Nola Brown, the U.S. Army’s artist-in-residence–a painter and trained soldier–sees something nobody was supposed to see and earns a dangerous enemy in this novel as powerful as “a launched torpedo slashing through 400 pages of deep water before reaching impact…one of the best thrill rides ever” (David Baldacci). Who is Nola Brown? Nola is a mystery Nola is trouble. And Nola is supposed to … trouble.
And Nola is supposed to be dead.
Her body was found on a plane that mysteriously fell from the sky as it left a secret military base in the Alaskan wilderness. Her commanding officer verifies she’s dead. The US government confirms it. But Jim “Zig” Zigarowski has just found out the truth: Nola is still alive. And on the run.
Zig works at Dover Air Force Base, helping put to rest the bodies of those who die on top-secret missions. Nola was a childhood friend of Zig’s daughter and someone who once saved his daughter’s life. So when Zig realizes Nola is still alive, he’s determined to find her. Yet as Zig digs into Nola’s past, he learns that trouble follows Nola everywhere she goes.
Together, Nola and Zig will either reveal a sleight of hand being played at the highest levels of power or die trying to uncover the US Army’s most mysterious secret–a centuries-old conspiracy that traces back through history to the greatest escape artist of all: Harry Houdini.
“Meltzer is a master and this is his best. Not since The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo have you seen a character like this. Get ready to meet Nola. If you’ve never tried Meltzer, this is the one.” — Harlan Coben
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One of the nice things about your favorite authors is that when you pick up a copy of their latest work you pretty much know what you are getting. Sue Grafton gave us detective stories, John Grisham spins a good legal tale, Kristin Hannah is going to dig deep into your soul and make you yell or cry, or both. Nicolas Sparks will tell you of uncommon love and the characters in a Joel Green novel are nigh unto bursting with angst.
And Brad Meltzer is the name you look for when you want a really good mystery about hidden secrets but you don’t want to stay up for days questioning all of human history. If that’s what you want, you knock on Dan Brown’s door.
Meltzer has become the go-to guy for a fun, fast-paced thriller that most often includes people searching for obscure clues about an ancient mystery.
But in the acknowledgements of The Escape Artist, Meltzer tells you something profound happened to him when he was touring with the USO six years ago make him “realize the difference between being alive and actually living.” While this sounds like fortune-cookie wisdom, it is much more than that for this best-selling author. Meltzer is a changed man and it shows in his writing.
Don’t get me wrong. He’s not waxing poetic about the banality of the human condition or anything. There is definitely the thrill and mystery that is coded into the DNA of any Brad Meltzer title. But that’s not all that’s there.
In The Escape Artist, the mystery in this tale takes a backseat to character development. Nola and Zig are deeply wounded people and we spend a lot of time in their skin watching new bumps and bruises being added atop the old scars that may be faded but still are tender to the touch. Some of the scratches are on the surface, but others cut much deeper.
And while Meltzer respected the source material for his earlier stories, there is a reverence here for the heart-wrenching pain and heart-warming honor that comes with caring for those who have given the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our nation.
So, by the time the actual mystery is fully fleshed out deep in the third act, you’re not really bothered by the fact because you’ve been drawn into the story of these two people who’ve been drawn together by fate more than once.
In this work, Meltzer’s storytelling prowess is transformed into something altogether new. He is deeper and more introspective than he has been before. I’m not sure if his next tale will take us back to familiar territory of long-forgotten secrets and stashes of hidden wealth, but I, for one, am hopeful that Meltzer is speaking of himself when his protagonist realizes that “[s]ometimes you need to bury your old life-and make a new one.”
Like most of Brad Meltzer’s novels, The Escape Artist presents mystery, intrigue, and conspiracies (although to be fair, this novel is a bit light on the conspiracy side in comparison to other written by Meltzer). His formula is a pretty simple one. His writing is riveting. The scenarios he puts his characters in are compelling. It’s entertaining. And there are generally big plot holes and massive believability issues. This novel was no different. The situation was interesting. I liked the tie ins to Houdini. The characters well drawn. And then, there were things that just made me shook my head.
