The 500

Robert Harris is the among the best writers of thrillers and historical fiction. His recent The Fear Index was, typically for him, smart and exciting. Matthew Quirk enters the field with The 500, which is neither all that smart nor very exciting. The action makes sense only in the most basic ways -- yes, that character could have crawled under that porch and listened to two people talking above him -- but very little of it is believable. This is due to poor writing and a lack of organic development. Given this same plot outline, Harris could have produced, as they say on the flaps, a ripping yarn.