[.ca] The Fourth Perimeter (ISBN 0446617245)

From Amazon.com:
Wealthy, high-tech entrepreneur Kurt Ford, once a Secret Service agent, doesn't believe that his son, an active agent himself, committed suicide. Using his money and connections, his knowledge of the inner workings of the Secret Service charged with guarding the nation's chief executive, and the computer technology at his command, Ford uncovers a link between a mysterious midnight meeting held by the president and the untimely deaths of the other agents on duty with his son that night. Even worse, he finds evidence pointing to one chilling conclusion: that the president himself had a hand in his son's murder. Vowing to make him pay, Ford uses his thorough knowledge of the Secret Service to undertake an attempt to kill the president and to live to enjoy his revenge, something no other presidential assassin has ever accomplished. And author Tim Green uses his own understanding of how the Secret Service goes about its mission to make the most of a riveting plot, which will give readers who've come to understand and empathize with Ford some extremely tense moments. It's hard not to cast this in one's mind as a movie; it's a juicy, action-packed story with a complex central character that has Harrison Ford written all over it. --Jane Adams

lousy writing, poor characterizations:
This may well be the WORST thriller I've ever read. This book's interesting jacket drew me to it, but thats about the only thing this monumental catastrophe has going for it. Over a lifetime of reading thousands of books, I've only put aside a handful as "too lousy to finish" - those decisions were made with 1/3 of the book remaining. For this one, I'm only 17 pages in (10 of them being prologue), and already want every character to die. This writer has managed to throw every trite, hackneyed, overused and worn out cliche into this book. I found myself wanting to enter it into the Bulwer-Litton Bad Fiction contest - I'm sure it would be a sweep. What an embarrassment - if I could give it a negative rating, I would.

Unlikable characters:
There isn't much "rooting interest" in this book. The main character, Kurt Ford, is (A) simplistically drawn (he has only one thing he cares about), (B) morally suspect (his only response to grief and trauma is a desire to kill people), and, worst of all, (C) kind of stupid: He has unlimited resources, but it never occurs to him to use some of them to investigate a little further before hatching his elaborate revenge plot. Thus, despite supposedly being both a crack former Secret Service agent and a high-tech enterpreneurial genius, he all too easily becomes a patsy for the bad guys. Likewise his girlfriend, supposedly a strong-willed executive, is reduced to being mostly his "enabler." Finally, the underlying political issue supposedly driving events is hugely implausible: An internet tax may or may not be a good idea, but it's not the kind of history-making issue on which the fate of the Republic will depend. On the plus side, the plot moves along reasonably briskly (except for a long, basically irrelevant section about the wife's near-affair with another man), and there are a few good lines. But when the characters are people you wouldn't want to spend much time with in real life, it's hard to feel satisfied at having spent time with them in the book.

Page turner!:
This was truly a page turner in every sense of the word. Full of suspense, surprising twists and turns, and great character development, this book is definitely one to read if you like thrillers.

Oh well...:
I don't know. The concept of this story felt contrived and the rest of the book was trying to convince me that it wasn't. You could almost hear the author asking the 'What ifs' that gave him something to write about. 'What if a former secret serviceman...', 'What if the former secret serviceman wanted revenge against the President...', 'Let's see, Ok, what if that former secret serviceman's son was...' That's it. Write it down. And it isn't a terrible story. It was fleshed out pretty well, but never enough meat to become fully convincing. I couldn't pinpoint what 'The Fourth Perimeter' lacked until I started reading, Paul McElroy's 'TRACON', which had everything this book was missing... the intimate details about the subject that allows a reader to truly experience the events of the story. Maybe if we could have had more inner workings of the secret service and a better portrayal of Kurt Ford's business operations as he divested himself of his software security company, I would have cared more. As it was, the focus is on Kurt Ford's barely contained lunacy while the author tries to hold our interest with justifications for Ford's actions. It didn't work for me. Made me wonder if I could write a better story. Heads 2 stars, tails 3 stars... tails

Good idea - bad execution:
This is a simplistic book in many ways. The "real" bad guy was evident within the first few chapters, the plotting seemed to race along with any regard for buildup or previous action but worse of all, the characters seemed totally unrealistic. The hero seemed to have no grief for his murdered son but kept on with appointments, plans, meetings, sex, etc as if nothing had happened. The trick of killing anyone who could possibly contribute to the depth of the story (agents, policemen, bad girl) was pushed to the extreme. I am glad this was a book at the home we stayed at on the beach and I did not fork over any money.