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24 Declassified #10
Head Shot
In less than twenty-four hours, in a palatial hideaway in the mountains of Colorado, a group of America's most powerful industrialists will be gathering for their annual summit. The bizarre disappearance of all the members of a local crackpot cult—and of two ATF agents assigned to keep an eye on them—may have no connection whatsoever to the impending high-powered conference. But with so many corporate titans grouped together in one location, CTU can't afford to take chances. Sent to investigate, Jack Bauer is immediately plunged into a maelstrom of treachery, terror, and slaughter as he uncovers clues to a devastating conspiracy that could leave America's most essential institutions in ruins. And now the rogue CTU operative has only hours to prevent the unthinkable—before the relentlessly approaching storm of blood and fire rocks his nation to its foundations.
384 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published April 8, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
May 30, 2009
This was my first Ever Action/suspense fiction book read, or at least the first since grade school/junior high(details of which are a little fuzzy, in my recollection).
It starts off a bit slow, meandering along at a slow pace and stopping along the way to go through mundane detail after detail after detail after detail..... I suppose this is common in suspense novels, it's just something I'm a bit new to.(I don't mean it to sound like I'm complaining, I really liked the book.)
Jack Bauer is CTU special agent (counter terrorist unit), a division of CIA. He is former LAPD SWAT team member who worked his way up to secret agent extraordinaire. He's in Denver, looking in to a possible attack on a massively important economic summit, attended by the nation's ultra-rich, being held at a lavish mountain retreat.
The book is broken up into 24 chapters, each representing events taking place in one hour increments, the whole book cover 24 hours.
Around chapter 12, thinks start getting really exciting, with shootouts, explosions, car chases, double crossings... real page turning adrenaline rush stuff for the 'guy' in me :) !!!
Jack Bauer is the modern day anti-hero, not afraid to bend or break the rules, along with a few necks, to get the job done. Jack always gets his man.
My first Action/suspense, yes... But not my last!
It starts off a bit slow, meandering along at a slow pace and stopping along the way to go through mundane detail after detail after detail after detail..... I suppose this is common in suspense novels, it's just something I'm a bit new to.(I don't mean it to sound like I'm complaining, I really liked the book.)
Jack Bauer is CTU special agent (counter terrorist unit), a division of CIA. He is former LAPD SWAT team member who worked his way up to secret agent extraordinaire. He's in Denver, looking in to a possible attack on a massively important economic summit, attended by the nation's ultra-rich, being held at a lavish mountain retreat.
The book is broken up into 24 chapters, each representing events taking place in one hour increments, the whole book cover 24 hours.
Around chapter 12, thinks start getting really exciting, with shootouts, explosions, car chases, double crossings... real page turning adrenaline rush stuff for the 'guy' in me :) !!!
Jack Bauer is the modern day anti-hero, not afraid to bend or break the rules, along with a few necks, to get the job done. Jack always gets his man.
My first Action/suspense, yes... But not my last!
July 18, 2011
Meh. While the writing and plot weren't bad, the main character just didn't ring true to the Jack Bauer I've come to love and support in his quest to save the world again and again and again. Now, admittedly, the timeframe (after 9/11, but before the events of the first TV season of 24) and the location (in Colorado, on special assignment from CTU/LA) limited the possibilities for involvement by the whole cast of LA characters, but to include only Chapelle in the action (and him via a flashback and a few frantic phone calls) and to give almost no weight to Jack's personal life (which is a huge driver of his actions in the TV series) really undermined any emotional buy-in. And the Jack presented here was far more uncaringly, ruthlessly, almost casually bloodthirsty, with almost no introspection at all. There was none of the emotional turmoil or angst over personal loyalties betrayed, etc., that I have come to expect from Jack. And Jack's dialogue was just wrong. The main character here expressed himself as if he were a substitute actor playing Jack for one season. The result? Meh.
May 30, 2016
I have watched every episode of 24 and read 5 of the books in the series. This book simply did not feel like 24 to me. There wasn't enough action and suspense to fit the 24 mantra. The story itself really wasn't all that bad, but when you are expecting high-octane action, it certainly falls short. The writing focused on Jack Bauer's perspective almost exclusively, and that is another thing I didn't really quite fit either. The threat to the United States didn't feel that pressing also, which added to the overall disappointment for me as well. Overall, I think this fell short of what I expect 24 to be, which made me not like it as much as the others I have read. There really isn't a whole lot that stood out to me from this installment in the series, but I do expect to finish reading the others on my shelf.
