Shock Wave -- Shockingly Competent!

Title: Shock Wave

Author: John Sanford

Progress: 27%

Platform: Kindle

Amazon Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

NYT BS Hardcover List: #8 (former number 1)

Book 2 out of 107

John Sanford has written 36 books. John Sanford's Prey series has made him one of the most successful thriller writers working today. John Sanford is not John Sanford. His real name is actually John Camp, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.

John was born in 1944 and doesn't seem enthusiastic about social media. His official website feels like it was made in 1995. It is almost all text with a few book covers for art.

There is a Facebook fan club for Mr Sanford, with all of 2,700 members in it. The author doesn't seem to have stopped by. I'm guessing someone at his publisher made the page, and John doesn't really care. He's 67 years old and every book he writes makes lots of money. He doesn't need to coddle his fans, or blog, or tweet, or do anything he doesn't feel like.

All he does is write good books. 

Shock Wave, so far, is one of those. It is conventional, sticking to all the guidelines of thriller writing.

Let's review the check list...

1. Male lead character with charm, good looks, a way with the ladies and a strong sense of morality he keeps disguised with his casual demeanor? Check.

2. Horrific crime that kicks the story off in a big way? Check.

3. Mystery bad guy that we are going to guess the identity of until about 2/3rds into the book? Check.

4. Rich people? Check.

5. Colorful cast of suspect? Check.

6. Gore? Check.

7. Sex? Not yet, but it's going to happen. I don't think it will reach Sandra Brown levels of explicitness, but who knows! One can only hope.

So yes, it's a by the numbers kind of book. So why is it entertaining? 

Because Mr. Sanford is funny. At times, Shock Wave sneaks up so close to satire it could give it a kiss on the cheek.

The description of the glorious PyeMart offices (a stand in for discount big box stores like Walmart and Target), and the buzzards that circle them and shit on them. The bomb that destroys the boardroom (and kills a woman), but spares the board because they were busy drinking at 9 in the morning. The descriptions of the large women playing volley ball somewhere in rural Minnesota. The pink T-shirt our hero wears to the crime scene, because he's just that cool and that comfortable with himself.

There is a wink to Mr. Sanford's writing, something knowing about it, something that says, "Just because I'm writing a by-the-numbers thriller doesn't mean I can't show off every once in a while."

What have we learned from the first quarter of Shock Wave? 

The formula works. If you stick to what has worked in thousands of other books, you too can probably write a readable thriller. (I'm not saying its easy. Not at all. I am saying its possible.) 

However, if you want to be a bestseller, you probably need to add a little of your own secret sauce. With Mr. Sanford, it seems to be humor. With Sandra Brown, it's sex. With John Hart, it's a flair for language and some insane violence, not to mention a talent for jamming a record number of plot twists into 300 pages.

What will mine be? I'm going to go with cuss words, lots and lots of cuss words. And I'm going to make fun of Star Wars a lot. Publishers, let the bidding war begin!