Penzler Pick, June 2001: Ridley Pearson, who has written 14 previous books, many of them featuring his Seattle cop Lou Boldt, ups the ante in his latest thriller.

Northern Union Railroad has been experiencing a series of accidents with their freight trains, but it is not until they find a freight car covered with blood that they call in outside help. Peter Tyler used to be a cop until he nearly beat a black man to death and lost his badge. When he gets a second chance via an old friend at the National Transportation Safety Board, he drives a convertible through a snowstorm with the top down (he suffers from claustrophobia) to view the freight car. He arrives at the scene to discover that he will have to deal with Northern Union's own security officer, Nell Priest, a black woman who already knows Tyler's history.

Meanwhile, Umberto Alvarez, the train wrecker, is systematically working his way towards his ultimate wreck, Northern's F.A.S.T. train due to make its maiden run from New York to Washington, D.C. Alvarez lost his wife and children when their car stalled between the gates at a crossing and were crushed by one of Northern's trains. Although Northern Union was cleared of all responsibility and Alvarez's wife was found negligent, he doesn't think that's so.

As Peter Tyler's investigation proceeds, he begins to come to the same conclusion. Closing in on Alvarez, he tries to interview the crossing guard who was on duty the day the wreck occurred. On arriving at the man's apartment, he finds the man bludgeoned to death--with the same stick with which Tyler beat the black man all that time ago. It's time to get paranoid. Who at Northern is covering up and what role does Nell play in all this? As always in a Ridley Pearson thriller, the action doesn't stop until the final page. --Otto Penzler

From Publishers Weekly
Pearson forsakes his franchise character, Seattle police detective Lou Boldt, for a railroad thriller that wobbles on its tracks. The hero here is Peter Tyler, a former Washington, D.C., homicide cop who was fired many say unjustly for beating a child-abuse suspect. Desperate for money, Tyler gets thrown a bone by an old friend who handles investigations for the National Transportation Safety Board. Handed a three-day contract, Tyler is assigned to check out a messy murder aboard a boxcar on a Northern Union Railroad line in rural Illinois. Nothing about the murder makes sense, but more intriguing to Tyler are the persistent rumors about why so many NUR trains have derailed in the past year. When Tyler turns up a suspect not only for the murder but also the derailments, he quickly finds that his services are no longer needed. Helped only by a railroad security officer, the lovely Nell Priest, Tyler follows the trail to New York City. That's where he believes the murderous vandal, who's seeking revenge for the railroad-related deaths of his wife and twin daughters, plans to sabotage the grand opening of NUR's most ambitious project: a bullet train connecting New York with the nation's capital. Pearson (Middle of Nowhere) keeps up his usual breakneck pace, and for excitement alone, his latest is good fun. But the story is marred by several false notes, imponderable plot twists and a clumsily executed love affair giving a squishy feel to an otherwise hard-edged thriller. Of greater concern, however, is Tyler. He simply never emerges as a character of substance or distinction. (July)Forecast: Despite Pearson's bestselling clout, a major/ad promo campaign and an eight-city author tour, tepid reviews and weak word of mouth may limit sales of this lackluster, Boldt-less effort.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Pearson (No Witnesses, etc.) has written another terrific thriller, this time without Lou Boldt and company. Two years after his family was killed when a train collided with their car, Umberto Alvarez is still grieving. Knowing that the train company is at fault but unable to prove it, he decides to take revenge. Shortly before a new high-speed commuter line is unveiled, derailments start plaguing the railroads. Ex-homicide detective Pete Tyler, who is determined to redeem himself after being dismissed from the force, takes on the case as a temporary hire for the National Transportation Safety Board. As this fabulous novel progresses, the lines of good and evil blur. Another essential acquisition from Pearson, this is highly recommended for all public libraries. Jeff Ayers, Seattle P.L. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
Most authors should stick to writing and leave audio performances to the professionals. Pearson is an exception. True, he's not as accomplished as Dick Hill, who has narrated most of Pearson's thrillers, but he's darn good. Pearson's latest is about a federal agent's search for a man who derails trains because his family was killed in a railroad accident. As the hunt intensifies, the listener begins to believe that railroad management is more criminal than the suspect. Pearson's unusual gritty voice captures the most exciting moments--and there are many, especially at the conclusion as a prototype train is barreling along at 180 miles per hour. Since he's the author, Pearson has an edge on performers because he knows what's coming next, and he uses his knowledge to the listener's benefit. A.L.H. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
One of Pearson's previous stand-alone thrillers, Hard Fall (1992), concerned terrorists who target airlines; this time it's railroads. Determined to expose a railroad company's malfeasance in the deaths of his wife and child, Umberto Alvarez has rigged the derailment of multiple freight trains (without loss of life), and now he plans a similar fate for the maiden voyage of the company's new bullet train. Tracking Alvarez is Peter Tyler, a freelance investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board. The two engage in an elaborate cat-and-mouse game that, typical for Pearson, features fascinating forensic detail. Complicating matters is Tyler's dawning realization that he, like Alvarez, is a victim of the railroad's cover-up. Both the thriller plot and the human drama seem just a bit more predictable than in the author's recent Lou Boldt-Daphne Matthews novels, but that is only to say that even Pearson has his hands full meeting the expectations of his previous work. Lesser Pearson remains near the top of the genre and is sure to draw a crowd at the reserve desk. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM OUR EDITORS

