Spider

Michael is an amazing author...whether its Sam Christer, Jon Trace or in his own name,,,,,this book is suspenseful and has loads of twists and tuns...characters are being formed and I am half way thru VIPER.... Enough said.....you will love it

A brilliant read i was total gripped within the first few pages and actually found myself shouting at it as if to warn the characters! Will be recommending to all my friends!

This book has been on my shelves for a year or more and I've only just found time to read it. I could have saved some time, I suppose, if the book had been shorter. It's a hundred pages too long, those pages filled with rather boring detail of what people think, exactly what they say to each other on introductions, which coffee they like, blah, blah. All that detail detracts from an interesting novel with a few twists but, since we know why the killer is doing his dirty deeds, the tension is only built up towards the end of the book. In fact, there is only one murder, so all the serial killing took place years ago. We are left to believe that a relative newcomer to the crime scene in the Italian Police Force manages to do what the hero has been unable to do for all that time. I'd have preferred to award three and a half stars but, on balance, the book is well written, well constructed and for a debut novel, it sets the scene for the author's career in crime writing. If we could have more action which would mean more tension, a deeper insight into the characters and less of what they had for breakfast, I, for one, would want to buy his latest releases as they appear. As it is, I will look around for the next one which seems to be entitled, 'Viper' when the taster in this current book states 'The Pit' (ah well, publishers, eh?) but I won't rush to the shop just yet.

Book arrived in great condition and came quickly. It was a present so I haven't been able to read it yet but his other books are fantastic.

As a life-long Italophile and a lover of crime fiction, when I first saw this novel on the shelves I thought it would be right up my street. Italy, an amazing and hugely diverse country, has often appeared in ficiton by British and American novelists, although unfortunately these works are often overrun with cliches and badly-spelled Italian words and names ... and unfortunately Spider is no exception. Most of the Italian characters in the book live up to the stereotypes. All of the women are beautiful, all of the men are gregarious, and many have wrongly-spelled names like Sylvio instead of Silvio and Paullina instead of Paolina. American Nancy King, wife of the novel's hero Jack (an homage to Stephen King, thank God he's not called Joe King), seems to love Tuscany, but even after living there for three years seems to understand barely any Italian and gets shirty when people don't speak English. This again is another sterotype, that Americans (and British) people don't bother to learn any other languages. Also this book contains too much telling and not enough showing - it could contain far more and punchier dialogue, like in many superior American crime thrillers. Spider, the serial killer is essentially a rehash of every other fictional serial killer that we've seen before, and far less rounded than say, Hannibal Lecter. And the ending is simply and predictably awful. In fact Spider is referred to as America's most feared serial killer but frankly he seems about as scary as Bugs Bunny. Okay, enough moaning. The novel is a well-paced thriller, and is far better than anything by James Patterson. That's not saying much though, and I wonder what those reviewers who have given this novel five stars would make of novels written by such illuminaries in the crime genre as James Lee Burke, George Pelecanos, Michael Connelly or Ian Rankin. Jack King in this novel is a typical beefcake, and despite the book being over 450 pages long, you don't feel that you really get to know him at all. My favourite character in the novel is Howie Baumguard, some of who's jokes are pretty funny, although again his character is riddled with cliches. The novel's cover depicts a bloody knife and I thought that this book would be a real gore-fest, something that would turn me (and many others) off from finishing it, so I was somewhat surprised that the body-count in the book is pretty low. I was going to complain that serial killers are almost unheard of in Italy - they're more prevelant in more northerly (and more sexually-repressed) countries like Britain, the USA, Germany and Russia, but most of Spider's nefarious deeds have been carried out well before the novel takes place, and mostly in America. I'm in two minds whether to read the sequal - Viper, as it is set in a city I have strong affections for, Naples, but only if it's a lot less cliche-ridden!

I loved this novel, it's my kind of story. Fast read, short paragraph, the economy of words,makes it snappy, interesting, and movie-like. The ending was one the most unexpected I read in a long time. If you like edge of your seat suspense, don't look any further, this Spider will catch you in it's web.

I really enjoyed this book and could not put it down. It is very vivid and well written. I can't wait to read more books by this author. Utterly thrilling and scary, just the job...

a fast pace make this a real page turner although why the main character's wife is too lazy to learn Italian even though she runs a guest house in Tuscany doesn't ring true. All the Italians conveniently speak good English throughout the story. The identity of Terry is a brilliant twist and all in all an excellent piece of writing.