Tag: suppressors

Posted on

#BlogTour: The Witness by John Ryder

For this blog tour we are looking at the newest inventive action thriller from John Ryder. For this blog tour, we’re looking at The Witness by John Ryder.

Here’s what I had to say on Goodreads:

Solid Action Thriller. If you haven’t been reading John Ryder… you need to be. This is just the second time I’ve read a book from him, and he has clearly established a pattern of solid action thrillers with heroes who are conflicted and yet have solid and even innovative ideas on how to do their jobs. The house scene early was truly brilliant in what Ryder has Roche do to prepare the scene, and a few other actions late were nearly as good – if a *touch* more typical.

Indeed, the one flaw – which again I’m chalking up to “maybe British people don’t know their way around guns as well as Americans do” and even “most Americans also think this, but it is a myth” – is one point where even as Ryder uses the correct terminology – “suppressor” rather than “silencer” – he still gets the actual effects more Hollywood than real-world. Without giving a whole hell of a lot away, Roche is across the street when a suppressed shot goes off inside a building. *Roche doesn’t hear the shot.* In *reality*… everyone within at least a quarter mile is hearing that shot, even with it occurring indoors and even if they are indoors themselves.

Still, this was the only actual flaw in the writing and story here, with everything else being more “no one is perfect and this actually makes the story seem even more real” level. Truly an excellent action thriller, and one you won’t want to miss. Hell, even as this book is (currently?) listed as a standalone… let me say right here right now that I for one would like to come back to this world. 😀 Very much recommended.

And below the jump, the “publisher information” including the official description of the book, an author bio, social media links, and a link to buy the book!:)
Continue reading “#BlogTour: The Witness by John Ryder”

Posted on

#BookReview: A Thin Disguise by Catherine Bybee

Solid, But With A Glaring Error Early. As a romance between an amnesiac assassin and an undercover FBI agent, this story works great. As a continuation of this new Richter series (which is apparently a spinoff from the First Wives series, though I did not know that until perusing the reviews on Goodreads for this book), this works quite well. As a forced-proximity romance, this is actually fairly inventive, as the leading couple is not alone in the house… *and* there are cameras and sensors (almost) everywhere to boot!

But there is one *blinding* in its glaringness issue that needs to be mentioned, even though it isn’t objectively strong enough to remove a star over (though I know some who would likely 1* the book on this issue alone). And that issue is the very moment the assassin becomes an amnesiac. When she is shot on a crowded Las Vegas street in a drive by shooting with a “silenced” weapon. That nobody hears.

Why is this so glaring?

Because I know from both handling firearms and speaking/ listening to others who do that suppressors – they aren’t actually called “silencers”, for one – don’t actually silence a weapon, unlike what happens so often in Hollywood. Depending on several factors such as barrel length of the gun (usually shorter, in drive by situations), temperature, humidity, etc – all of which would be known and factored by professional hitmen/ security / assassin types – a suppressor *at best* takes a gun shot from sounding like you’re standing beside the speakers at a rock concert to sounding like your is using a chainsaw to cut down a tree on the other side of the fence you are standing beside.

In other words, for the shot not to be heard by *everyone* nearby – inside or outside – is so implausible that it brings the reader out of the story if they know the realities of these devices *at all*.

And since Bybee herself noted during the discussion of her Canyon Creek series that she knows her way around a shotgun, it is implausible that the author is not aware of these issues directly. Which makes them being written this way even worse. Though again, because it was a singular point in the book and not a recurring problem, it isn’t a star-deduction level error.

Ultimately, this is a quite solid book for what it actually is, and I’m still very much looking forward to seeing where this series goes from here. (And I’ll need to go back and read the book this series spins off from, since I bought it years ago and have yet to read it. :D) Very much recommended.

This review of A Thin Disguise by Catherine Bybee was originally written on May 27, 2021.