The two major plot holes is that one of the hooks for the novel is the note that Nola’s substitute on the plane crash writes and is found on her body by Zig, who is the coroner for her death and the novel’s co-main protagonist. The contents of the note made no sense upon reading the story. There is no conceivable way that the character would have written this message. It was a cool, compelling message that made me want to keep on reading, but it was almost like cheating the audience since their was never a viable explanation as to why she would write it. The other major plot hole is the crazy level of coincidence that brought Nola and her foster father together, especially since the man seemed like a complete imbecile not capable of doing what he was ascribed to do. Although those things were downers, the novel is still very much worth reading. I was certainly entertained by it and on balance would give it a thumbs up.
Carl Alves – author of The Invocation
A Questionable Plot Bogs Down in Repetitive Trips Down Memory Lane
The Escape Artist has Jim “Zig” Zigarowski, a mortician at Dover Air Force Base, sticking steadfastly to his creed to help the families of our fallen military – a truly honorable calling. Part of his pledge to them is to verify the identity of every victim. So, when he’s expecting the body of Nola Smith, a person he knows, but someone else is in the casket, Zig ignores the advice of all his friends and the orders of his superiors in order to investigate. It’s a premise that promises tense action and unexpected twists, which it delivers. Unfortunately, the story also gets bogged down in prolonged bouts with angst and lengthy trips down memory lane.
One area that lives up to expectations is Meltzer’s development of the background of Nola. She’s a keen observer of humanity, a hard-as-nails loner who rarely speaks and even less often, finds happiness in what she sees. Her extreme personality is made more believable by Meltzer’s use of flashbacks to a childhood filled with brutality and neglect. Each time a chapter started, ‘Ten years ago. This was Nola at sixteen,’ I would find myself tensing, preparing for the next emotional gut-punch. Her’s was a childhood that no one should experience.
Meltzer uses the same technique to illuminate the background of Zig, but much less effectively. That’s because his emotional scar comes from the death of his daughter, a truly devastating loss. But unlike Nola where each flashback is one more layer of the onion, Zig laments the same thing, over and over. Even the most horrific, tear-jerker scenes can only work so many times and Meltzer was considerably over that limit. He also has Zig reminiscing about his life too often. To get an idea how far this went, one of the final scenes involves a showdown between Zig and the villain and it occurs in a storehouse on Dover AFB. In the midst of this life-and-death battle, Zig starts thinking about how he learned on the antiquated equipment stored there. Seriously? And when asked why he is taking such an enormous risk for a young woman he hardly knows, he talks about his commitment to the fallen and his dead child, but admits he doesn’t really know. If he doesn’t understand his motivation, how could the reader?
Finally, the plot is iffy in places. Several gunshot victims are hardier to kill than reason would dictate. One, shot at point blank range in the back of the head, crawls back to his office to later speak to Zig. But even more fundamental than that, the entire story rests on a coverup when there is absolutely no reason for one – Nola was nothing more than an innocent bystander to the corruption being hidden by a plane crash. To me, that was the real mystery of the story – why did the bad guys do things that would have raised red flags all through the process when there is no need?
Great book. Must read
The story is great and the Audible version is a good listen.
Great book, kept me guessing till the end!
Hard to hold my interest
did not like this book at all. Poorly contrived plot.
Frankly, I was disappointed in this effort by Meltzer. I have been a fan of his plots, the clever and original characters, and the “back-knowledge” in his previous work. This one left me cold. Not one character could ever be called by his/her given name; each one had some silly, unwieldy nickname (“Master Guns”, “The Curtain”), which served only to increase the eye-rolling quotient to painful levels. The story, while somewhat interesting, is defeated by the unsympathetic characters; I just didn’t care why or how someone kept disappearing – I only wished she’d stay gone.
The excessive violence was also made worse, I think, by the “medical analysis” of the mayhem being inflicted with each chop or blow. The central character is a mortician; it’s fitting that this book should be given a toe-tag and laid to rest.
I liked how Metzler keep going back and giving us a glimpse on the childhood of Nola. It helped me understand her adult life better.