We Know by Gregg Hurwitz

Years after a traumatic event uprooted Nick Horrigan from his comfortable life when he was 18, Nick thinks that he finally has a handle on his life. He has put his past behind him and now has a stable job in Los Angeles. As far as he knows, nothing extraordinary will ever happen to him again.

Then a SWAT team explodes into his apartment, whisks him away in a Black Hawk and tells him that a terrorist is demanding for his presence.

Thoughts: We Know’s premise called me like a siren; I like stories about folks with a tragic/shady past, and I sure wanted to know what in the world happened to Nick when he was 18.

But a few chapters in and I began to have my doubts about the book.

My biggest stumbling block in liking this book? It’s illogical and the characters can be downright silly in their actions.

To echo Nick – why couldn’t the SWAT team have knocked on his door instead of barging into his apartment, all commando style, and dragging him into a Black Hawk like he was a covert agent for Al Qaeda? And seriously, a Black Hawk hovering above a Los Angeles suburb? Way to be discreet, dudes.

And then you these super agents worrying about this terrorist who’s threatening to blow up a nuclear plant. They explain to Nick why it’s important not to have a bomb blow up in the nuclear reactor’s spent-fuel pool where the terrorist is only to … (spoiler!) get rid of the terrorist with a bomb? Hello, what if the terrorist threw the cell phone into spent fuel pool, which – if it blew up, apparently – will render LA uninhabitable for 500,000 years? (Though, having written an article on nuclear energy once, I think some nuclear scientists would have some issues with this. For one, it is not that easy for one unarmed(!) terrorist to get into the spent fuel pool!)

It doesn’t bode well for a book when you start to doubt the realism of the story just two chapters in. And when I finally found out what happened to Nick 18 years ago, I could only shake my head in disbelief. Nick must’ve been seriously naive when he was 18 to do what he did.

I just couldn’t read on after that. Though for the sake of completion, I flipped to the end to see who did the nasty deed. I wasn’t surprised at the revelation at all.

So, should you read it? To give Hurwitz some credit, it is a page turner and he writes reasonably well. If you could overlook its logic flaws you could get some entertainment out of it.

I say just borrow it from a library or a friend.

[Via http://imaginarylands.wordpress.com]

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