Product Description: "Thrilling.... PRIVATE SCREENING succeeds on all counts. It's a footrace of a read, daring you to put it down." ATLANTA JOURNAL & CONSTITUTION The nation is stunned silent when presidential hopeful James Kilcannon is shot dead in front of his rock-star girlfriend Stacy Tarrant. Fiercely independent attorney Tony Lord dares to defend the shooter, but the already bizarre plot takes another twist. As America watches, a mysterious and ruthless figure, known only as Phoenix, takes to the airwaves-- and takes the wife of a wealthy newspaper mogul and Stacy's manager as his hostages. Phoenix mounts a televised trial of his own--in which Stacy Tarrant and Tony Lord are helpless defendents, millions of viewers are jurors, and--unless his chilling demands are met--Pheonix is the unstoppable executioner....
Good read! This author never fails to get the story done in an interesting way! GREAT READ.
Not worth reading This is a thoroughly scrambled plotline, full of unsympathetic poorly-drawn characters, droning on for 439 pages.
How can a "bestselling author" write a book with so many factual errors and improbable situations?
Patterson writes that Carson is about to assassinate a presidential candidate, as both of them are standing on stage at a fund-raising concert. Just before, Carson puts "a bullet in the Mauser." Five seconds before firing, Carson raises the gun from 15' away and points it at the candidate. He takes another step toward the candidate and then shoots. Shortly after that shot, Carson fires three shots at a photographer.
Patterson describes the Mauser revolver as "a perfect assassin's gun." WHY? What gun wouldn't be "perfect" from about 13' away?
Patterson doesn't explain why the Secret Service doesn't react within 5 seconds to a handgun pointed at the candidate from 15' away. Nor does Patterson reveal how the one bullet put in the revolver produced four shots fired from the gun. Plus, it's an imaginary gun because Patterson never bothered to research and discover that Mauser never manufactured a revolver!!
Later in the book Patterson describes how trees in Vietnam were "napalmed" to reduce cover for the enemy. Napalm wasn't used; the defoliant Agent Orange was used.
Much later, another villain uses a SILENCED Mauser revolver to shoot someone else. Because of their design, revolvers cannot be silenced.
This is a book well worth skipping!
stick with it When I first starting reading this book I honestly couldn't tell what was what. But I kept at it and it really paid off! I have never read Patterson before but I can tell you I plan to read a lot more of his work! Even though I figured out the ending pretty much as soon as the hostage was taken it was still fun for me to read.
TV OR NOT TV This early novel by Patterson is far inferior to his later works, but I think it stands on its own in kind of a predatory or sadistic way. The whole concept of hostages being negotiated and aired as a t.v. special is all too frighteningly real, considering the nation's obsession with so-called reality television. But the premise is intriguing, and the story has some tense and riveting scenes. My main complaint is that within the novel, John Damone tells Stacy that "the man I hired killed him. Lord just brought it up again.." So i figured Stacy was in on it, but obviously she wasn't. This little confusing issue kind of squelched my overall enthusiasm for the novel, but even then Patterson was writing awesomely, giving us a glimpse of what he's come to do best---trial novels! RECOMMENDED.
NOT REVIEWED AND NOT SHARED I never received this book from the used book dealer so I can't rate it or write a review of it.Please remove it from my sharedpurchases. Thank you.
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