The List (Konrath/Kilborn Collective, #1) By J.A. Konrath

J.A. Konrath ↠ 3 read

ASIN B00267T89E moved to the most recent edition here

A billionaire Senator with money to burn...
A thirty year old science experiment, about to be revealed...
Seven people, marked for death, not for what they know, but for what they are...

History is about to repeat itself

THE LIST is a bit of a departure for Konrath. It's a technothriller about a group of ten people who each have tattoos of numbers on the bottoms their feet, and don't know why. One of them, a Chicago Homicide cop named Tom Mankowski, has had one of these strange tattoos since birth. When he investigates a violent murder and discovers the victim also has a tattooed number, it sets the ball rolling for an adventure of historic proportions. To say more would give away too much.

Like the Jack Daniels series, THE LIST combines laugh out loud humor with serious suspense and thrills.

THE LIST is approximately 82,000 words long, and is specially formatted for Kindle with an active table of contents. The List (Konrath/Kilborn Collective, #1)

This is exactly the type of thriller I am addicted to reading; and Konrath nailed it dead centre. I’ve never read any of his books before, so I was pleasantly surprised to find this author has expertly crafted a novel riddled with scientific experiments gone haywire, intertwined with political conspiracies; antagonists so terrifying you won’t want to sleep with the lights off for at least a week. “The List” is incredibly entertaining and had me guessing right until the end – and all my guesses were for naught as nothing was what it seemed. A brilliantly formulated plot with an utterly shocking and unpredictable ending, held me glued to the edge of my seat for hours on end!

I loved all of the characters. Well, all the good ones, at least. Imagine meeting Abe Lincoln, Joan of Arc, Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein (to name a few) in real life. That would be awesome, right? And can you imagine Joan of Arc as a Hollywood producer trained in martial arts who can kick the heck out of…oh, let’s say, Vlad the Impaler? No, that’s not a spoiler. That’s only a microscopic tip of the iceberg called “The List”. Because the reader is catapulted headfirst into the action in the first chapter and is given so many hints at what’s to come later in the story, my one fear was that it would lose momentum half way through, and then peter out to a mediocre, unsatisfying conclusion. Lucky for me and everyone else who reads this adrenaline-spiking thriller, this does not happen at all. “The List” starts out fast, driven by clever writing, witty, pragmatic characters and knee-jerking plot twists, and manages to keep its breakneck pacing throughout while building up to a stunner conclusion that leaves you wanting more of this magnificent writer’s extraordinary creations.

I’m a huge fan of horror, so naturally Stephen King and Dean Koontz are tops on my list, but as from today J.A. Konrath will be added to that list of authors who have perfected the art of sending chills down my spine with their fear-inducing works. “The List” is mostly a thriller but has enough shocking scenes and malevolence in this fast paced heart-stopping story to satisfy any horror fanatic’s lust for the macabre. I will most definitely be reading more of Konrath’s books!
311 I did enjoy that! This is a thriller with quite a bit of humour. Of course it’s preposterous, Konrath writes dark thrillers and horror - what would you expect? Just park your disbelief at the door and jump in.

Tom Mankowski is a Chicago homicide detective. When he arrives at a particular murder scene he is a bit taken aback because the victim, who’s is minus a head, has a one inch high blue number tattooed on his heel (left I think). Tom also has a number (different) tattooed on his heel. What does it mean? Tom and his partner Roy (without a number) set off on an epic adventure to work it out and save the world. It turns out that there are 10 individuals who have been cloned (not exactly but the book attempts to clarify that) from famous and long dead people. Unfortunately, along with some noble historic figures (Tom Mankowski is a clone of Thomas Jefferson for example) there are also some ignoble figures - Attila the Hun, Vlad the Impaler and Jack the Ripper to be precise!

Unsurprisingly the bad guys are trying to kill the good guys. The whole mess is a result of some rich dude and his egomaniacal plans for world domination. That’s all you need to know. Is it plausible - not a chance. Is it fun and enjoyable to read - hell yes! 311 I've been following Joe's blog for quite sometime as I think he has some great thing to say to new and aspiring writers. When he lowered his price to $0.99 I took the dip and really enjoyed it. This is not a book to change your life its just a nice entertaining way to spend a few hours and there is absoltuely nothing wrong with that. I enjoyed it and when have even if I paid $4.95 instead of $0.99...Guess I'll go buy a few more Konrath's to put some more money in his pocket to make up for the cheap read. 311 Be aware that I read the first 1/4 of this book and stopped. This review does contain giveaways from that first portion.

