I received my copy of this book as an LibraryThing Early Reviewer.

I'd rate this book as being (maybe) OK, at best. It was a tedious read for me: too slow-paced. The whole storyline about the strike was a waste of time -- I guess the author wanted to rant about unfair big corporations. Nick (the protagonist) is a jerk and a creep - self-obsessed in the extreme content to live off a successful woman while complaining about having to look after his dying father. He was just plain annoying.

I think the basic crime story could be salvaged with a major edit, but absent that I'd suggest giving this book a pass. ( )

An enjoyable read which challenges one's values on how far is too far? The young anarchists who are prepared to maim ad damage property to get their eco-warrior message across to the youngster who believes the same messages and will try to protect his friends but doesn't step across the line to injuring others. The main character is torn between protecting the youngster with a conscience; telling the truth though his journalism; finding himself after a disastrous marriage; being loyal to a lifelong friend and trying to do the best for his father ... and somehow managing to end up feeling he has failed again and again.

The industrial relations dispute backdrop lends an air of realism; the urges of the young eco-warriors to turn the attention to their messages are not so far fetched .., a believable tale of modern morals and belated coming of age. ( )

All in all, this is pretty solid crime-thriller writing. The story threads – Nick's relationship with his dying, cantankerous father, his odd friendship with an old friend's teenage son, the industrial action hijacked by various gangs of activists – are masterfully woven together. I always like a book that can make things matter on both a personal and wider level, and MacLean succeeds here with aplomb. His depiction of an initial strike by the city's janitors spiralling out of control as activist and anarchist groups co-opt the dispute to further their own agenda is well-drawn. I enjoyed Nick's internal reasoning, and his debates with his teenage friend, about the ethics of direct action weighed up against the need for change – it felt very true to life.

The actual crime isn't clear until quite late on in the book, but I didn't mind that. It could have felt very slow-paced, but the build-up to that point was so well handled that it managed to maintain a good pace. On the other hand, the ending felt a bit rushed: once the action arrives, it's all over within a few pages, with one character unceremoniously killed off via an off-hand sentence at the end of a chapter.

I did enjoy this, but – and it's a big but – I found the protagonist, Nick, astonishingly unlikeable. Now, it’s not necessary to like the main character in order to enjoy a book. Some great works of fiction have absolute monsters at their heart, and noir fiction (clearly an inspiration for this book) has a long history of thoroughly unpleasant protagonists. However, I'm not sure we were actually supposed to dislike Nick. I got the impression (and I could be wrong) that we were supposed to sympathise with him, as an everyman. I absolutely didn't sympathise with him: he is selfish, self-centred, at times bull-headed and at others frustratingly passive.

The thing that got me the most was his vile lecherousness. He openly lusts after teenage girls, which is bad enough, but he also appears incapable of interacting with any woman without sizing up her attractiveness. This got really tedious after a while: it’s one of my pet hates in books, when male narrators continually introduce each female character with an appraisal of her fuckability. Particularly when, as here. the narrator in question is never called on his behaviour, and the reader clearly isn't meant to see it as the massive character flaw that it is.

Overall, this is a decent thriller. It didn't blow me away, but it was a good commuting read. I enjoyed it, but it loses points for the tedious sexism of the main character. ( )

So Headlong brings together a number of themes - political and personal - and pieces them together over a brief Boston summer. A dying father, left in penury and unable to pay for hospital bills; a teenager getting caught up in local politics and perhaps more; a story of a local boy coming home without much to show for his life amongst the stars; industrial action by cleaners tangling up with anti capitalism protests - and maybe more. This is a rich mix and, I thought, was handled well by the author. In true noir style, the first place narrator is both laconic and far from heroic, facing a mid life crisis and fumbling through it more through luck than judgement. The book navigates wealth and poverty, age and youth, success and failure and makes them all appear arbitrary and tangential. Violence here is distanced, seen through the lens of reportage, and death takes place off screen - the narrator is shocked briefly at his own capacity for violence and revenge, exercised briefly on an anti social child - appropriate for a book seen through the viewpoint of a writer and reporter, but which teeters on the brink between protest and anarchy. I found it an interesting read - not a conventional thriller, but a book with things to say for itself

This book has to be one of the dullest novels I've ever read. Journalist Nick is incredibly boring, utterly self-obsessed and also rather nasty - he lusts after the girlfriend of his best friend's teenage son and then gets upset when said son calls him a pervert. Get real, Nick! He also goes on and on about local politics in his home town and honestly it isn't interesting the first time we read this. Let alone the other 99 times, sigh ...

The actual crime doesn't appear to happen until we are three-quarters through the novel (so that's a heck of a lot of local politics to read through, believe me ...) then there's a rare moment of interest on page 230 or thereabouts when the book finally gets going. Somewhere this author manages to make the crime dull too, and it was a huge relief when I finally reached the end.

Mind you, I can see why the awful Nick's ex-wife keeps her distance, though I was terribly sorry for the unfortunate Juliana who - once the teenage son's girlfriend is out of the scene - seems to be lined up to be Nick's Next Girlfriend. Lord help her! Run, Juliana, run ...

So, honestly, I'd give this novel a miss. You won't regret it. ( )