Order PITFALL here
There's an old saying that the past is like a shadow: although it had no real substance, it's always at your heels. That's how it is with me.
I'm one of these guys you'll find yapping about the Bushido of artistic creation at your local bar. There's a certain level of purity of intent necessary to write great stories. In order words, you can't force it. It's against human nature though, not to try and recreate your most unforgettable experience, so that's why self-defined badass characters exist. PITFALL, by Cameron Bane is a thriller in the tradition of the Jack Reacher, author Lee Child's arrogant and self-aware killing machine with a kind heart. In fact, PITFALL is one of the numerous attempt to create a more pleasant spin off Jack Reacher, which is not very successful.
Whatever you might say about Lee Child, he's got a winning formula figured out.
John Brenner is an Army Veteran looking to quietly reintegrate American society. When industrialist Jacob Cahill mandates him to find his missing daughter though, self-preservation instinct go out the window and Brenner goes back to doing what he does best: putting himself in harm's way for others. This case turns out to be way more than just a simple missing person investigation. Brenner tumbles an otherworldly conspiracy involving powerful people that could very well be the end of him. Whoever is keeping Sarah Cahill prisoner obvously don't know who they're dealing with though, John Brenner is no ordinary man.
It sounds like a pretty self-evident by-the-numbers thriller, right? Believe me, it's not. It has a couple important issues that undermined my enjoyment of PITFALL. For example, the use of first person narration doesn't work here. Being a badass who narrates his own adventures is weird, but a badass with a sense of humor that narrates his own stuff can get downright irritating, because nothing really seems like a menace to him. Brenner, most often than not, sounds like that guy at the bar inventing stories about his life. It's important to establish a proper distance with heroic actions, which PITFALL doesn't have.
It's a major issue, but it could've been worked around by using a comic book-ish angle. There's a great antagonist named Boneless in PITFALL, that could've made it work. Unfortunately, that leads us to the second major issue of the book: the support cast's dialogue. It's weak. I don't know how else to put it. Here's an example. Brenner is haunted by the memory of his wife - a cool, but rather standard quirk for Army vet protagonists in general - here's what she says to him.
My wife's sobs ripped me apart. "Why John? Why weren't you there when we needed you the most?" The shame was too much. She was right.
I'm sure you've heard that dialogue line about a million times before, too. Using pre-made dialogue lines like this tremendously undermines the strength of your cast, because it doesn't carry any sense of an identity. There are several lines like that in the novel. John Brenner is by far the most complex and most interesting character in PITFALL, which would be fine if the lack of interesting confrontation didn't undermine his own character development. Brenner is the most interesting character, but I didn't find him THAT interesting. It's not that uncommon of a problem though for first person narration. The support cast dialogue issue just makes it more apparent.
Now that my grievances are out of the way, I want to say that there is an audience for a book like PITFALL. I don't think it's a book that shouldn't exist. It didn't insult my intelligence or anything lie that. It's a beach read for casual readers who don't obsess over nuts and bolts as much as I do, but if you're reading this blog you're probably as obsessive as I am, so you need to know what you're getting into with PITFALL. Half of the game is about managing your expectations, right? As polarizing as the writing of Lee Child can be at times, there is still no viable alternative to what he does.