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Dead Lines: A Novel of Life ... After Death

1 rating: 2.0

Ghost Tale by Greg Bear

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Tags: Books, Suspense Fiction, Greg Bear, Ghost Tales

Author: Greg Bear

Genre: Suspense

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Date Published: June 28, 2005

1 review about Dead Lines: A Novel of Life ... After Death

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Don't Waste Your Money on This!

May 6, 2009

by MichaelN

Rating:

This book had some interesting concepts but slogged along at an excrutiatingly slow pace. Peter Russell, a director of soft porn films, learns that his best friend Phil has died suddenly of a heart attack. To top it off his daughter is kidnapped and murdered.

Phil takes on periodic work from a wierd, rich, sickly, entrapaneur. On one job, he wants Peter to pay $10,000 to a woman if she can answer a question. The old man's assistant, Michelle seems to make overtures to Peter. What any of this has to do with the plot, I am not sure.

Peter meets a guy at the old man's mansion who is trying to sell the old man on a new type of cell phone. He gives one to Peter. It seems the more Peter uses it the more wierd things he starts to see. Like old men that come up to him and ask him questions and then do the same thing (kind of like a movie rewind) over, before vanishing. Apparently by using the cell-phone he is disturbing the dead. The book continues with Peter going to work at an old prison (where a lot of executions took place) so there are plenty of dead people to disturb.

The plot is pretty strange and disjointed like it was written by someone on drugs. I realize Bear was trying to show how a new technology could be dangerous and tried to force the technology into a ghost story but it just doesn't work.

Read Hell House by Richard Matheson if you want a good ghost tale with a hint of technology.

I had a real difficult time finishing the rest of this book.

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