2 out of 4 stars
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A psychopathic killer escapes from jail and a massive manhunt across the globe ensues. This is what Jimmy Green by J.E. Giffard offers its readers. This book is a crime thriller, written in the first person from the point of view of Adrian Hopkins most of the time, except when Jimmy Green gets up to his mischief.
Jimmy Green starts life as an orphan. The older boys are always bullying him. Until one day, Jimmy strikes back, maiming one of his attackers. This act brings him such a rush that he just has to keep on doing it. Eventually, Jimmy gets locked up with a life sentence, for a series of particularly gruesome murders.
Jimmy talks his cell mate into trying to escape with him, miraculously this plan succeeds and the two of them find themselves on the run. Jimmy turns on his cell mate, killing him, and leaving plenty of evidence that the body was Jimmy’s rather than his cell mate. Jimmy then hijacks a car belonging to Adrian Hopkins. Deserting Adrian, almost naked, in the middle of the moors, Jimmy takes off in Adrian’s car and using the information from Adrian’s wallet, goes to Adrian’s home to see what he can get.
Fooling Adrian’s neighbour into believing that he was returning the car under orders from the garage it was taken to when it broke down. The neighbour invites Jimmy in for a cup of tea. Jimmy takes advantage of the situation to carry out the gruesome murders that he craves. When Adrian comes home and discovers what has happened, he blames himself, and then he sets out to track down Jimmy and bring him to justice.
In the beginning, I found this story to be a little unbelievable. The method of escape that Jimmy employed to get out of prison blatantly wouldn’t work. If it did then inmates would be escaping every few days. Adrian’s reaction to the hijacking seemed equally implausible. He was worried about being shot! I understand that he had to put on prison issue clothes to keep warm, but the story is set in England, not America. In England there is law against guns and even the police don’t have them, except for a few special squads, which I wouldn’t expect to be found in the middle of the moors.
If you accept that these things happen, then the rest of the story is much more believable. I loved the cat and mouse chase as Jimmy is pursued across the globe by all sorts of people on both sides of the law. Especially all his narrow escapes as the noose inexorably tightens. I also liked the pathology he displays, with his inability to restrain himself from the acts of violence that he loves so much. The part I didn’t like was the contrived ending where the author tries to force the possibility of a sequel, when really there isn’t one.
The author has a great way of leading the imagination to see the worst, without actually putting too much detail into the violent scenes. Even so, I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone who has a weak stomach. I do think anybody who likes crime novels or chase stories would enjoy this book.
I found this book to be hard to follow because of the grammar, spelling and formatting mistakes. The paragraph breaks in mid sentence were especially disconcerting. I was also curious why the book is only printed on the left hand of the page. I thought at first that the right hand side would include illustrations. Now that I have finished the book, I have no idea why, as I didn’t see a single picture. I have to rate this book as 2 out of 4 stars. This is because of the unbelievable elements and the bad formatting etc. If you ignore these then the book was an enjoyable, easy read, thus saving itself from scoring only one star.
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Jimmy Green
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