Nothing Human

by Ronald Munson

Highly educated and charming, John Haack (a.k.a., the Jaguar), keeps his dark side hidden from the many women he meets and foils the attempts of Lieutenant Eric Firecaster to catch him and end his reign of terror. Reprint. PW.

Genres: Fiction, Thriller

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

Reviews

[Nick Davies · Rating 2 out of 5]

OK, so the author has the benefit of research and expertise, and there was plenty in this which felt realistic (the procedural nature of police work especially). However, my conclusions from reading this is that you need more than an interesting idea and some knowledge of criminal psychology in order to write a good crime novel.

I picked this up, it appears, from a library sale - it must've sat on my shelf for around a decade before I decided to pick it up and (force myself to) read it this week. The plot was fairly decent, and I enjoyed the format of the story in following the criminal, victim and police detective. However, it did feel dated (published 1992) and there were plenty of moments where the clichés irritated me, the writing felt 'creative writing 101', the romantic cop/victim love strand was laughable, and inaccuracies got on my wick repeatedly, a whole section about a 'poisonous' snake especially - the dumb author surely meant 'venomous', unless he was scared that his characters might eat the snake?

[Karen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Books that promise to "enter the mind of a serial killer" usually are formulaic and obvious. Such as this one.

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this sci-fi book, it was the first book I read in the bolo series. It starts a bit slow, mainly setting the background, but when the action gets started it doesn't stop! The book is beautifully done with explanations of how the bolo weapons systems work, especially the explanation of the Hellbore cannon. This cannon is the bolo's primary weapon, in that it uses deuterium and creates a steady stream of star-like plasma at its target... the fight between man and machine is something to behold in this book!

[Robin · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was pretty awful. I was so amped up to read it because of all the touting of "built on actual cases". But it started out far too dramatically, it was like wading through a syrup that was made of the gunk that bad 1950's P.I. shows left behind. It picked up a little, thankfully. But it was still shallow, repetitive and boring. It wasn't the clean cut mind I was expecting, and it fell woefully short of suspenseful. I won't be wasting any readers time by suggesting this book.

[Anita · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5-- I thought this book was pretty good. I liked that the story was told from three different points of view: the victim, the police investigator, and the killer.

[Norm Tarbell]

No

[Liane · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nope.