Kring’s ‘Shift’ never really gets into high gear

Set in the sixties, ‘Shift’ is a novel that aims for the sky but at some point it gets lost somewhere else. We don’t really know where. Written as the beginning of a trilogy that, as far as I’m concerned, hasn’t been continued, the book introduces a pretty good idea, plot and characters; however, as the story goes on, it begins to erode itself. Is it worth reading? I guess. Does it leave you with more questions than answers? Definitely, and not in a good way.

This thriller was written by Tim Kring (creator of the ‘Heroes’ tv series) and Dale Peck back in 2010 and it fell into my hands in a local book fair some time ago. It’s about mind control experiments that the CIA used to run back in the sixties, LSD, Cuba, conspiracies, the Mafia, the JFK assassination. You can see why the premise is awesome, at least for someone like me. Who doesn’t like a political thriller mixed with secret agents, drugs and conspiracies? Oh, come on!

On the bright side, besides the whole idea of the story, I think the characters and their respective backgrounds are pretty solid. It feels like you really get to know each one throughout the chapters and that is something that doesn’t happen often. Also, I’m not a very big fan of long descriptions, but Kring (or Peck) manages to achieve both a dynamic and simple style of doing it that you end up really hooked. For example, the mind control or the LSD trips. Another good thing would be towards the end, when he perfectly combines parts of the story with real JFK killing theories. It makes you go watch that fatal motorcade video over and over again. That same thing happened to me, in a whole other level, after reading 11/22/63, by Stephen King (that one is a must).

On the other hand, I must say that, though the plot is great, the way the authors manage to develop it is not that good. It’s all over the place at times, constantly mixing jawdropping passages with bad ones. Moreover, I think that the extension of the book plus the quantity of characters help bringing down the rythm. Yes, they are excellent characters, but there are so many... And all of that builds a confusion you can’t easily escape from. Furthermore, there are intriguing questions that are presented to the reader almost at the beginning and at the end you realize there is no answer to those. That really pissed me off. I mean, I get that it is the first part of a series but, man, I read almost 500 pages, I want answers.

All in all, ‘Shift’ leaves much to be desired. The perception is that, somehow, the novel has so much potential but doesn’t really live up to the expectations it builds. In a nutshell, it never really gets into high gear. 

My rating for the book: 2 stars. Regular.