I'm currently about halfway through the book. I agree with some of the comments in the Kirkus Reviews section below but, still, it's an entertaining read.



BOB





Shikar

Jack Warner



Format: Hardcover - First Edition

Pub. Date: June 2003





FROM THE PUBLISHER

Shikar pits Grady Brickhouse, sheriff of Harte County, Georgia against an unlikely but fearsome opponent - a full-grown Bengal tiger that has somehow found its way into his jurisdiction. Brickhouse happens to be very good at his job: keeping the peace in his sleepy corner of the huge forested wilderness at the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. A former high-school principal, Brickhouse is known as a gentle and fair man; people like him. But he's no match for the tiger, one of the most powerful and cunning predators on the planet - few humans are, and every hunter who goes into the woods after the beast is taken out in pieces. Brickhouse is going to have to find someone or something that can do something damn quick - the death toll mounts every day, the media and the politicians are clamoring for something to be done ... and something strange is going on that Brickhouse just can't put his finger on, something that doesn't add up.



FROM THE CRITICS

Publisher's Weekly

With blurbs from Janet Dailey, David Morrell, Dan Simmons and Stephen Coonts, among others, this sharp action thriller from a retired journalist looks to get some well-deserved media attention. Readers shouldn't be dismayed by the opening chapters, which follow classic monster-movie template as a huge Bengal tiger escapes an itinerant zoo in rural Georgia. It then proceeds to eat a few inhabitants, to the consternation of many including local sheriff Grady Brickhouse, the novel's protagonist, but not its most interesting character. That distinction belongs to Col. Jim Graham, a legendary hunter of man-eating tigers who leaves retirement in England to slay the Bengal beast even as a media frenzy develops over the story. Based-according to the author-on the equally legendary but entirely real tiger hunter Col. Jim Corbett, Graham dominates every page he's on with his quiet, cool yet compassionate demeanor, his superb hunting skills and his deep respect for nature and animals-the latter theme pushed by Warner throughout. The novel takes off when Graham arrives, and gains emotional and even spiritual resonance as Warner develops a curious subplot about a young mountain boy, nearly feral, who forges a bond with the tiger but joins forces with Graham in the novel's very exciting climax to confront the man-eater head-on. With lots of fascinating tiger lore, some terrific stalk-and-slash sequences and the charismatic Graham at its center, this novel will please all who enjoy swift tales of courage and derring-do. It'll make a fine movie, too. (June) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.



Kirkus Reviews

Bengal tiger goes AWOL from an overturned circus truck and takes up a biped-only protein diet. Strictly from the rope-a-dope school of mystery thriller: the reader sees all the punches coming. Effectively if not so subtly, first-novelist Warner, retired journalist, invokes Kipling through a reverent hunter vs. man-eater prologue that�s set in India. Then the reader is dumped into modern-day rural Georgia as the devil-in-giant-cat-drag chews its way through mountainous scenery. The prologue may have been replaced abruptly by the red Georgia clay, but the classic types--Great White Hunter, Jungle Boy, and Man-Eating Tiger--are transported from the past virtually intact, two-dimensional and bloodless. Warner hurriedly covers all the events that were foreshadowed in the prologue. The only stranger to those familiar with the genre is a nicely portrayed rural sheriff, Grady Brickhouse, who�s not a cartoonish country galoot but a sensitive modern gentleman doing his best to deal with a dangerous carnivore and a drooling press corps. Sheriff aside, the rest of the cast is drawn in dotted-line primary colors. Beyond vague descriptions of the "man eater�s" gory dining habits and some references to sexual activity by secondary characters, there�s little of violence or prurience here, a curious absence that tends to give the whole a YA atmosphere. The only lust is the insatiable feline�s. And, remarkably soon, even the primal, nightmarish terror of humans being stalked and eaten by a huge, reddish cat with burning yellow eyes becomes routine. Promising idea, but, told through a yawn, without the tension the genre demands. Agent: Richard Curtis/Curtis Agency



Reviews and comments from: Barnes & Noble

I seldom read a book twice, but I have this one. Fantasy, but interesting.

I finished the book last night, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Anything that may be even remotely related to Corbett I'm going to have a look at.