The Manhattan Hunt Club

The promising future of New York City college student Jeff Converse is destroyed when he is accused of a crime he didn't commit.
After the victim swears Jeff is the man who assaulted her, Jeff is convicted and sentenced, but on his way to the prison, he is abducted and lured to the underground tunnels of New York, where he will become game for a vicious group of hunters who call themselves "THE MANHATTAN HUNT CLUB". Determined to escape alive, Jeff will use all his wits to come out the victor, and clear his name.
Jeff's parents are told he is dead, and only after viewing the horribly burned body, does Keith Converse realize his son is alive. Now, teaming with Jeff's fiancée, Keith and Mary Converse must enter into the labyrinth tunnels show more below the city to find their son and bring him back alive, and put a stop to the twisted individual heading up this murderous club.
`Manhattan Hunt Club' is an enjoyable suspense novel, fans looking for horror will be disappointed. John Saul has taken the high road to action/suspense, and he does a good job of it. Combining a creepy plot, and his usual cast of likable characters, Mr. Saul goes full steam ahead with an action novel that takes off on the first page, and barrels through twist after twist, leading to a shocking and satisfying conclusion. show less

Jeff has been falsely convicted of a crime. But when he is “transferred” out of the prison, he is taken… somewhere and locked in a room with another man. It’s not long after that they are released into the tunnels underneath New York and are told that they’ll “win” if they make it to the surface. Meanwhile, his family and girlfriend think he died in a crash.

I really liked this. It didn’t take long to get sucked in, though it takes a little bit to figure out what’s going on in the book. It’s told from different viewpoints, so the reader is partial to things that the characters aren’t as they try to figure out what’s happening, as well. This was one I didn’t really want to put down – I wanted to keep reading. show more And, there were a couple of twists! show less

A Creepy Read!

Saul's suspenseful thriller The Manhattan Hunt Club starts off with a race to the death and ends with a race for survival. This book will leave you completely and utterly breathless and is one I would never read on the subways of New York.

Jeff Converse is sent to prison--for a crime he didn't commit. But instead of the confines and safety of concrete prison walls, he is given his freedom. If one can call it that. Jeff has become the prey in a deadly game, hunted by people with wealth, power and a sadistic lust for control. And what better control can one have than that over another human being’s fate? ‘Should he live or die?’

Saul paints a terrifyingly hellish canvas of winding subway tunnels and a believable secret show more subterranean city--the land of the lost, the forgotten, the homeless and the insane. This novel is a pavement-pounding masterpiece of terror.

John Saul is a master of horror. I started as a teen, reading Suffer the Children, and have read almost every one of his books, but this one stayed with me far after the last page was turned. Along with Stephen King and Dean Koontz, Saul has been responsible for some of my sleepless nights and most terrifying dreams. And I can't wait for their next books!

Cheryl Kaye Tardif,
suspense author show less

A group of wealthy Manhattanites decide to take justice into their own hands. Tired of criminals getting away with murder, they start hunting and killing convicted criminals they feel did not get a harsh enough sentence. The criminals are taken into the sewers and set free. Then the hunt starts. When they go after Jeff, a college student falsely convicted of a horrible crime, they get more than they bargained for.

Jeff is released into the sewers, along with Jagger, a murdering psychotic. Together they form an alliance to try to survive the hunt and get out of the sewers alive. Along the way we also meet many of the homeless population who call the sewers their home.

This book is part thriller (the part with Jeff) and part an attempt to show more call attention to the amount of homeless people living in and under the city. There was a slow buildup into the final exciting ending. I enjoyed reading this. show less

Not a bad book by any standards. Saul is a good writer, quick to the point, but leaves you hanging just enough to wonder. This book like many of his others is predicable. That lingering darkness pervades around his sharply edged corners. This book is not as good as Creature and some of his earlier work but the idea is driven home.

This is one of my favorite reads from Saul. He takes the horror of the real (ie other people) and turns it into the almost absolute dark. I cringed most of the way through and while the ending is a little on the "happy" side- I can forgive that for the ride it provided.

Review by Jeremy Taylor

John Saul has written nearly thirty books, all of which have been international best-sellers and many of which have spent time on the New York Times Best-Seller list. Starting with Suffer the Children in 1977, Saul has managed to whet—and satisfy—readers’ appetites for terror and darkness. With vivid characters and action-packed plots, his books tend to be fast-paced and emotionally satisfying. Many of his books feature children and families, and his writing often explores family-related themes while enthralling readers with the secrets of the night.

The Manhattan Hunt Club is the story of Jeff Converse, a promising architectural student with his whole life in front of him. Jeff’s life changes abruptly on show more the day he rescues a woman in a New York subway station from being raped, only to be arrested for the crime himself. Through the legal proceedings, events seem to conspire against Jeff, and he is convicted and sentenced rapidly. No one believes his innocence except his family and his fiancée, Heather.

While being transferred between prisons the day after his sentencing, Jeff’s prison van is broadsided by another vehicle and bursts into flames. A mysterious figure pulls Jeff from the fire and rushes him into a subway station and through several tunnels before leaving him in a dark room somewhere deep under the city. There Jeff meets Jagger, a true criminal who becomes Jeff’s partner as he tries to reach the surface and freedom.

Jeff and Jagger are told they are now participants in a game that has only one rule: reach the surface, and live; fail, and die. Fleeing the pursuing “hunters” and the seemingly omnipresent “herders” through the tunnels under New York, the convicts fight for their lives against hunger, thirst, the threat of disease or infection, and the sometimes insane and usually hostile homeless people they encounter.

Jeff’s father, Keith Converse, refuses to believe the reports of his son’s death in the van explosion and begins combing the streets in search of Jeff. Enlisting Heather’s help, Keith slowly begins to piece together a theory about what might have happened and where Jeff might be now. But there are forces working against Keith and Heather—the same forces that want Jeff and Jagger never to emerge from the tunnels. It’s a battle to the finish as Keith and Heather frantically search for Jeff, hoping to find him and rescue him before whoever is hunting him in the vast underground finds him first.

There are a number of problems with the book. Though exciting, the plot is implausible and therefore not terribly compelling. For that matter, it’s not even completely original (is anything?), bearing a striking resemblance to the 1994 movie Surviving the Game starring Ice-T. The conflict relies heavily on an all-powerful group known only as “The 100,” a secret society consisting of the hundred most powerful people in New York, a plot device recently repopularized by authors like Dan Brown but absolutely tiresome in nearly all settings. The characters are almost caricatural in their type extremes (villainous, heroic, insane, religious, etc.). Some twists near the end spice up the story a bit, but the demise of certain characters tends to be fairly predictable, and I found myself detaching from the plot toward the book’s conclusion.

The book contains no sexual content other than hints that Jeff and Heather have been sexually intimate prior to their marriage. Keith and his wife are divorced. There’s some language, but not more than the characterizations seem to call for. One disturbing element is some rather graphic violence, mostly done to people who deserve it, but it seems gratuitous and unnecessary in its detail. Jeff’s mother’s religious insanity is not humorous, as seems to have been the author’s intention, and the criminal insanity of Jagger is disturbing at times.

Overall, I found the book a fast read but otherwise unremarkable and not worthy of recommendation.

(http://www.cerebralexchange.com/books/reviews.asp?host=1&book=234) show less