No Exit, by Taylor Adams
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Thrilling, suspenseful – and completely over the top
No great quotation comes to the rescue in this case which could actually be good because “No Exit” promised to be a fast-paced thriller with a highly interesting premise: Darby, a college student takes refuge in a rest/service area during a blizzard. There she meets four other travellers who are stranded. When she finds a girl, Jay, in a van in the parking lot, she knows she’s going to have an interesting night ahead of her…
“It was all really happening, right now, in vivid color, and a little girl’s life was really on the line, and tonight’s title match would be between a sleep-deprived art student and a human predator.”
This outset got my hopes up high – after several books that taxed capacity for prolonged complexity (especially during a holiday!) I just wanted some action-flick-look-alike of a book. And, admittedly, I got one. So, why only three stars out of five?
Well, worst of all: Pretty much every single plot twist was foreseeable. Early on I guessed at two completely different possible story lines but once the first “big revelation” about a certain relationship has occurred, it was rather obvious in which direction we were heading. Not that it was a completely bad idea but it has been used so often before, I was slightly disappointed.
My next gripe is with Darby, our “sleep-deprived art student”, herself: Not only is she fairly sporty, ingenious with improvised weapons, full of wild ideas (in the vein of “if I mix this, put something in the toaster and run fast enough…”), no, she is willing to sacrifice herself for a complete stranger. Oh, and she’s really fast or so she thinks:
“She wondered — if he went for the .45 under his jacket, could she yank the Swiss Army knife from her pocket, retract the blade, and cross the room quickly enough to stab him in the throat with it?”
Riiight…
Which leads me to another huge issue: Especially towards the end of the book, Adams goes bat-shit insane with his story. While I’m absolutely willing to suspend my disbelief there are so many totally crazy things happening that I just can’t help it and think it might have been better to just let the book end.
Last but not least, the gore: It was just as over the top at times as those crazy ideas I mentioned before. Yes, the perpetrator is a sadistic psychopath but there’s no need to describe in gruesome detail how he kills a certain person.
It’s sad so much went wrong with this book because at its core, it was a decent thriller and could have satisfied my needs for some shallow fast food entertainment. As it is, I’ll have to “cheat” and read another thriller before moving on towards deeper waters again.
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