2 out of 4 stars
Share This Review
Dave Zeltserman's The Interloper follows Dan Willis, who was once a member of Military Intelligence within the U.S. Army and is now an out of work salesman. After a period of unemployment with bleak prospects, Willis is contacted by a shadowy government agency called The Factory and asked to serve his country by covertly assassinating members of a secret U.S. based terrorist insurgency. Eventually, however, he discovers that something more sinister is afoot and finds himself on the run from The Factory. During Parts Two and Three, Willis partners with various criminals in hopes of gathering sufficient funds to combat his former employers, yet perilous complications arise amidst even the most seemingly straightforward heists.
The premise is bound to interest those of us who enjoy a good action-packed conspiracy, yet I can’t help but feel the final product doesn’t quite live up to its potential. There weren’t many grammatical errors (aside from sentence fragments which seemed to be used as an artistic tool rather than being actual errors), yet there were many details that seemed redundant, out of place, or irrelevant. Most of the redundancies involved intermittent summaries of information given earlier in the book, and while this can sometimes be useful, in this book it read more like parts of a summary that should have been removed or altered in the editing process.
For example, Part Two begins in the middle of a robbery Willis is committing with several new characters. Shortly into the second chapter of Part Two, however, the narrative abruptly switches to briefly discuss Willis’ sex life and then how he connected with the criminals he partnered with for the robbery. This abrupt shift in time and focus happens several times throughout the book, each time breaking the flow of the narrative unnecessarily for a reader who has been paying attention to the story at all.
Several of the abrupt shifts in focus involve Willis’ sex life. While sex is obviously a part of life and is a part of many good books, the plot of The Interloper is so focused on conspiracy and criminal activity that there isn’t much room left for a plotline concerning Willis’ sex life. Usually, so much description of women, whether Willis wants to sleep with them, etc. would indicate that they are at least somewhat relevant to a plot, but nothing much comes from it, which makes the presence of these scenes questionable.
Ultimately, I give The Interloper by Dave Zeltserman two out of four stars. I believe it deserves more than one star on the basis of its premise and the secret behind The Factory. I haven’t encountered a twist quite like this one before and found it rather intriguing. However, I wouldn’t quite give The Interloper three stars due largely to the somewhat haphazard flow of the narrative. I would recommend the book to people who like a book with plenty of killing and dubious (at best) morality and those who don’t mind frequent breaks in the narrative.
******
The Interloper
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Like eowens's review? Post a comment saying so!
