When the Wind Blows

I agree with many of the previous reviews of WHEN THE WIND BLOWS--the book has flaws. For one thing, most of the members of the police force in the little town of Harmony were really stereotyped, like the typical southern cops in a TV melodrama. Why a town that totally relies on its tourist trade for survival would have a bunch of thugs as its law enforcers stretches the credibility factor. The cops were a lot of fun to dislike, but would have been more believable had at least a couple of the members of the force been more sincere in carrying out their duties as public servants.Events fall into place too fast and too easily. Mark Ritter goes from being a man bereaving his mother's death to finding out secrets buried and hidden from his past within the time span of a few days. It's like the town of Harmony had been in limbo for 30 years until he showed up to set them in motion.One of the really annoying factors in this novel was the author's problem in trying to decide what to do with Ritter's 10-year-old daughter while the man was hunting down clues to his past. In most scenes, the child was in the way of the story. The common device the author used to remind us of the girl's presence was to have her complaining for ice cream, whining to go horseback riding, etc. This, in reality, is what most children would do to get some attention after being subjected to hours of listening to adults talk about topics often too mature for a 10-year-old's ears. But her presence became annoying when I wanted to see the plot advance and then have to stop for an ice cream break for the child. To solve this technical problem, the author should have found a logical way to keep the girl from appearing in just about every scene, i.e., creating a nice motherly character to baby-sit her (there HAD to be someone without an evil thought even in Harmony). Instead, her father left her with virtual strangers or let her wander off by herself, even after he discovered the child's life had been threatened.And yes, the ending was too long and cumbersome, finally all tied up in ribbon like a Christmas package.Despite its weaknesses and inconsistencies, I had a great time reading this novel.. Mr. Fox has a knack with suspense that, at two o'clock in the morning, kept me saying, "One more chapter and then I'll go to sleep." Needless to say, I read the book in two days. And that's what a suspense novel should be. Right?

This is a real page turner. Patterson makes sure that the end of each chapter leaves you wanting more. Very entertaining and captivating!

This book was so much better than the one also titled by James Patterson. I liked the plot, which moved quickly and the believable characters. There were lots of intricate twists and just when I thought I had it all figured out, I was blind-sided. A good read from a new (for me) author.

As a writer myself, I'm acutely aware of the difficulty of weaving a complex story in such a fashion that all the disparate elements hang together logically while the reader's interest is continually engaged. Many writers detour around this obstacle by churning out simplistic plots and dressing them up in irrelevant fluff so as to disguise the paucity of substantive ideas. To make matters worse, many present-day editors applaud the trend, assuming that the greatest revenue accrues from sales to readers whose attention span is limited to time spent hanging from a subway strap.Fortunately, neither Zachary Alan Fox nor his editor seem to have made any such compromises in bringing us When the Wind Blows, and they don't assume that their potential readership is composed of bored clerical workers looking to kill time. So if you like your thrillers intricate and dense, and appreciate the virtues of patient exposition prior to the fireworks, you'll probably like this book as much as I did.The story opens with an incident whose theme is universal in its evocation of disorientation: widower Mark Ritter discovers that he was adopted and the identity and lineage he has taken for granted all his life is a sham. Together with his young daughter, he sets out on an odyssey of personal discovery but almost immediately runs into an obstacle course of skepticism, suspicion and deliberate deception. At times it seems the relentless pursuit of his past is almost as much an angry rebellion against the stonewalling he encounters as it is a primal drive to definitively determine the circumstances surrounding his origins.To say more than that would ruin the fun. Fox deftly throws red herrings at us with the skill of a stage magician but never strains credulity or gratuitously leads us down wrong paths. At every turn, there's a likelihood our interim guesses will turn out to be wrong, but in every case, the information that led us astray is relevant in another context. So we never feel cheated as we do in works of lesser craft. And all the while, we're in complete sympathy with Ritter's escalating anxiety and frustration, especially since the presence of his young daughter seems to be engendering more disquiet among his potential sources of information than his own interminable questions. Speaking of disquiet, pedophilia is a central thread running through the tale, but thankfully this subject is exploited only as a literary vehicle and there is nothing graphically prurient in its presentation.As he did in his previous novel, All Fall Down (an interesting title in that it's the same as a novel of my own), Fox showed us an enviable knack for sustaining breath-catching suspense over an amazingly large number of concluding pages, a skill he shares only with the likes of Nelson DeMille. That ability is in dazzling view in When the Wind Blows, as events come to a deadly head on a deserted ski slope in the off-season. But rather than deg

In Seattle, single parent Mark Ritter is playing Monopoly with his seven-year old daughter Lisa when he receives the call from South Dakota that his mother has died. Mark and Lisa attend the funeral, but while going through his mother's possessions, Mark finds a strange key to a Rapid City bank's safe deposit box. He opens the box, only to shockingly find an envelop containing his death certificate, which was issued by the state of Idaho three decades ago. Mark calls a number written on the envelop and finds out that the other party is a law firm in Harmony, Colorado.Mark and Lisa next drive to Harmony as he tries to unravel the mystery of who he is. The townsfolk are stunned by his arrival and everyone acts as if they have seen Lisa many times before, even though Mark knows that he never heard of this town until he made that call from Rapid City. Mark continues to inquire into his and his deceased parents past even though it seems to have left a sour taste in the minds of the citizens of Harmony.WHEN THE WIND BLOWS is an incredible mystery because the underlying premise is outrageous yet feels genuine due to the colossal abilities of Zachary Alan Fox. The story line is filed with an innocent point and a treacherous counterpoint that brilliantly blends together. Mark's reaction of abject horror as revelation upon revelation piles up on him appears very real. This mystery is a great thriller because of the personalized touches that make it seem as if it could happen to anyone; thereby forcing readers into thinking they should check their own bloodlines to insure that their personal identities remain solid.Harriet Klausner