Product Description

From the bestselling author of Ice Station, another dizzyingly fast-paced adventure thriller featuring Shane Schofield. Here the hero of Ice Station is sent to a top-secret US Air Force installation in the Utah desert. After the notoriety of his recent adventures in Antarctica, the Marine Corps decide they want him well out of the media's reach - so assign him to the US President's helicopter known as Marine One. In this new role, Schofield will be escorting the visiting President on an inspection tour of the base itself. But, already waiting and watching, there are certain people there who don't plan on the head of state ever leaving the place alive...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #883002 in Books
• Published on: 2001-11-09
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 512 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Matthew Reilly's Area 7 shows an even more concentrated skill at keeping us turning the pages than his previous bestsellers Ice Station and Temple. He knows just the kind of book he wants to write, and he's repeatedly said that the key agenda behind his kinetic thrillers is to keep the reader's pulse quickened throughout.

In Area 7 America's most secret base is the eponymous Area 7, and hidden deep in the Utah desert, this high-tech Air Force installation is visited by very few unauthorised personnel. But when the President of the United States pays a call, he encounters a nasty surprise: a hostile force is waiting inside. And as mayhem erupts, Schofield, a young marine in the President's entourage, finds himself obliged to live up to his reputation: that he's a good man in a storm. Reilly's speciality is the steady accumulation of cliffhanging situations (as he demonstrated so readily in Temple) and he pulls off the trick with his usual aplomb in this one. If the President here seems considerably brighter than the current real-life incumbent, that's a minor distraction in a thriller that maintains a Rottweiler-like grip on our attention:

The flashlight was the only thing that saved Book II's life. Primarily because it blinded the man on top of the decompression chamber, if only for a moment. That was all the time Book II needed. His shotgun boomed, blasting their commando's goggles to pieces, sending him flying off the top of the chamber. It was a small victory, for at that exact moment, gunfire erupted around the darkened room as a legion of dark figures emerged...

About the Author
Matthew Reilly was born in Sydney in 1974 and studied Law at the University of New South Wales. He has written both both screenplays and magazine articles, and recently optioned the film rights to his first novel, Contest. His second and third novels, Ice Station and Temple, became No. 1 bestsellers in his native Australia, and went on to enjoy huge success internationally. The author still lives in Sydney, and keeps on writing.

Customer Reviews

tosh but enjoyable tosh!!!
I picked up this book with some trepidation after reading a few reviews but thankfully the result was well worth the effort. Yes elements of the story are somewhat too far fetched but it is no less unbelievable than a series of 24. The heroes continually get into ever increasingly tighter spots but manage to outsmart their opponents at every turn. Mr Reilly has produced an easy reading novel that is fun cross bred with 24 and Die Hard for a thrill a minute ride that helped me to finish this book much quicker than I ever manage to with a Clancy novel. I enjoyed it and have now started the follow up SCARECROW to see what new scrapes Mr Reilly can conjure up.

You Get Exactly Whats on the cover The Fastest Action Packed Book In History
Well in my opinion anyway.
Forget Mission Impossible this is Mission Impossible and then some, with all sorts of action, presidents with ticking timebombs in them, missiles waiting to launch and some maniac wanting to create some kind of genocide. Granted Scarecrow and a lot of his colleagues would put Steve Austin (the bionic man) through his paces I felt that the worst part of the book was the end the last word on the end of the last page as the book certainly takes you to a different world full of action heroes and heroines and villains that are so over the top.

Get this book now.
Thats if your blood pressure can stand it.

More than just action, action, action
"Area 7" is a thriller containing an incredible amount of high-octane action. This huge amount of action, and the lack of realism in many of the things that happen, requires a great deal of suspension of disbelief on your part if you want to enjoy the book.

But there's more to "Area 7" than just page after page of action.

True, most of the book consists of action scenes with bullets flying everywhere and things exploding and a fantastic line-up of various groups of really nasty bad guys who are all out kill the good guys (and each other) in the most violent and horrifying way possible.

It's also true that the story is not particularly believable, nor are the characters very well developed. The bad guys in particular are nothing more than cardboard figures, and the good guys aren't much better when it comes to resembling real people.

But Matthew Reilly keeps you reading despite these weaknesses because he has a couple of tricks up his sleeve.

The plot is actually pretty interesting (despite being unrealistic), and there are a large number of imaginative plot elements and very creative twists and turns. Several times after you thought you'd worked out what's going on you discover that things are more complicated and the bad guys are more devious than you realized.

I especially liked the start of the book, where the leading bad guy, U.S. Air Force General Charles "Caesar" Russell, is executed in Leavenworth prison for treason and murder. But the execution doesn't "take" - as soon as his dead body is delivered to his Air Force cohorts they revive him! And at the same time we're informed that the newly inaugurated President of the USA has some kind of super-miniature electronic device implanted on his heart!

From there on the book goes somewhat downhill until around the middle, where the plot becomes better fleshed out and we realize that things aren't as simple-minded as we originally thought. It's because of these clever developments in the story line that I'm giving "Area 7" four stars instead of the three that I'd been planning for most of the book.

I'm also giving plus points for the many drawings and maps that make it more interesting to follow the action. And I like the fact that several of the good "guys" are actually good gals, and that they're just as tough and ingenious as their male comrades.

At the end of the book there's a seven-page interview with Matthew Reilly, and I must admit that I like this sort of thing because I like reading about how authors go about creating the books they write.

In conclusion, if you like imaginative (albeit unrealistic) thrillers with lots of action, action, action, and are willing to almost totally suspend your disbelief, then "Area 7" should entertain you.

Rennie Petersen