Pendulum by Adam Hamdy

Title: Pendulum

Author: Adam Hamdy

Publisher: Headline

Publication Year: 2016

Pages: 496

Genre: Thriller

My Ratiing:4/5

52 book Goodreads challenge #2

Synopsis (from the back)

You wake. Confused. Disorientated. A noose is round your neck. You are bound, standing on a chair. All you can focus on is the man in the mask tightening the rope. You are about to die.

John Wallace has no idea why he has been targeted. No idea who his attacker is. No idea how he will prevent the inevitable. 

Then the pendulum of fate swings in his favour. He has one chance to escape, find the truth and halt his destruction. The momentum is in his favour for now. But with a killer on his tail, everything can change with one swing of this deadly pendulum...

You have one chance. Run.

Thoughts:

This is not the type of book I'd normally pick up. I like my mysteries golden-age, fair play and cozy. Miss Marple is basically who I want to be when I grow up but when I saw that Janel from the amazing blog and Instagram Keeper of Pages was starting a book club I knew I was in for a treat! I am so glad that I picked up the book! Not only was it AH-maze-ing, but it made me want to branch out into other types of crime/mystery/thrillers. If I enjoyed this book so much what else is out there waiting for me to discover?

Pendulum is a straight-up action-thriller. It starts out with the attempted murder of John Wallace, a photographer who wakes up to a stranger in a mask tying a noose around his neck. A lucky break gives him a chance to escape with the killer hot on his heels. The police do not believe his story, thinking it was a suicide attempt gone wrong, but the killer won't stop until he is dead.  

This book starts with a bang and then continues into an adrenaline filled, transatlantic game of cat-and-mouse. The book itself it quite hefty at 481 pages but I tore through it in a couple of days. Wallace's fight for survival, incredible action-packed sequences and slowly unraveling mystery of why this mysterious and deadly serial killer is determined to kill Wallace all make for an extremely addictive and vivid read that at times made it feel more like I was watching a Jason Bourne film rather than reading a book. Seriously, someone should make this a movie, I would love to watch it!

As consequence of this cinematic feel, story line at times feels like it leans a bit on action movie tropes, from the cop with underground ties to the plucky FBI agent with a dark past and even the revelations at the end seem familiar but Hamdy's fresh writing, adrenalined-filled plot and one of the most terrifying villains I've read in a long time take this book to the next level and make this book a must-read for anyone looking who loves a good thriller or wants a novel that they will not be able to put down until the end. I can't wait until the next book in the series comes out! I will definitely be picking it up!

.