What do you think?
Rate this book
Shot
When journalist Kevin Burns gets a call from former schoolmate Carl Greene, he's surprised. They weren't that close at school and the temperature cooled when Carl married Kevin's girl, Lucy. Carl, a scientist, sounds anxious, afraid. They arrange to meet at the baseball game in Denver but Carl never makes it. Someone kills him first. Soon after, Lucy surprises a masked figure prowling Carl's study. Whatever her husband was working on, a lot of people want to get their hands on it. Some are clearly prepared to kill for it, though not the prowler who, it turns out, is a woman with a quite different agenda ...
242 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
1 person is currently reading
58 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 6, 2016
Kevin Burns is a journalist who has just lost his job with MSNBC for faking a report. He's trying to determine what he should do next when out of the blue, he's contacted by an old high school acquaintance named Carl Greene. The call is something of a surprise because Kevin and Carl were never close and Carl wound up marrying Kevin's old girlfriend, Lucy.
Carl insists that he has a very important story that Kevin needs to hear. Naturally, since this is a thriller and not real life, Carl refuses to give Kevin even a hint over the phone but insists that they meet at a baseball game in Denver. And, of course, since this is a thriller and not real life, Carl will die in a mysterious car crash before he can meet with Kevin. But the appointment does serve to brink Kevin back to the Denver area where the three grew up.
Shortly after Carl's death, an intruder breaks into his house where Lucy, now his widow, is sleeping. Lucy wakes up and finds the intruder riffling through the files in Carl's study. She chases the intruder off and assumes it was simply a burglar, even though the intruder bypassed several very valuable items on the way to the study.
Of course the reader knows, as Lucy should know, that something much more sinister is going on here. Kevin and Lucy reconnect and the files in Carl's study are removed by a couple of guys from Bioflux, the company he works for. Shortly thereafter, the intruder returns and is extremely upset to discover that the files are gone.
Naturally, very dark and mysterious things are going on here. (How could they not be when you're dealing with a company called Bioflux?) Lucy, Kevin and an associate that I won't name for fear of giving away a plot point, join forces and go on the road in pursuit of whatever the secret was that Carl had uncovered. Very bad people will attempt to prevent them from succeeding in their mission.
I'm a huge fan of Jenny Siler's first two books, Easy Money and Iced, which both have very gritty, realistic plots and feature tough, edgy female protagonists. Shot is not a bad book, but it pales a bit by comparison to Siler's first two novels. It feels a little formulaic; the main protagonist, Lucy, is not nearly as compelling as the ones in the first two books, and the story seems a bit far-fetched. Three stars, if only because my expectations were set so high after the first two books.
Carl insists that he has a very important story that Kevin needs to hear. Naturally, since this is a thriller and not real life, Carl refuses to give Kevin even a hint over the phone but insists that they meet at a baseball game in Denver. And, of course, since this is a thriller and not real life, Carl will die in a mysterious car crash before he can meet with Kevin. But the appointment does serve to brink Kevin back to the Denver area where the three grew up.
Shortly after Carl's death, an intruder breaks into his house where Lucy, now his widow, is sleeping. Lucy wakes up and finds the intruder riffling through the files in Carl's study. She chases the intruder off and assumes it was simply a burglar, even though the intruder bypassed several very valuable items on the way to the study.
Of course the reader knows, as Lucy should know, that something much more sinister is going on here. Kevin and Lucy reconnect and the files in Carl's study are removed by a couple of guys from Bioflux, the company he works for. Shortly thereafter, the intruder returns and is extremely upset to discover that the files are gone.
Naturally, very dark and mysterious things are going on here. (How could they not be when you're dealing with a company called Bioflux?) Lucy, Kevin and an associate that I won't name for fear of giving away a plot point, join forces and go on the road in pursuit of whatever the secret was that Carl had uncovered. Very bad people will attempt to prevent them from succeeding in their mission.
I'm a huge fan of Jenny Siler's first two books, Easy Money and Iced, which both have very gritty, realistic plots and feature tough, edgy female protagonists. Shot is not a bad book, but it pales a bit by comparison to Siler's first two novels. It feels a little formulaic; the main protagonist, Lucy, is not nearly as compelling as the ones in the first two books, and the story seems a bit far-fetched. Three stars, if only because my expectations were set so high after the first two books.
February 25, 2009
More of a thriller than a mystery, Jenny Siler's Shot is a fast paced and fun book that will keep you turning pages right to the end. For some reason, I would call this the perfect book for a day of traveling. So, if you're getting ready to fly across country and need something to keep you from exploding in the security que, grab a copy of Shot and get lost in a good read.
