Review: Nick Pirog tells a great story. Buy his books!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 12, 2013
I first ran across Nick Pirog's work in Unforseen. I spent a couple of days in stitches, laughing my way through a mystery of mayhem about a self-effacing FBI consultant on the trail of a serial killer. Loving the book, I then went hunting for more from Mr. Pirog and found Gray Matter, which picks up his main character, Thomas Prescott, as he travels from Maine, the location of Unforseen, to Seattle where he grew up. In just hours, he finds a dead body and manages to get into trouble with a pack of wolves. Searching for even more Pirog humor and riveting storytelling, I found Arrival, the first of the Maddy series which I have yet to find more of. (What's up with that, Nick?). More searching left me with no further Nick Pirog books until I happened to do an Amazon search just the other day and found both Afrikaans and Oz. Afrikaans turned out to be just as exciting and often humorous as Unforseen and Gray Matter. It's a story of the retired FBI consultant now taking an African cruise with his sister Lacy when the ship is taken over by pirates. However, there's a twist. Or two. Or three. The takeover of the cruise ship is actually a mask for a different crime, which appears to be a quasi-philanthropic endeavor favoring AIDS victims, but is actually a ransom crime that is a cover up for an exploitation of natural resources. Holy crap. I have yet to read Oz, but it's next on my list. At the end of Afrikaans, Nick promised the first 50 people a signed edition of Unforseen if they wrote a review, even a bad one. I note that 34 people have reviewed Afrikaans, so I'll expect to get my first edition hardbound of Unforseen shortly, made out to me and signed. Oh, and let's go on the Maddy series, Nick. No rest for the wicked.In all seriousness, Afrikaans is an excellent book as well as all of the Thomas Prescott series. You can't go wrong reading Nick Pirog's work.