Stephen King describes Ridley Pearson as "a killer combination" of Patricia D. Cornwell and John D. MacDonald with a dash of Thomas Harris thrown in. Pearson's portrait of an aggrieved ex-cop possesses an often-terrifying plausibility.

ANNOTATION

From renowned author Ridley Pearson comes this edge-of-your-seat thriller about one man's struggle to bring down the corporation responsible for his family's deaths.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Every six or eight weeks, another train derailment. Images fill our TV sets and cover the front pages. "Driver error," "mechanical failure," "a failed signal" - the rail company provides the reasons behind the accidents. But they are hiding the truth." "Umberto Alvarez, a suspected terrorist, blames Northern Union Railroad for the crossing guard collision that killed his wife and twins two years earlier. He believes he and his family are the victims of a massive cover-up. The truth is nothing but a publicity stunt." "Peter Tyler is an ex-cop looking to redeem himself after being suspended from the force for an assault that was taken out of context. Now a "temp" investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, Tyler sees an opportunity to jump-start his career. The truth of what happened that night will never be known, but a woman who steps out of a snowstorm and into his life may just hold the key to unlocking the past and allowing Tyler to move on."--BOOK JACKET.

SYNOPSIS

Parallel Lies is a riveting tale about a grieving widower bent on sabotaging the railroad company responsible for the deaths of his wife and children. Packed with action, laced with romance, brimming with heart-stopping suspense, and marked by the intelligence and humanity that make Pearson's novels stand apart from others in the genre, Parallel Lies will give reviewers and readers yet another reason to hail him as "the best damn thriller writer on the planet" (Booklist).

FROM THE CRITICS

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

a strong cinematic quality to the action, that the novel is good vacation reading for summer travelers-even those taking the train.

