Review: Burn Factor

Author Kyle Mills is a gorgeous-looking young man. You can tell by looking at the full-page, artful, studio photograph of him on the back of the dust jacket. He’s touted as a superior and best-selling thriller author. I’ve only read this one and there isn’t a whole lot of evidence here to support the claim.

Burn Factor is a loose, episodic over-the-top story which strongly suggests that the end doesn’t justify the means. Moreover, those who play with such fire are doomed to be destroyed by it. The novel starts out with odd factual errors while at the same time it’s cleaner of typos and computer-generated errors than most novels being published today. The bad guys, one of who is a demented though brilliant individual and a serial killer of women as well as a mass murderer, are a curious blend of monumental evil, genius level thinking and total incompetence. Considering the vast resources instantly available to the evil empire, aspiring FBI agent Quinn Barry--naturally a good looking young female--should have been murdered after she stumbled across a malignant computer programming error. Of course, then there would have been no novel.

Ms. Barry, touted as a top-flight computer programming whiz, is working at the FBI headquarters, fixing and updating search programs. This is, she hopes, a step toward becoming an agent. When she tests her modification of a search program, she discovers an error and after some trials, is stumped as to why or how to begin finding the problem. Once that information is transmitted to her boss, the fat’s in the fire and she comes to the attention of the people who designed the original search program. The rest of the book follows Quinn Barry along a twisting dangerous path as she attempts to find out why the original program is faulty, why she is abruptly transferred, and who’ trying, over and over again, to kill her.

We are told, several times by her adversaries, that she’s bright, adaptable, and a worthy adversary. Unfortunately, she doesn’t show much of that brilliance and she misses some obvious possibilities. The writing style is clean, if unemotional, and things are satisfactorily tidied up at the end, but for me at least, the emotional engagement, even while reading about some horrific events, was lacking.

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Carl Brookins - RAM

Book Review: Burn Factor