Reviews for The Ruffian on the Stair

The average rating for The Ruffian on the Stair based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-03-09 00:00:00 Paul Tait A pretty good thriller. I liked Ben, the hero, better than John Rain. Wonderful mystery & great ending, but pretty typical "shoot 'em up, bang, bang" as my boys used to call media of this type. Tough guy op, a gorgeous girl, & some real bad guys to whack. It's all that, but a bit more as well. Not everyone is as good or bad as they seem & there's a brother & old family history to contend with, too. Anyway, it was fun & relaxing. I think I'll read another. (Think potato chips.) Eisler is an author I've been interested in, not so much for his writing as for his decision to leave one of the Big 6 publishers & start self-publishing. If you're not familiar with this, you should look up J.A. Konrath, author of the Jack Daniels cop thrillers, Be the Monkey: A Conversation About the New World of Publishing Between Authors Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath. I read the original on his blog & then got a copy for free off Smashwords, but now it's $1 on Amazon. It brings up a lot of points about book publishing in general & how it is changing.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-10-15 00:00:00 Kosta Apostolov A very cool political thriller, set mostly in Silicon Valley, about the struggle to gain possession of a new high-tech encryption code. I had a great time cheering on Alex, Sarah, and Ben, the main characters, as they tried to evade a shadowy crew of villains from one end of the Bay Area to the other. The scenes in North Beach, San Francisco's Little Italy neighborhood, were especially vivid and enjoyable. I also appreciate the author's underlying message about the dangers of top-secret U.S. government surveillance programs here at home, and the risks of U.S. covert intelligence operations overseas. Not quite a LeCarre-esque literary masterwork for the ages, but definitely a fun and relevant read. Five not-so-top-secret stars!