****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
Five stars vastly underrates this book. I give the brilliant Shadow Man 10 stars. Easily. Cory McFadyen’s Shadow Man is the best thriller I have read. In my life. Ever.By the time I reached the 5% mark, I knew this book was going to be special. I paused long enough to race over to Amazon to order the other 3 books in the series. I was instantly transfixed in chapter one, and the book did not lessen its grip on me from that point on. The last 25% of the book was simply unputdownable. Truly.Shadow Man is a masterpiece thriller, in my humble opinion. It ticks off all the boxes important to me. The character development is simply stunning and unlike that I have ever seen in any other thriller. We even learn about the minor characters. Deep stuff. Psychological stuff. The stuff that makes these people who they are and what they do and think. There are whole chapters devoted to where the team members are psychologically. Boring, you say? Far, far from it. This is deep, meaningful, and dare I say, moving storytelling.Agent Smoky Barrett is the female leader of a team of FBI agents. The team members’ interactions are real, and though certainly not all a bowl of cherries, reflect steadfast loyalty and respect when it counts. Even the less-than-charming guys have integrity. I came to love every member of the team.Smoky has been through horrendous trauma for which she is receiving psychiatric help. These sessions are shown to us and are fascinating, even to me--a survivor of a 3-month rotation in lock up psychiatry during my medical residency. The encounter in chapter 2 is the best written, most powerful and moving patient-psychiatrist encounter I have ever read in a novel. I must extend my praise to the psychological aspects throughout the entire book. If I didn’t know otherwise, I would definitely think that the author was a board-certified psychiatrist.Even though this book was written in 2007, I learned a lot about police work. I now know about cognitive interviewing of witnesses, neurolinguistic interviewing of suspects, what a “confrontational statement” is and when it should be used, how to detect whether or not a package contains a bomb, how latex gloves do not always prevent the leaving of fingerprints, what makes up the psyche of a serial killer, and more. And these techniques and facts, like the psychological aspects of the novel, are shown and not just told to us. I cannot stress what a difference showing, rather than just telling, makes to a story.There is a hint, just a hint of a budding romance, but I have to say chapter 39 holds the most beautiful and emotional sex scene I think I have ever read.I must issue one warning. The thriller aspects to the story are intense, dark and depraved. It takes a lot to scare me off, and I had no major issues tolerating the degree of evil and debasement depicted in Shadow Man, but I do understand it will be too much for some readers. Otherwise, the plot was complex and suspenseful. It was intriguing watching the FBI team go from nearly no leads at all to cracking the case. The clues are there if you are smart enough to follow them, but I was fooled big time in the end. If I have one criticism, it is that the case broke on a clue that I’m not sure was good enough to earn that honor, but that was more than made up for by the very original and touching as well as explosive final scene with the killer.Do I recommend this book? Are you kidding me? I want to go to each and every one of my thriller-loving friends, especially those who love thrillers with strong character development, such as Angela Marsons’ Kim Stone series, and COMMAND them put this book on the very top of their lists. Do you hear me, people??? In regards to the darkness factor, I do believe if a reader can handle Karin Slaughter’s works, then he or she can get through Shadow Man. Thriller fans, do not deprive yourself of this most brilliant book.