September 27, 2014
RATING: 2.5
Lucy Greene had a hardscrabble life up until the time that she married the local doctor’s son, Carl. They live in a beautiful home, and Lucy’s time is mostly spent in leisurely pursuits such as painting, quite in contrast to her earlier years when she and her brother Chick earned money by picking beets. Carl has an excellent job in the biotech industry, and they appear to be doing quite well. But the façade falls apart when Carl is killed in a car accident.
While Lucy is mourning his death, several events occur which cause her to question the manner of her husband’s death. First of all, someone breaks into Carl’s home office one evening and appears to be looking for some files. Later on, his former employers come to the home and remove all the material that was in the office. Secondly, Lucy is contacted by a friend from the past by the name of Kevin Burns. Burns was most recently a news reporter who lost his job. Right before Carl’s death, Carl had gotten in touch with him and asked that they meet, promising Kevin a very important story.
The story is important and has to do with the aftereffects of biological testing. Originally, the chemicals were used in an experiment conducted on selected individual in the military, including Lucy’s brother Chick. Unknown to the people who set up the tests, there are long range health impacts. There are several instances of unexplainable health problems that are ultimately related to the experiments, including birth defects which killed Carl and Lucy’s infant son after only 2 hours and major problems at a local plant. Part of Carl’s research on the job had to do with the causes of these defects.
Kevin and Lucy team up with the woman who tried to rob Lucy, an ex-con by the name of Darcy who has her own reasons for wanting to find out the truth. The three of them embark on a search for the truth and uncover a conspiracy to cover up the testing of biological weapons. There’s an inept killer on their trail. Through great good fortune, they are able to talk to the one person who can reveal the lurid details about the history of the incident and get the truth out in the open.
The book felt formulaic, and there were too many implausible elements that made it difficult for me to become engrossed in the narrative. Darcy’s motivation for participating in the activities seemed weak to me (to protect her druggie sister who was in prison). The killer on their trail can’t shoot straight. And the path to the very informative informant was just a little too convenient.
Siler’s first two books, Easy Money and Iced, featured edgy female protagonists, lyrical writing and a noir sensibility, none of which were in evidence in this book. I give Siler credit for trying to write a different kind of book with Shot, but I don’t feel that she succeeded in the endeavor. Shot was very much a standard suspense thriller kind of book, and it never elevated itself to anything beyond the ordinary.
Lucy Greene had a hardscrabble life up until the time that she married the local doctor’s son, Carl. They live in a beautiful home, and Lucy’s time is mostly spent in leisurely pursuits such as painting, quite in contrast to her earlier years when she and her brother Chick earned money by picking beets. Carl has an excellent job in the biotech industry, and they appear to be doing quite well. But the façade falls apart when Carl is killed in a car accident.
While Lucy is mourning his death, several events occur which cause her to question the manner of her husband’s death. First of all, someone breaks into Carl’s home office one evening and appears to be looking for some files. Later on, his former employers come to the home and remove all the material that was in the office. Secondly, Lucy is contacted by a friend from the past by the name of Kevin Burns. Burns was most recently a news reporter who lost his job. Right before Carl’s death, Carl had gotten in touch with him and asked that they meet, promising Kevin a very important story.
The story is important and has to do with the aftereffects of biological testing. Originally, the chemicals were used in an experiment conducted on selected individual in the military, including Lucy’s brother Chick. Unknown to the people who set up the tests, there are long range health impacts. There are several instances of unexplainable health problems that are ultimately related to the experiments, including birth defects which killed Carl and Lucy’s infant son after only 2 hours and major problems at a local plant. Part of Carl’s research on the job had to do with the causes of these defects.
Kevin and Lucy team up with the woman who tried to rob Lucy, an ex-con by the name of Darcy who has her own reasons for wanting to find out the truth. The three of them embark on a search for the truth and uncover a conspiracy to cover up the testing of biological weapons. There’s an inept killer on their trail. Through great good fortune, they are able to talk to the one person who can reveal the lurid details about the history of the incident and get the truth out in the open.
The book felt formulaic, and there were too many implausible elements that made it difficult for me to become engrossed in the narrative. Darcy’s motivation for participating in the activities seemed weak to me (to protect her druggie sister who was in prison). The killer on their trail can’t shoot straight. And the path to the very informative informant was just a little too convenient.
