Children's Reprise- Review by OnlineBookClub.org

Review Posted on 3/12/18 by Christinaro
​(4 out of 4 stars)

This is an excerpt.

"Jack Huber’s Children’s Reprise is the fourth book in the Pat Ruger Mystery Series. The author himself confesses that he might have found a niche in the detective/mystery/ crime/thriller genres with the novels in this series. Apart from the traditional detective layout, Children’s Reprise does indeed bring something quite original in the field: an insight view on the functioning and threat of teenage-targeting cults.

"Jack Huber belongs to Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled school of detective fiction. Children’s Reprise is written in the first person and Pat Ruger seems the reincarnation of Chandler’s famous Philip Marlowe. He is the embodiment of the tough wisecracking private eye who is often cynical and at times contemplative or philosophical. Like Marlowe, Pat somehow ends up the eternal bachelor although women find him irresistible and he was once married or engaged. Fans of the genre will definitely appreciate the character’s keen eye for detail, dry humor and unflinching determination to achieve his own justice.

"Jack Huber craftly uses the storyline to raise people’s awareness on the threat posed by such a cult. For example, Pat takes his time explaining how the members of the cult proceed. They start isolating the teenage boy or girl from everyone they know while never letting them alone without one or more of the members. They use sleep deprivation or blackmail to make the vulnerable adolescents lose their values. Finally, they test them by making them do something illegal, something they would never do under normal circumstances. In the novel, Terry, one of the taken children, describes the way the cult members made her feel wanted when she felt rejected by her own family. 

"On the whole, the story is well-written and the book is professionally edited. I recommend it to all those drawn to detective fiction in general and hard-boiled detective fiction in particular. Jack Huber proves he is a talented storyteller turning his protagonist into a new emblematic figure of the genre."

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