September 26, 2009
Much, much better than the author's first 24 entry. Plenty of action and a decent plot. Still, only three stars because:
a.) Jacobs' writing is overly descriptive and impercise, which at times slows the story's pacing to a crawl.
b.) The Jack Bauer of this novel speaks absolutely nothing like the Jack Bauer of the show. He says goofy things like "Do tell!", and at the end delivers a long Sherlock Holmes-esque monologue.
c.) The Jack of this novel is more bloodthirsty.
a.) Jacobs' writing is overly descriptive and impercise, which at times slows the story's pacing to a crawl.
b.) The Jack Bauer of this novel speaks absolutely nothing like the Jack Bauer of the show. He says goofy things like "Do tell!", and at the end delivers a long Sherlock Holmes-esque monologue.
c.) The Jack of this novel is more bloodthirsty.
Read
August 5, 2011Bauer is on loan to the CTU in Denver as some of the most powerful and influential industrialists are gathering for a summit. Jack has 24 hours to stop a conspiracy group that wants to see the US economy fail. This novel isn't as good as some of the previous ones in the series but I still found it to be an interesting look into the past of Jack Bauer.
Read
March 7, 2011I thought the book was pretty good. It was not the best. Jack caughtb the terroist and he killed him. And Ryan Chappelle helped jack out get the bad guys. Anybody who likes action should read it.
January 17, 2020
Jack is sent to Colorado to look at a recently evacuated compound as it is nearby a soon-to-happen meeting of industry titans as there are fears the compound members may be up to attacking the titans meeting, and there have been 'The big Short' activity going on. He encounters a variety of people and dangerous situations and handles them all like a champ as he is former military and LAPD. Early on a character says, " I would like to hear all that you know." (Suspect? YOU BET!) Descriptively written, some torture, a bit of swearing, some is just mentioned as happening though the words are not shared, after all, this is based upon network television. Engaging, baddies do not begin to appear until just before the half-way mark.
February 21, 2024
I've mostly really enjoyed the prequel '24 Declassified' series of books but this one didn't excite me greatly. The biggest change is that 99.8% of the book focused solely on Jack Bauer, whereas previous instalments have also focused on the bad guys and all the bit players that pop up and go away hour
by hour which make the '24' universe so unique. Not a bad thriller, but nowhere near as good as some of the earlier titles in this series.
by hour which make the '24' universe so unique. Not a bad thriller, but nowhere near as good as some of the earlier titles in this series.
January 3, 2026
Jack Bauer is sent to Colorado to deal with cultists, gunrunners, crooked cops, and stereotypical bikers from Hell - any and all of whom could be ready to take down a whole conference full of big business tycoons. And if you couldn't have guessed, it's gonna be another long day for Jack. Crazy vagrants! Shootouts in ghost towns! Hallucinogenic gas! Grizzly bears! My name is trashy book reviewer Dr. Mattaconda. And today... is the longest day of my life.
Well, despite the title, I found out rather quickly that "Head Shot" is sadly not a porn novel. Typical. Instead, it's part of a series of novels based off the hit espionage series "24", the show where everyone is double crossing everyone and regular characters are routinely killed off in order to save on paying the actors more for going past a certain number of appearances on screen... I mean... uhh... for the surprise factor! Yeah, that's it! It's long been a favorite show of mine and in all honesty is probably the last 'event' television series I actually watched as it was being transmitted. The novels were, to my estimation, a complete afterthought, were poorly advertised, and never seemed to generate much in the way of fan enthusiasm.
Set in a nebulous time before season one of the show, Special Agent Jack Bauer is dispatched to the mountains of Colorado to oversee potential security concerns surrounding a major business summit of high-powered industrialists. The mysterious disappearance of a cult making their domicile in the same proximity of the conference is bad enough, but then two ATF agents who were tracking said cult also turn up missing. On top of this, Jack's boss Ryan Chappelle has detected what he believes to be a stock market scam where someone with inside knowledge is rapidly selling off stocks of all the companies represented at the industrialist conference. Suffering from a bad case of altitude sickness and a killer headache, Jack prepares to unravel a conspiracy to destabilize the American economy and upend the status quo forevermore...
I can't find a whole lot of information on the David Jacobs that wrote this particular novel. He wrote a few of these "24" novels and he's also credited with a few true crime books, but other than that, information is scant. I suspect it may be a pen name and I might also guess he's British based on certain word choices ('trousers' instead of 'pants', for instance). I believe his take on the "24" novels are somewhat different than other authors in the series because instead of trying to follow an ensemble cast around like the television series did, Jacobs focuses strictly on the main character. This makes "Head Shot" read more like a typical adventure novel, which in my estimation is a good thing. In fact, I would go so far as to say despite the occasional moments of the laughable or absurd found in this book, if you could somehow rip out all of the "24" references and stick a schlocky piece of artwork featuring some beefsteak dude with a gun on the front cover, "Head Shot" would read as a perfectly acceptable men's action novel from the 70's or 80's.
Unfortunately, all of the "24" books I've read thus far seem to be shackled by the gimmicky notion of trying to mimic the television show's format of each episode taking place throughout an hour of 'real time', thus each chapter is supposed to be one hour of the day. Even as a diehard "24" fan, I don't think I would be offended if the format was abandoned for the novels and we just had traditional chapters that play out naturally. The reader really has to suspend disbelief in several chapter breaks to pretend the real time format is also at play in this book. For instance, one chapter ends with a character announcing to Jack that the bodies of two unfortunate agents were found. The very next chapter - the beginning of the next hour - sees Jack already at the crime scene doing his investigating thing. Studious fans have observed Jack and other characters making miraculous time on the freeways during the seasons of the show set in Los Angeles, but Jack is just straight-up teleporting in certain parts of "Head Shot".
In keeping with the credo of the television series where any character could die at any given moment, plot armor be damned, Jack's initial partner, a member of the Denver branch of CTU, is quickly dispatched by the enemy. That character's replacement is a by-the-business blonde named Anne Armstrong who is perhaps more shockingly also dispatched after it seemed certain she was going to be Jack's backup throughout the rest of the novel. Instead, Jack's real backup arrives in the form of two rough and tumble bikers named Griff and Rowdy. No, I'm not making this up. Yes, it is incredibly goofy. But we get a little taste of what "24" might be like if it was crossed over with "Sons of Anarchy" in this novel, and that is a form of goofy I can get on board with.
I also learned in this novel that Jack Bauer takes his coffee black. I knew I always liked Jack for a reason.
I can't imagine anyone other than an ardent "24" fan ever picking this book up, but if by some chance you like the show and you're down with men's action novels, you might consider giving "Head Shot" a whirl.
Well, despite the title, I found out rather quickly that "Head Shot" is sadly not a porn novel. Typical. Instead, it's part of a series of novels based off the hit espionage series "24", the show where everyone is double crossing everyone and regular characters are routinely killed off in order to save on paying the actors more for going past a certain number of appearances on screen... I mean... uhh... for the surprise factor! Yeah, that's it! It's long been a favorite show of mine and in all honesty is probably the last 'event' television series I actually watched as it was being transmitted. The novels were, to my estimation, a complete afterthought, were poorly advertised, and never seemed to generate much in the way of fan enthusiasm.
Set in a nebulous time before season one of the show, Special Agent Jack Bauer is dispatched to the mountains of Colorado to oversee potential security concerns surrounding a major business summit of high-powered industrialists. The mysterious disappearance of a cult making their domicile in the same proximity of the conference is bad enough, but then two ATF agents who were tracking said cult also turn up missing. On top of this, Jack's boss Ryan Chappelle has detected what he believes to be a stock market scam where someone with inside knowledge is rapidly selling off stocks of all the companies represented at the industrialist conference. Suffering from a bad case of altitude sickness and a killer headache, Jack prepares to unravel a conspiracy to destabilize the American economy and upend the status quo forevermore...
I can't find a whole lot of information on the David Jacobs that wrote this particular novel. He wrote a few of these "24" novels and he's also credited with a few true crime books, but other than that, information is scant. I suspect it may be a pen name and I might also guess he's British based on certain word choices ('trousers' instead of 'pants', for instance). I believe his take on the "24" novels are somewhat different than other authors in the series because instead of trying to follow an ensemble cast around like the television series did, Jacobs focuses strictly on the main character. This makes "Head Shot" read more like a typical adventure novel, which in my estimation is a good thing. In fact, I would go so far as to say despite the occasional moments of the laughable or absurd found in this book, if you could somehow rip out all of the "24" references and stick a schlocky piece of artwork featuring some beefsteak dude with a gun on the front cover, "Head Shot" would read as a perfectly acceptable men's action novel from the 70's or 80's.
Unfortunately, all of the "24" books I've read thus far seem to be shackled by the gimmicky notion of trying to mimic the television show's format of each episode taking place throughout an hour of 'real time', thus each chapter is supposed to be one hour of the day. Even as a diehard "24" fan, I don't think I would be offended if the format was abandoned for the novels and we just had traditional chapters that play out naturally. The reader really has to suspend disbelief in several chapter breaks to pretend the real time format is also at play in this book. For instance, one chapter ends with a character announcing to Jack that the bodies of two unfortunate agents were found. The very next chapter - the beginning of the next hour - sees Jack already at the crime scene doing his investigating thing. Studious fans have observed Jack and other characters making miraculous time on the freeways during the seasons of the show set in Los Angeles, but Jack is just straight-up teleporting in certain parts of "Head Shot".
In keeping with the credo of the television series where any character could die at any given moment, plot armor be damned, Jack's initial partner, a member of the Denver branch of CTU, is quickly dispatched by the enemy. That character's replacement is a by-the-business blonde named Anne Armstrong who is perhaps more shockingly also dispatched after it seemed certain she was going to be Jack's backup throughout the rest of the novel. Instead, Jack's real backup arrives in the form of two rough and tumble bikers named Griff and Rowdy. No, I'm not making this up. Yes, it is incredibly goofy. But we get a little taste of what "24" might be like if it was crossed over with "Sons of Anarchy" in this novel, and that is a form of goofy I can get on board with.
I also learned in this novel that Jack Bauer takes his coffee black. I knew I always liked Jack for a reason.
I can't imagine anyone other than an ardent "24" fan ever picking this book up, but if by some chance you like the show and you're down with men's action novels, you might consider giving "Head Shot" a whirl.
December 6, 2022
As a die hard 24 fan, this at times felt out of character of the show. It seemed more like an adult Scooby Doo mystery without a talking dog.
June 16, 2009
Absolutely dreadful, knew i was taking a chance after this author's last attempt at Jack, not even in the same league as the other two authors who write these. I put it down after reading about halfway through. The best way to describe this authors take on this series is to imagine watching an episode of the show, and for some reason the Powers That Be have decided to let someone else other than Kiefer Sutherland play Jack Bauer for a few episodes. If you'd never seen the show and caught one of these episodes as your first, you'd probably never watch it again. If you are an enthusiastic fan as I am, it's very annoying and beyond disappointing. My advice, save your $8 unless you just HAVE to have the whole collection.
PUBLISHERS, please don't make us wait months and months for a new Bauer novel and give us one from David Freakin' Jacobs?
PUBLISHERS, please don't make us wait months and months for a new Bauer novel and give us one from David Freakin' Jacobs?
September 4, 2011
While Marc Cerasini and John Whitman nicely transferred the show's fast pace and suspense to their 'Declassified' contributions (albeit leaving out character depth, politics and the highly controversial ethics of '24' on TV), David Jacobs, IMO, ruined the Declassified series. Ever since he took over, the books have turned into boring, drawn-out, spineless pulp fiction that has nothing to do with the show or the first books of the series. Not only does Jacobs drop the essential real-time format, he also loses himself in lengthy descriptions of no relevance to the bit of plot that remains.
I had to force myself to finish 'Head Shot', and I only did so because of my love for and loyalty to the character of Jack Bauer. However, unless Whitman comes back or a new writer continues, 'Head Shot' will be the last book of the series that I've read.
I had to force myself to finish 'Head Shot', and I only did so because of my love for and loyalty to the character of Jack Bauer. However, unless Whitman comes back or a new writer continues, 'Head Shot' will be the last book of the series that I've read.
December 22, 2012
Jack is dispatched to the Denver office to assist in finding a possible terrorist plot against a summit of all of the rich company owners in the US being held in a fortress in the Colorado mountains. The suspects, a commune of Zealots, seems to have disappeared. On several occasions, Jack is almost killed, including by a mysterious green fog. A couple of witnesses tell Jack that time is running out.
August 21, 2016
By far the worst one of the series so far. There's really no forward momentum and thus quite boring and makes it a slog to get through. Again, there's not other CTU characters besides brief asides to Ryan Chappelle, so it even further seems like plugging Jack Bauer into some random cult investigation thing in Colorado that seems so unlike '24' that makes it seem so unbelievable within its world.
June 5, 2009
Jacobs' first "24" book was a disaster (hardly any Jack Bauer). This one improves upon that criticism, but now the lack of balance affects getting to know the bad guys. Plus, some of the stuff uttered by the Jack Bauer character are just not believable!
March 27, 2019
A must read for any 24 or Tom Clancy fans
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews