The Savannah Project: A Thriller

Chuck Barrett
Switchback Publishing (2010)
ISBN 9781936214075
Reviewed by Olivera Baumgartner-Jackson for Reader Views (12/10) 

 

Chuck Barrett’s “The Savannah Project” grabs your undivided attention from the very first sentence and does not let you truly exhale until the very last, chilling-to-the core line some 300 pages later. I’ll give you the first sentence here, but for the last one you’ll just have to go get the book… This is how this wild ride starts, “Jake cradled her head in his lap, hand cramped from applying pressure to stem the fountain gushing from her neck.”

Although I had no clue who Jake was and whose head he was cradling, I wanted and needed to find out more. Usually books with such graphic violence do not attract me, but for some strange reason this one turned out to be an exception.

Jake Pendleton, an investigator for NTSB, is spending some badly needed quality time with his fiancée when he is called to Savannah, Georgia to investigate an aircraft accident. The accident, which at first appears to be quite run-of-the-mill, turns out to be anything but. Since Jake is not willing to pretend there are no suspicious circumstances and more than the usual share of rather unlikely “coincidences,” he sets off a veritable avalanche of secrets, violence and treachery beyond compare.  Aided by an unlikely partner, Gregg Kaplan, the air controller who was the last person in contact with the airplane which crashed, Jake sets out to untangle the webs of deceit and to find a vicious killer. Nothing is as it seems, nobody is who you thought them to be. Nothing is sacred. Nobody is safe.

What set this novel apart, in addition to the sharp writing, snappy dialogue and well-fleshed out characters, was the author’s technical expertise. Mr. Barrett’s experiences as a pilot and air traffic controller contributed greatly to a particularly realistic and graphic feel in this truly unforgettable and gripping thriller. And I never knew that “black boxes” are actually Day-Glo orange. Did you?

While “The Savannah Project” would undeniably appeal to the lovers of thrillers containing high level of violence, it should also appeal to anybody who simply enjoys a really well written story. Just be mindful – you might view your friends and neighbors a bit differently after you are done with this one…

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