Siler’s first two books, Easy Money and Iced, featured edgy female protagonists, lyrical writing and a noir sensibility, none of which were in evidence in this book. I give Siler credit for trying to write a different kind of book with Shot, but I don’t feel that she succeeded in the endeavor. Shot was very much a standard suspense thriller kind of book, and it never elevated itself to anything beyond the ordinary.
December 11, 2016
T'was an interesting and reasonably fast paced book with an appropriate amount off good guys, bad guys and those somewhere in the middle.
Definitely worth a holiday read.
Definitely worth a holiday read.
April 12, 2019
Een boek wat lekker wegleest met een spannend verhaal. Over een onderwerp wat de overheid uit het verhaal liever geheim houdt. Mycoplasma, Tubercolose en geheime testen op mensen!
In het begin vond ik het erg verwarrend geschreven, maar dit wende al snel. Ik begreep niet altijd waarom er steeds weer nieuwe personages bij komen, tot ik aan het eind van het verhaal kwam. Toen werd het me duidelijk!
Jammer dat de laatste twee à drie hoofdstukken eigenlijk overbodig zijn en de gehele spanning en nieuwsgierigheid wegvagen.
In het begin vond ik het erg verwarrend geschreven, maar dit wende al snel. Ik begreep niet altijd waarom er steeds weer nieuwe personages bij komen, tot ik aan het eind van het verhaal kwam. Toen werd het me duidelijk!
Jammer dat de laatste twee à drie hoofdstukken eigenlijk overbodig zijn en de gehele spanning en nieuwsgierigheid wegvagen.
July 17, 2019
Quick moving story
October 8, 2025
A fast-paced thriller following an unlikely alliance in search of a killer, inevitably discovering there is more, to what becomes a series of murders, than meets the eye. Edgy and gritty.
Read
December 7, 2010I've heard from other people who've read this that it's not a patch on Siler's earlier works Iced and Easy Money and to a point I'd agree. What I am pleased with in this book is that Siler hasn't carried on writing the same book time after time but has branched out into something different.
Siler's first two books both featured strong female characters with criminal pasts and were told (as far as I remember) fron one point of view. Though the protagonists were different from each other if Siler had written another character who could be summed up in the same way she may have been on her way to "Dick Francis syndrome". (I always feel that Dick Francis writes essentially the same lead character in every book, the background and specialisations change but the character seems to be the same ethical being every time. I enjoy reading Francis all the same but he's not the writer that he could be.)
In this book there are three main characters who share the lead. Kevin is a journalist, he's been sacked from MSNBC for concocting a fraudulent story and he gets interested in the death of his friend Carl Greene who told him that he had a big story for him. The second lead is Lucy, Carl's widow, and the third a young burglar, Darcy, who is trying to go straight. Darcy is very much Siler's trademark character though there are aspects of Lucy which fit too. Overall I think the inclusion of three leads does the book, and Siler's career, much good though the plot itself here isn't as interesting as in the other books.
September 15, 2012
This novel opens with Carl Greene standing at a window in Seattle hotel, realizing that he wants out. We don't know what it is that he wants out of, we don't know why he wants to fly home to his wife Lucy and explain everything to her, hoping to make "it" better. What we do know is that, he leaves the hotel to take an auto ferry over to Bainbridge Island, he drives north way past Poulsbo and west, past Sequim, and on past Port Angeles with late afternoon turning to a rainy early evening. Then, he sees a flare in the road, stops and is taken by gunpoint by a man who was on the ferry...
My review:
http://mostlyfiction.com/mystery/sile...
My review:
http://mostlyfiction.com/mystery/sile...
January 6, 2011
This was fast paced and gritty story - I enjoyed learnign about Carl, Lucy, Kevin and Darcy. The subject matter was interesting too - a govenment conspirancy.
August 21, 2012
Piacevole, si legge di un fiato..... forse si perde verso la fine
March 10, 2016
Some of the setting hits close to home...northern CO. I liked it fine, but still like Easy Money better.
July 2, 2016
This book lacked any real suspense and the characters were so bland that it was impossible to engage with them. A very disappointing read.
Read
September 1, 2018DNF
Paused about 50% into listening to this as I wanted to read a new release. It's been over a week and I haven't had any motivation to start listening again to find out what happens, so I'm taking that as a sign it's time to move on to a new book.
Paused about 50% into listening to this as I wanted to read a new release. It's been over a week and I haven't had any motivation to start listening again to find out what happens, so I'm taking that as a sign it's time to move on to a new book.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews