The Two Minute Rule

This is the first modern mystery novel I've read. It's suspenseful, thrilling and compelling, but one of the highlights is the character development and arc which gives the story more heart and more meat than just any old murder mystery. Oh, and every time I thought I had something figured out,

Show More

there was a twist that proved me wrong.

Show Less

Somehow, I got bogged down in the middle of this. Just sort of stalled. I guess I’m used to the multi-layered tension building of the Elvis Cole novels. That and the wisecracks. This one had a different tone and I don’t know if I altogether like Holman as a character. He was sympathetic, but

Show More

also unreal. I don’t know if a father who’s never had a relationship with his son before would go to all the trouble to clear him. He seemed kind of wimpy, too. One minute he’d be worrying and freaking out about something, and the next he’d be all hot for action. Seemed like the actions and temperament of two different men.

Show Less

Surprisingly boring, since I've read other glowing reviews. Even more so because I thought the idea of a bank robbery thriller seemed quite interesting. I couldn't get into the main characters one bit and couldn't force myself to go on past a mind numbingly boring 180 pages.

First day out of prison after serving 10 years for serial bank robberies, it is not a good day for Max Holman. He plans to reconnect with his family, but is informed that his son, who had become a police man, had been shot. Max is anxious to find out who did it, and meets with perculiar

Show More

stonewalling from the cops. He calls an unexpected ally - the FBI agent who put him away - Katherine Pollard. I enjoyed this book, and read it in 2 days. The mystery was strong and interesting, the tension was high. What I didn't get, somehow, was a real handle on Max Hollman. Even from the first paragraph, I understood Katherine Pollard, and her journey made sense, but Max, while not a cipher, just didn't coalese into a real character for me. So while this is fun thriller and a good airplane/beach book, it didn't make it into my absolute faves pile because of Max.

Show Less

I so wanted to like this book. I enjoy Crais's Elvis Cole mysteries. And I am truly the most uncritical of mystery readers. So when I say there's a hole you could drive a truck through, well, there's probably a dozen in it you could run the Southern Crescent through. Rats.

Enjoyable crime thriller with good reader. Former bank robber gets out of jail after serving 10 years and his son, a policeman, is murdered the day he gets out. He is reformed, but wants to find the killer. Teams up with former FBI agent that put him in jail to find out there is corrupt police

Show More

involvement. Lots of good twists and turns.

Show Less

Another good book by Crais - full of suspense and very atmospheric. His books are always hard to put down.

Back Cover Blurb:
When Max Holman finally gets out of jail after ten years of thinking about his own botched bank raid, freedom quickly doesn't taste too sweet. At the moment of his release, the

Show More

son that he had barely met is gunned down. And when the victim is a cop - especially a cop with a con for a father - the motives are never simple.
Katherine Pollard was an FBI special agent. Now struggling to look after two children on her own, the last thing she expects is for her old life to come calling....

Show Less

Holman gets out of prison after ten years for bank robbery.. Right before he gets out his son who is a policeman is gunned down and killed. The story is about him trying to find his son's killer. Fun read and is easy to follow.

In “Two Minute Rule�€? by Robert Crais, bank robbers Marchenko and Parsons linger longer than two minutes and end up dying in a violent shoot-out. Max Holman certainly knows about the time limit better than most. Dubbed the "hero bandit" by the press, he got caught during a robbery after he

Show More

stopped to perform CPR on a bank customer who had a heart attack.
Now that he’s being released from prison, the 48-year-old Max hopes to establish contact with the son he never really knew, who became a policeman. Ironically, Richie is murdered before he gets that chance. Max wants the truth about the death of his son.
The only person he figures can help him is Katherine Pollard, the fed who nabbed him, now ex-FBI and a struggling single mom. The action is fast paced as they hit the streets of Los Angeles and begin to wonder what happened to the missing money from the Marchenko and Parsons heists. The perfect odd couple, they keep this novel personal and real as it builds to an exciting conclusion.

Show Less

My first read of Robert Crais, and boy oh boy am I a fan. My only negative observation in the first few chapters was that the plot seemed to plod, but he set up the MC as such an endearingly flawed individual who truly turned out to be an honorable man that I was hooked on the character study

Show More

first.

But then the story shifted into high gear and what a ride! Masterful, (seemingly) effortless writing with a brilliantly constructed plot that was totally plausible and came to a resounding climax.

I appreciated the lack of overwrought chapter and scene breaks where a mini-cliffhanger scene is abruptly cut, forcing you to recall the scene a chapter or two later and pick up the action in midstream. The scene breaks were tension-filled and all created frantic page turns, but not frustrated page turns. Scenes ended logically, but were often cliffhangers on their own, not because we were forced to keep reading in order to finish a scene two chapters later.

Crais used Los Angeles as an effective setting, but didn't fawn over it, or denigrate it, like some authors tend to do with big cities. It was there, had some good and bad points, good and bad people, but he respected the neighborhoods and the logistics, and used the Hollywood sign as an effective scene at key moments in the plot.

His writing made me think of my favorite David Baldacci books. Yep, he's that good.

Show Less

This review is for the 5-cd abridged audio version of the novel.

I've listened to other Crais novels and have enjoyed them. I gave this one 60 minutes of my life and then pulled it out of the cd player.

I felt nothing for the main character. I couldn't tell if there was ever going to be an actual

Show More

story. The first hour just struck me as a lot of 'Boo-hoo, I'm a loser and I deserve it'.

This might be a decent story, but if after one hour of an ABRIDGED version I can't find the story, I'm outta there.

