it mostly becomes a matter of marking time, so to speak.

I have no doubt that a really skilled writer could make this structure work very well, using it to keep the reader guessing right up until the last (or, as the case may be, the first) minute, but Doetsch doesn't really pull it off. There are some moments of excitement here, and the plot certainly starts off promisingly enough, but after the first few chapters my excitement had waned, and by the end, I had mostly lost interest. What a waste of a wonderfully nifty idea! show less

From Amazon:

A mesmerizing thriller -- told in reverse! The 13th Hour is the story of a man given the chance to go back in time in one-hour increments to prevent a vicious crime from destroying his life. Nick Quinn is being held in jail, accused of the murder of his beloved wife, Julia. He knows she's dead; he saw her bloody corpse, shot in the head at point-blank range. The police tell him they found the murder weapon with his fingerprints on it in the trunk of his car. Nick is confused, show more grief-stricken -- and completely innocent. At 9 p.m. on July 28, a gray-haired gentleman visits Nick in the police interrogation room and asks him a simple question: "If you could get out of here, if you could save her, would you?" He hands Nick a golden talisman that allows Nick to go back in time, one hour at a time, for a total of twelve hours. With each hour that Nick travels back, he finds more clues to the identity of Julia's real killer, but he also discovers that his actions in the past may have unexpected repercussions in the future. In his race against time to save the woman he loves most in the world, Nick will find that friends become enemies, old loyalties are tested, and Julia's murder is part of a larger scheme that has its roots in greed and vengeance. Nick has the ability to save Julia, the chance to put his own world in balance, but he is venturing down a precarious route. If he hasn't set things right by the thirteenth hour, his desperate attempts to save Julia's life may lead to a far greater catastrophe than he could have ever imagined.

My Thoughts:

WOW!! The plot seems a bit confusing at first. I thought it might be hard to read. Instead, we live hour-by-hour with Nick and experience his race to uncover clues to his wife's murderer. Nick makes occasional mistakes that have serious repercussions. But each hour, he is able to learn from the previous one and try to stop events from happening in the past.

Not only is the plot and design unique, but the story is incredibly fast-paced and impossible to put down. The suspense is intense, caught up in drama and fantastic characters. There are twists and turns in each hour that unfolds, leading to a surprising climax. This is a must for mystery and science fiction fans alike. But simply put, I loved this book and would recommend it to anyone. show less