No Safe Place: A Thriller (Michael Gannon Series, 4)

No Safe Place felt a lot like a James Patterson novel that wasn’t edited for plot flow. The story starts out with a young college student named Olivia who sees something she shouldn’t one night. We know there are bad men but don’t find out until much later what they were up to and what happened to Olivia. Almost all of the book is about the ex-military, ex-cop protagonist Mike who helps his childhood crush, Colleen, now an investigator, find out what really happened to Olivia.

I felt the story started off well and I was interested in what Olivia saw, but that part of the story fizzled as the reader is forced to follow Mike who is a little too egotistical for his own good. It took a long time to get back to Olivia’s story. The book focused a lot on the henchman named Shaw trying to kill Mike and blow things up. I wish the author had developed the backstory about what happened to Olivia because it left me feeling like that part of it was skimmed over very quickly. Overall, the characters are a bit obnoxious and the plot lost it’s structure.