This is a disappointment for this long-time Haldeman fan. The dual storylines never really combine in a satisfactory fashion. The main storyline has a thriller touch to it, but the ending is all deus ex machina. If you have to explain everything on the last page of the novel, you failed. And even when the explanation comes, it's a bit of a dud. ( )

A pretty good story that's marred by it's ending. Fun and rapid reading but kinda stupid by the end. ( )

Der Veteran Jack Delay war einmal Scharfschütze bei der US Armee. Nun versucht er sich als Autor durchzuschlagen. Als ihm ein lukratives Angebot für ein Drehbuch unterbreitet wird, greift er zu. Während seiner Schreibarbeiten erhält er ein Paket mit einem Scharfschützengewehr und dem "Tödlichen Auftrag". Erst spielt er mit, da seine Freundin bedroht wird. Doch als er mit seiner Freundin flüchtet, hat er hartnäckige Verfolger an seinen Fersen.
Die Story wird aus zwei Perspektiven geschildert. So können wir uns in Jack Delay hineinversetzen und erfahren zwischendurch immer etwas über einen Kannibalen aus dem Horror-Drehbuch. Unterschiedliche Schriften machen es uns leicht, zu sehen, wo wir uns in der Geschichte befinden.
Der Schreibstil ist flüssig zu lesen. Der Beginn ist etwas zäh, aber das Tempo steigert sich und damit kam Spannung auf. Dennoch konnte mich das Buch nicht vollends überzeugen. ( )

Jack Daley is an ex-military sniper, now nurturing a mediocre writing career, when he gets the opportunity of a lifetime, to novelize a movie that hasn't been released yet. While movie novelization isn't something most writers would be excited about, it's paying extremely well, and it could be his big break.

It sounds great, until he finds a rifle on his doorstep with instructions to kill someone. It only gets worse when he realizes how organized these people are. They know more about him than they should, and they are on his tail no matter how hard he tries to shake them.

Also, the novel he's writing is actually a novel within a novel. That is to say, you read it as he writes it, and it's about a serial murderer/monster. Is it starting to feel convoluted yet?

This is one of those books that's difficult to rate, because the pacing of the plot was fantastic, and it was a joyride to read, but I don't know if I've ever read a book with so many plot holes. For example, the book within a book spends an entire chapter introducing multiple characters for no reason, and it also ends anticlimactically (actually, it doesn't end it all.) The actual book makes no sense whatsoever. I saw the ending coming from the very beginning, yet it never offers any explanation for how anything happened throughout the book.

The whole book feels sketchy, like it was a rough draft that needed heavy revision but ended up getting published as-is by mistake. The book honestly deserves a 2-star rating, but having just come off a 1-star book, I can appreciate the fact that it's at least a very readable story, so I'm giving it a bump up just for that. 3 stars. ( )

Almost didn't pass the 80-page test, but suddenly got more interesting. It got more interesting when the little chapters about the "monster" got fewer and farther between. Didn't much care for them and they really had very little relevance. The story would have been better without them. And the actual story, about a man who find a rifle on his porch with a message attached, is quite good. ( )