An excellent modern Count of Monte Cristo. It grabs the reader and doesn't let go. ( )

Exact Revenge is basically a retelling of The Count of Monte Christo in modern times. In this case, the aggrieved party in this novel is Raymond White, a lawyer who is about to run for congress, and gets blindsided by three individuals in a murder rap. After a long prison stint where he attacks prison guards so that he can be in solitary confinement and not have to deal with the prison population, he is transferred to a prison close to his home and befriends an old man. Together, they escape from prison. The old man was a master thief and had amassed insane wealth that he kept in a cabin in a remote area. The old man dies, but Raymond escapes and claims the robbed treasure. Using this, he sets about a plan to destroy the three men who set him up for a murder claim.

Although I generally liked the retelling of this classic tale as far as the narrative style that switched from first person to third person, there were too many aspects of the tale that were either too convenient or not believable. The first is that the old man in prison had been working on his escape for forty years, and decides to go through with it as soon as he meets Raymond. Secondly, that he would have all of these masterpiece works of art, and jewels and the like untouched for all of these years in a cabin is a little hard to swallow. When Raymond amasses this wealth, he buys the New York Jets. The level of media scrutiny that a person buying a football team would go through is intense. The media would uncover every aspect of his life, including that he escaped from prison. Also, the part where he uses some drug that the CIA uses to make one of his betrayers crazy was just silly. I still found it entertaining and can recommend it on that basis.

Carl Alves - author of Blood Street ( )

At the beginning of the book I didn't expect to like it. It appeared to be only the story of a way a man was framed and imprisoned. But Raymond escapes, and more of the story centers around him, well, exacting revenge. ( )

Overall a decent read. The first half of the story was excellent. The second half was okay. The story seemed to get garbled in the last half with too many events going on at the same time and things changing too quickly. One minute Seth is on a plane, the next he's in some obscure place in Russia, and the next minute he's sitting at his home with a drink in his hand overlooking a lake, and the next minute his girlfriend is hiding in the drapes. Silly really. Full of mystery, intrigue, and adventure. This is not Green's best writing, but certainly not his worst. If you liked the Count of Montecristo, you will like this story told in contemporary terms. ( )

This modern take on Dumas'"Count of Monte Cristo" is interesting in it's approach to that classic tale of revenge. All the basics are there; a long imprisoned, railroaded into solitary confinement by a trio of corrupt friends along with the unknowing help of a loving woman. An unlikely ally reveals vast wealth available should they effect an escape. Which they do by tunneling only to have his ally killed by the prison guards as they reach the outside. Raymond finds his Jacopo in the person of Bert, an Akwesane indian. Together they proceed in search of "exact revenge" as it was defined by his prison mentor and ally Lester using the immense wealth hidden away.

I found some of the machinations a bit of a stretch but they did not hurt the story. The author, Tim Green, did a good job of fitting a revenge story using the skeleton built by Alexandre Dumas. But then, some would have it that was what happened in the Dumas version. ( )