The Righteous Bore (The Righteous Men - Sam Bourne)

Member Name: Andy.mack

Product:	The Righteous Men - Sam Bourne
Date:	20/08/07 (166 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A good finsih

Disadvantages: It took too long to get to the decent bit, poor charecterisation

When a New York Times reporter’s wife is kidnapped his first instinct should be to phone the Police and get some professional help. For Will Monroe however, that is not an option as the people holding his wife have warned him if he does inform the police she will die. As Will tries to solve a series of riddles to find her he stumbles upon a much bigger conspiracy, one that is costing lives all across the globe. With the help of his best friend and his ex girlfriend Will races against time to find his wife, fearing if he isn’t quick, it may be too late.

This is one of a number of new novels that have been written since Dan Brown hit it big with the Da Vinci code. The Righteous Men follows the same trend as the majority of these books, using religion as its primary subject. This time it’s the Jewish faith that comes under the microscope in Sam Bourne’s debut novel. Bourne is infact the name that Guardian journalist Jonathan Freeland is currently writing under. With the religion aspect taking the centre stage again it is a matter of how well he can pull it off if this book were to work or not.

Personally I really didn’t feel that he did manage it. His description of the Jewish faith is incredibly insightful and gave me a new knowledge of the faith. The story itself however was incredibly pedestrian and didn’t particularly make me want to carry on reading. The opening 200 odd pages of the book are hard work and although there are a few things happening, none of them particularly grab your interest enough to make you think this is a book your really going to enjoy reading.

I’ve read a few of this current trend towards religious novels and while this isn’t the worst I’ve read, the effort it takes to get into it really isn’t worth it. It has a decent story eventually, but it can be described as no more than average, considering the amount of time and effort that had to go into getting that far into the book. In fact the cover of the book quotes the Mirror as saying that Bourne and this novel is the biggest challenger to Dan Brown. I’m not too sure how much Mr Bourne has paid the Mirror for this comment but as you read on you’ll see this isn’t at all true.

The biggest problem with the book is the lead character. For the first 100 pages, Bourne follows the live of Will Monroe and what he does before his wife goes missing. In truth as much as Will is a reasonable character he isn’t really a lead character and despite his predicament I really didn’t find myself hoping he succeeded. His Father too seemed to be the type of character that had he not been mentioned every now and again, you could easily have forgotten about.

In fact I think that is Bourne’s biggest failing. The story could have worked ok with reasonable characters but his characterisation really let him down. The only character that seemed to have anything about them is Will’s ex girlfriend TC. I always find that if a book has likeable characters it makes it far easier to read and this one fails on that score. And of course because of this it means that no matter how good the story might have been this was never going to be anything more than an average novel following in the path of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code and the cash cow it has spawned.

Overall I was incredible disappointed with this book. I’d been told it was quite a good read and so I had opted to give it a go. While I’ve been off sick from work I’ve found books are taking me 2 days at most to read, whereas The Righteous Men took me over a week and a half. In fact at times it seemed like a chore picking it up to read some more. With the reputation it has gained this was very disappointing and having persisted with it to the end I would be going against all my instincts if I actually recommended this to anyone.

Amazon: £4.44
Amazon Marketplace: £0.01
Pages: 562
ISBN: 978-0-00-720330-7

Summary: The debut Novel from Sam Bourne