Book Magazine

Following on the heels of Middle of Nowhere, the latest in the excellent Lou Bolt series, Parallel Lies features Peter Tyler, a recently disgraced D.C. homicide cop who, to hear him tell it, was just having a bad day when he beat a child abuser to a pulp. Tyler caught the man in the act of swinging a baby against the wall, the way you'd beat an old rug to clean it. After the incident, Tyler lost his job, his wife, his house and even his Norton motorcycle. Now it's the middle of winter and he's found a freelance gig at the National Transportation Safety Board, investigating a blood-splattered boxcar in a snowy St. Louis rail yard. Tyler doesn't buy into the prevailing story offered by the railroad, and he begins to point out inconsistencies. He learns that there is a man named Alvarez who has caused a series of train derailments in the past eighteen months. Tyler's unhappy that the railroad has been holding out on him, and he does some more investigating on his own, eventually gathering information that may very well put his life in danger. Early on in the book, Tyler meets the security executive for the railroad, Nell Priest, a drop-dead-gorgeous African-American woman. Soon, Tyler and Priest begin to fall for each other and eventually begin a romance (in the process of searching for clues, Tyler makes a number of mental notes about the security executive's fine legs). Beyond emphasizing the color of Priest's skin, Pearson doesn't quite know how to handle this last fact. Both characters make a series of token efforts to confront the problems that race might hold for each of them, but these moments always ring hollow. This book's casual style simply isn'tup to the task of handling a serious issue that, in this case, can't seem to be shrugged off. Tyler and Priest dance around anything as authentically important as race, but they have plenty of time to work out a plan for stopping Alvarez. Introduced into this mix is a supertrain, the so-called Fast Track, whose inaugural run is being sponsored by the same railroad company that Tyler is investigating. Based on the French and Japanese models, the Fast Track will zip from New York to Washington in about the same time it would take a plane. It doesn't take a genius, of course, to figure out that Alvarez will go after the Fast Track. We know Alvarez from the first couple of chapters to be a smart, even decent, man, a former high school science teacher who was tipped over the edge after his wife and children were killed when their train derailed due to a faulty crossing gate. The railroad, as it turns out, is responsible for the crossing gate's failure, and there's been a fairly intense cover-up engineered by the head of security, Keith O'Malley, an ex-Marine and an old buddy of Tyler's boss at the National Transportation Safety Board. Whatever anguish exists beneath the surface of this book merely manifests itself as quirky behavior on Tyler's part—or as a mild case of defensiveness. Tyler never comes off as a truly tormented character. He rents convertibles because he has recurring bouts of claustrophobia and rides around with the top down in the dead of winter. Of course, when it later becomes important to sneak inside the rail yard, Tyler unflinchingly slips into the trunk of a car. In other words, his problems aren't real, they're merely plot contrivances—weak ones at that. Tyler never seems to experience problems that the healing powers of a good woman, for example, wouldn't solve. I recently heard that Pearson considered writing this book from the point of view of brash Seattle detective John LaMoia, a secondary character in the Lou Bolt series. Whether or not this is true, the impulse sounds about right. LaMoia is a ridiculous character who wears expensive cowboy boots, drives a Trans-Am and chases just about every woman he spots. Peter Tyler has LaMoia's simple, brutish charm. Once you envision babe Nell Priest through the eyes of someone like LaMoia, all of Tyler's own leering begins to make better sense. But characters like LaMoia don't get starring roles for a reason, which makes it even harder to accept Pearson's decision to have someone as one-dimensional as Tyler carrying this book. It really is stunning how much less Parallel Lies has to offer than many of Pearson's other novels: the half-hearted, even awkward characterizations, the flat, often dull language, not to mention a story line that asks the reader to switch tracks, so to speak, very late down the line. This book—exhausted from carrying the deadweight of a caricatured Priest, not to mention Tyler and O'Malley—in the end lacks any real energy. Perhaps Pearson figured that he didn't need convincing characters when he had a story about a runaway train. But the author's plot machinations couldn't revive this book, which, unfortunately, better resembles a train wreck. —Randy Michael Signor (Excerpted Review)

Library Journal

Pearson (No Witnesses, etc.) has written another terrific thriller, this time without Lou Boldt and company. Two years after his family was killed when a train collided with their car, Umberto Alvarez is still grieving. Knowing that the train company is at fault but unable to prove it, he decides to take revenge. Shortly before a new high-speed commuter line is unveiled, derailments start plaguing the railroads. Ex-homicide detective Pete Tyler, who is determined to redeem himself after being dismissed from the force, takes on the case as a temporary hire for the National Transportation Safety Board. As this fabulous novel progresses, the lines of good and evil blur. Another essential acquisition from Pearson, this is highly recommended for all public libraries. Jeff Ayers, Seattle P.L. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

AudioFile

Most authors should stick to writing and leave audio performances to the professionals. Pearson is an exception. True, he's not as accomplished as Dick Hill, who has narrated most of Pearson's thrillers, but he's darn good. Pearson's latest is about a federal agent's search for a man who derails trains because his family was killed in a railroad accident. As the hunt intensifies, the listener begins to believe that railroad management is more criminal than the suspect. Pearson's unusual gritty voice captures the most exciting moments--and there are many, especially at the conclusion as a prototype train is barreling along at 180 miles per hour. Since he's the author, Pearson has an edge on performers because he knows what's coming next, and he uses his knowledge to the listener's benefit. A.L.H. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine

Cleveland Plain Dealer