Set in Montreal in 1996 a vigilante kills the murderers and rapists.
The writing felt stilted and the ending didn't come as a surprise. ( )

I have always enjoyed a good vigilante story, from Batman, Jessica Jones, really every comic book hero ever, to the more nitty gritty like Boondock Saints. There is something deeply satisfying about a bad guy getting his dues no matter what happens in our broken court systems. Not that I would ever encourage someone to become a vigilante, and I certainly would not want a vigilante targeting me. This is the greatest version of realistic escape that I enjoy reading.

So perhaps I went into this with too high of expectations. I wanted to love the story, and instead got meh. This is why I recommend that young women don't get too invested in romantic movies. Rarely are men portrayed accurately, and it makes finding the right guy hard.

Except that this is a book, not a husband, so I can be as picky as I want! Lets start with the positives: I liked how we got to see the vigilante evolve. How he starts out with a signature kill of beating the baddies with a bat (this bothered me at first because it is too much like a serial killer.) and over time he began planning deaths that fit the crime. I liked that we get to see early on why he is motivated to help others and that it is not just revenge, though this got convoluted later. I loved that his wife knew what he was doing and fully supported him doing it. Although, this got convoluted as well and that leads me to the thing I hated about the book.

I get what the author was going for. He wanted a surprise reveal of who the vigilante was. He was mixing thriller with suspense with police procedural. He had too many red herrings and it annoyed me.
The story is told from many perspectives LT McCall, his agent Frank, his expert Chris Barry, Barry's man Carl, and about six other people who are minor characters.... and interspersed throughout is the perspective of the vigilante, cloaking those thoughts in mystery and bland details.

I felt like I was reading a story as poorly thought out as My Bloody Valentine. I knew who the vigilante was, and the red herrings were so painfully set up that it really bugged me. Of course, I am glad that it wasn't like Saw where there is no way you could have known who the baddie was because he didn't exist in the story except for one ridiculously stupid cut. There is that, I suppose.

It did bother me that the vigilante had so many pathological tendencies that are linked to serial killers. I suppose it makes sense because technically that is what he was, but it makes it hard to root for a guy who reminds you more of the BTK killer than the Boondock Saints.

Still, there were moments that were fun. I already got the next two books in the series, so I will inevitably read them and hopefully the story gets better now that the author isn't trying to trick the readers with who the vigilante is. ( )

In spite of a few typos and sometimes awkward language this was a good story. While I was fairly certain I knew who the protagonist was the suthor did keep me guessing. ( )

This is not a children’s book – it’s a crime novel, and the crimes are pretty violent. The first in the Barry/McCall series, it introduces us to Dave McCall, police investigator with a problem, and Chris Barry, Executive Vice President of a computer security firm who has a brilliant mind and a sense of moral justice. Barry offers his firm’s services when the police are baffled by the cyber aspects of a series of murders by someone who styles himself Vigilante, and a new crime fighting partnership is formed.

I like the pace of this story. Sometimes thrillers these days are too ‘all action’ for me. This allows glimpses into private lives, enabling the reader to get a more rounded view of the protagonists. It also does a nice job of offering you a range of suspects. For readers who like the psychological side of crime fighting, it is very engaging indeed. It kept me guessing, and discarding my own theories as new data was presented, which is what I think all good crime novels should do.

This is a very good crime novel. I saw reviews which criticised certain aspects of it. In my view these criticisms must have been addressed by the author as, in the edition I read, there were no traces of those aspects. It is a well constructed, well written, tense, convoluted and satisfyingly completed story.

It’s no wonder Claude Bouchard has thousands of followers. Now I’m one of them. When can I start book 2 in the series? ( )

When a serial killer stalks Montreal, instead of fearing him, they cheer him, because he only kills bad guys. No one cares that he is removing scum from the earth. Still, as a detective, Dave McCall has to find the killer so he enlists a local computer guru, Chris Barry to aid him as he works.

This book has so many twists and turns that it will keep you guessing until the end. At first, it seems to be a simple mystery, but then there is another twist. The characters are well developed, but the addition of unnamed characters’ background makes it difficult to connect the past to the current activities. Since the definition of a good mystery is that you do not know ‘who-done-it’ until the end, then, this is a good mystery. I would recommend it to people who appreciate a book for it is intellectual nuances rather than non-stop action. ( )