No.1 international bestseller Jeffery Deaver returns with a stunning thriller - the first in an exciting series featuring enigmatic investigator Colter Shaw. Escape or die trying... A student kidnapped from the park. Nineteen-year-old Sophie disappears one summer afternoon. She wakes up to find herself locked inside a derelict warehouse, surrounded by five objects. If she uses them wisely, she will escape her prison. Otherwise she will die. An investigator running out of time. Sophie's ...
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No.1 international bestseller Jeffery Deaver returns with a stunning thriller - the first in an exciting series featuring enigmatic investigator Colter Shaw. Escape or die trying... A student kidnapped from the park. Nineteen-year-old Sophie disappears one summer afternoon. She wakes up to find herself locked inside a derelict warehouse, surrounded by five objects. If she uses them wisely, she will escape her prison. Otherwise she will die. An investigator running out of time. Sophie's distraught father calls in the one man who can help find his daughter: unique investigator Colter Shaw. Raised in the wilderness by survivalist parents, he is an expert tracker with a forensic mind trained to solve the most challenging cases. But this will be a test even for him. A killer playing a dangerous game. Soon a blogger called Henry is abducted - left to die in the dark heart of a remote forest - and the whole case gets turned on its head. Because this killer isn't following the rules; he's changing them. One murder at a time... 'No one in the world does this kind of thing better than Deaver' Lee Child Deaver's most riveting, most twisty, most unputdownable novel yet' Karin Slaughter 'Deaver grips from the very first line and never lets up' Peter James 'The very definition of a page-turner' Ian Rankin 'Lightning-fast and loaded with twists' Harlan Coben 'With The Never Game you know you are in the hands of a master' Peter Robinson SOON TO BE A MAJOR TV SHOW STARRING JUSTIN HARTLEY (This is Us)
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Good. All pages and cover are intact. Possible slightly loose binding, minor highlighting and marginalia, cocked spine or torn dust jacket. Maybe an ex-library copy and not include the accompanying CDs, access codes or other supplemental materials.
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Seller's Description:
Good. All pages and cover are intact. Possible slightly loose binding, minor highlighting and marginalia, cocked spine or torn dust jacket. Maybe an ex-library copy and not include the accompanying CDs, access codes or other supplemental materials.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Good. All pages and cover are intact. Possible slightly loose binding, minor highlighting and marginalia, cocked spine or torn dust jacket. Maybe an ex-library copy and not include the accompanying CDs, access codes or other supplemental materials.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Good. All pages and cover are intact. Possible slightly loose binding, minor highlighting and marginalia, cocked spine or torn dust jacket. Maybe an ex-library copy and not include the accompanying CDs, access codes or other supplemental materials.
Although I have never read a book by Jeffery Deaver before I was so excited to get the ARC to read The Never Game. I read the blurb out to my friends who all agreed that this book sounded perfect for me. I have been an avid gamer all of my life, I love going to escape rooms and crime thrillers are one of my preferred genres of books so on paper this book sounded absolutely ideal. This may also be why I've held it to very high standards and ultimately come away disappointed though!
To start with I don't think Deaver is a gamer, and it was a little obvious that some of the gaming aspects of the book were under researched or that liberties had been taken to suit the plot. There is no way for example, that a game released in the 80s would have a whole level that no-one had ever been able to complete, nor that only 9 people in the world had completed the one before it. I also found it incredible unlikely that gamers would be ok with watching a current news broadcast every time they started up a game - ads are one thing but it would be a massive undertaking to do in every state, let alone international releases. I liked that a female gamer who was a grinder and used twitch was a character but as all the other gamers we meet are men living in smelly basements little is done to break stereotypes - the police of course all laugh at how stupid these people must be to waste their time on video games. I did like the introduction to the excitement and pitfalls of VR gaming though.
I thought the prospect of the murders based on a video game was really interesting but actually the crimes themselves aren't well developed or explained. The 5 items the victims are given are completely side-lined and the perpetrator just leaves an easy escape route available for most of them so the items didn't actually correlate to anything. I would have preferred to have seen the crime from the victim's perspective and been introduced to more of the puzzle element of the crimes rather than the police just mentioning that 5 items had been randomly dumped with them.
I was a little confused that this is the first plotline that the author chooses to introduce his new protagonist - Colter Shaw (yes, it's an unusual first name and we are hit around the head with that fact repeatedly). Colter is a reward hunter, a man brought up on a remote compound by survivalist parents - the flashbacks are mostly about hunting and trapping which is so completely at odds with the plot of this book. I don't really think the target audience for the plot are the target audience for the main character and this is a really odd choice for the start of a new series.
There were a lot of red herrings in the book as well, almost too many and the actual reveal was done so fast I almost missed what was going on. I found myself just wanting the book to end - not helped by the fact that after the main plot is finished the book then carries on trying to set up a main through-line for the rest of the series that I had thoroughly lost interest in.
Overall, as a gamer I really didn't enjoy The Never Game despite a love of crime fiction and a plot that looked like it was made for me. It's too odd a clash between plot and main character, with a drawn out story and under researched topic that failed to keep interest. Thank you to NetGalley & Harper Collins UK for a copy of the ARC in exchange for a (very) honest review.
