There is something annoying about an author who has a law degree, played eight productive years in the National Football League, became a television commentator not just for sports but for outlets like GOOD MORNING AMERICA and NPR, wrote a well-respected non-fiction book about football, goes on to pen 10 popular thriller novels, and then for his 11th – the new KINGDOM COME – your wife says from across the room while looking at the author’s photo on the dust jacket, “Hey, he’s a handsome guy.” (See Exhibit A below.) Yeah, great.
So you want to dislike him and his writing, but you really can’t. Because he does this just about as well as everything else he seems to do, very competently, very professionally, perhaps without flash or sheer brilliance, but more than well enough to be entertaining. KINGDOM COME concerns a high-powered construction company run by James King. His executive underlings are all looking to climb the corporate ladder, and their maneuverings for power in the firm become very serious, especially when King is murdered.
Oh, we know who did it, and we even know why, to an extent. The question is, will he get away with it? And the bulk of the book revolves around this man’s one attempt to achieve his paradise on earth, and then have to deal with the ramifications of his kingdom come. It’s not pretty. And that’s part of the problem. There are just so few likable characters in the book that you want them all to go away and die. Even the hackneyed motif of having the protagonist chat to a prison psychiatrist about the motives behind the crime leaves you feeling no more sympathy than before. One of the sympathetic characters is killed right off, and the other doesn’t come in until 200 pages later.
But even with the annoying characters, the alienating world of super-rich construction mavens and a rising body count that you know is going to do no one any favors, you still end up appreciating Tim Green’s facile, smooth writing style. He can tell a simple but still exciting story. If you’ve read any Green before, or if you’re looking for a competent two-day thriller, you’ll want to add this to your list. But perhaps next time, he can up the ante and go for more interesting characters and milieu. Because then he could really put out something special.
Oh, and change the photo on the dust jacket to something less attractive, just for my own sake. –Mark Rose
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