I was drawn in by the summary of this book. It sounded very intriguing - tattoos, murders - what would the connection be??? When I started reading this, the dialogue and writing style was so crude and basic that I almost stopped 5 pages in. I decided to give it a chance, though, and continued reading. The story jumped around constantly, the dialogue/banter was VERY cliche, and the premise of the story was absurd. One of the targets got attacked twice in the same night because, after reporting the first attack, the police let her go home.....all by herself. Right. By page 47 you already have learned that each of them is a clone of a famous person from history, the killer is Jack the Ripper, and one of the officers has been injured in the butt requiring the use of a donut and pain killers. YAWN!! It got so bad I couldn't even read any further. Don't waste your time on this one. 311 It’s mostly a thriller but has enough shocking scenes and malevolence in this fast-paced story to satisfy most horror fanatic's lust for the macabre. The twists were unexpected, yet well thought up and written, So why the 3 stars instead of 4 or 5? While it was everything, I said before, it was a little too much on the “science fiction” side for me...at least I hope this story is entirely science fiction without one single grain of truth in it. It was silly in places and unbelievably far-fetched in others...but I think it would make a great movie...and it wasn't at all a “bad” book...just not for me. 311

This is my first time reading J.A. Konrath/Jack Killborn. Now that I see he's written many many books I realize I'll be spending many many dollars to download them to my kindle and read them. After this book I'm an instant fan.

The premise of the book is a little out there. A billionaire senator started a shady cloning experiment 30 years ago. Now, 30 years later a series of murders drags several very unlikely people together in order to save their lives and ultimately, much more when they finally find out why they were tattooed with numbers on their feet from birth. A cop and his partner, an LA movie producer and a man who makes fishing lures for a living. Unlikely bedfellows yes, but do they have what it takes to solve the mystery of their tattoos?

This book is part thriller and quite honestly has a buddy cop movie feel to it. The interplay between the characters is organic, feels natural and in many cases is laugh out loud funny. Konrath writes in such a fluid style that the chapters just fly right on by.

As for the scientific aspect of the novel, I can't really comment on that as I have no clue about cloning DNA and all that it entails but Konrath puts enough science speak in there to at least make it sound plausible. As long as you suspend disbelief and enjoy the wild ride I don't think there's any need to break it down any further than that.

This is just a great, fun and fast paced read that stands primarily on strong and well thought out and well written characters.

Great book and I'm officially a fan! 311 The Audible narration was good.

The story, however, didn't work for me. What was meant to be funny left me detached and somewhat put off. The graphic slasher parts were over the top gruesome. Although I do have to commend the author for keeping the majority off page. Finally, the central mad scientist plot came across weak. A plot that has been done and overdone. A plot done better by many.

No, this one didn't work for me.
311 The first sentence on Chapter 1 is “I found the head”. How can I not love it immediately?

Unique plot? Check.

Tons of actions? Check. Almost as much as the sweet mind-boggling actions in ‘Draculas’, but unfortunately not as gorrific as it.

Level of gore? Moderate by Konrath’s usual standard. The impaling and the decapitation were scary, sure, but then again, they weren’t vividly presented to us readers as in Endurance. It felt more like a fleeting moment of a glance at an ugly carcass rather than being lusciously described about the gore-in-process. But, it’s okay, whenever I felt the need of an uproarious-vivid-gore-image nudging me, I always pictured in my head that splendid moment of Vlad being “erased” by a bus. I did hate that scumbag terribly.

“Pinned between the wheel and the street, Vlad’s lower half was scraped away, leaving a wide streak of gore for almost thirty yards, like a big red skid mark.”
This left me with a giddy feeling and it says a lot about my mental condition, yes?

Suspense? Check. Now I’m kind of used to Konrath’s suspense style. Sometimes they’re just false signals. It reduced the suspense a little bit, though, because you could detect a false signal right away. Well, I don’t think there’s much false signal in this one.

Character likability? Check to the max. I even loved the ostrich in this story!

Hilarious? Hell yeah. Bert and Roy nearly killed me.

Safe to say, it's an UTTERLY ENTERTAINING READ. Not as scary as Endurance, but heck, it's a crime thriller (with some science fiction theme), not horror.

Note: The first half of this book oozed out a strong vibe of a good thriller, but in the end I think it's more of a mix of thriller, a few droplets of horror, a spoonful of sci-fi, and a massive injection of HILARIOUSNESS! 311 Now that was just a helluva lotta fun! Has the usual Konrath humor, action, fun characters.
Can't wait to read the sequel. 311 Well that was just all kinds of entertaining. I could definitely see this as a movie. The characters were amusing, sometimes surprising, and so much fun. Thoroughly enjoyed the premise of this book. So, nurture or nature? A bit of both? 311