Show Less

Not one of his best. The characters didn't really pull me in very much and the plot seemed to drag out unnecessarily. The ending was excellent though. But it took me a while to get to it.

This is another riveting mystery from Crais. Both his protagonists while flaw have a moral compass that keeps focused on the truth. As the novel opens, Max Holman is getting ready to leave prison after 10 years in jail for a bank robbery. As he is packing, his adviser comes in to tell him that his

Show More

son who was a police officer has just been murder.

Show Less

What's It About?
Ask anyone on the wrong side of the law about the two minute rule and they’ll tell you that’s as long as you can hope for at a robbery before the cops show up. Break the two minute rule and it’s a lifetime in jail. But not everyone plays by the rules.

When ex-con Max Holman

Show More

finally gets out of jail, freedom doesn’t taste too sweet. The only thing on his mind is reconciliation with his estranged son, who is, ironically, a cop. But then he hears the devastating news: His son and three other Los Angeles police officers were gunned down in cold blood the night before Holman’s release. When the hit is exposed as a revenge killing and the question of police corruption is raised, it becomes a father’s last duty to clear his son’s name and catch the killer.

What Did I Think?
In a nut-shell I would have to say that this novel is a tale of one man’s search for redemption. Most of the characters are not at all likable...but then they aren't supposed to be. The saving grace for the entire story is ex-con Max Holman and ex-FBI agent Katherine Pollard, They make the perfect odd couple and keep this novel personal and real. The ending has a real twist that readers will never see coming

I've read all the Elvis Cole and Joe Pike series and really enjoyed every one of them. I have found that this authors standalone novels don't quiet live up to Elvis and Joe for me... but they are readable.

Show Less

Bank robber, Max Holman, has done his time. He's anxious to get out and find his family - particularly his son, now an adult, whom he hasn't seen since the kid was 7. But the day of his release, he learns that his son is a cop and has been murdered. Holman finds out why. This is a great story well

Show More

told. I read it with my ears. Crais crafts some fine characters here.

Show Less

Perhaps Connelly may be wearing thin for me, but Crais takes over. This is a wonderful detective story with no real detectives. The day a guy gets out after ten years in prison, his estranged son is murdered. The father is a bank robber, the son a policeman. The murder is very complicated and the

Show More

father isn't getting any help from the police who are investigating. He enlists the aid of a divorced, widowed ex-FBI agent who was the one who arrested him and put him in jail. The writing is better than Connelly and these characters are wonderful. A great read.

Show Less

Robert Crais' The Two Minute Rule is a captivating thriller that has it all: non-stop action, nail-biting suspense, deepening mystery and even the hint of a romance! It doesn't take long to get caught in the complex web and find that you can't wait to get to the next chapter to see what happens

Show More

next.

The book is well written and the pacing is perfect. The characters are fully fleshed out until we feel like we know them inside and out.

Max Holman was a career criminal, busted on his final bank robbery and has just finished his ten year prison sentence. On the eve of his release he learns his son, a police officer, has been gunned down and killed. Max's world is turned upside down from that moment, as he vows to find and bring his son's killer to justice. He elicits the help of the last person on earth you would expect him to, the former FBI agent that put him away, now a financially struggling single mother. Together they find themselves steeped in a mystery with twists and turns that will amaze you. They also find themselves face to face with a killer who knows no bounds and will let no one stand in his way.

Show Less

I've seen a few reviewers of this book decry 'politically motivated' criticism of this book, and I scratch my head at the notion. First, the attempt to keep a neat tidy box around what can be deemed political or not. (I tend to err on the side of more things being political than not.) Second, the

Show More

inability to understand that economics is a political science.

Jonathan Gruber, professor of Economics at MIT, opens his Microeconomics course (freely available on YouTube!) with a crucially important observation: Economics is a right-wing science. In that, it's basic principles and logical conclusions lead towards right-wing politics. Less government intervention. More dependence on the free market. More individual autonomy. This may seem offensive to both adherents and critics of Landsburg. Adherents may protest the claim that a 'science' can be political and critics may find that it proves their suspicions of Landsburg's policy conclusions.

Landsburg's book succeeds when it focuses on those economic principles, and it falls short when it attempts to present them as unassailable.

I’ll provide an example, not from this book, but instead that you would find in many introduction to economics textbooks. That minimum wage laws lead to unemployment. The basic economic theory here is not hard to follow. A minimum wage is effectively a price floor. Price floors set below the equilibrium price do nothing. Price floors set above the equilibrium price create a surplus because the prices are too high for many people who would otherwise be interested. In this example a surplus in labor would translate to higher unemployment rate.

This example is sound economic theory, and the logic rather straightforward. But the wrinkle is that in reality we have seen very different things happening when minimum wage laws are enacted. The effects we observe neither prove or disprove the theory. Instead, they point to a complicated outcome with various factors and inputs.

This is where Landsburg’s book falls short. It presents a very basic introduction to economic thought as a very basic introduction to economics. I think there’s a vast difference between the two. Learning to think like an economist is different than learning to be an economist.

I suppose it’s unfair to malign the book for its inability to crunch various undergrad courses into a single 200-something page popular economics book but alas! The book is a fine introduction to economic thought, but economic thought is not necessarily the end all be all way to analyze the world. It’s an important tool in the toolbox and this book serves as a passable starter set.

Show Less

Regular mystery readers will figure out the main plot early and may be impatient for the characters to catch up. Once they do (3/4 of the way through) the suspense does ratchet up and the characters take on deeper dimensions. Nice for a light, fast read. Similar to Linwood Barclay's stuff, but

Show More

better written.

Show Less