Winner Takes All by Robert Bidinotto
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The third in what is now a trilogy, Winner Takes All, deals with questions about justice and revenge through an exciting and compelling story. While I enjoyed the novel, I think I preferred the first two better. The story meanders a bit in the beginning as Bidinotto sets the pieces. The plot is more wide-ranging, with more players and elements, so he needs to do this. But it took me a bit to get into it. Personally, I found the subplot of the relationship between Annie and Dylan to be at times distracting. The relationship is important; it humanizes and grounds Dylan. But their interactions were often just a bit too on the nose for my taste.
Nevertheless, the second half of the book cooks as Dylan unwinds what is going on and figures out how to stop it. Dylan is a bad-ass; part Batman, part Jack Bauer, part Jason Bourne. Fans of this genre (Child, Silva, Thor, Flynn, Baldacci) will like it.
From the intellectual side, Bidinotto works his idea of the master narrative into the plot. It drives the motivations and decisions of both the good and bad guys in the novel. The protagonists struggle explicitly with the apparent conflicts of integrity, justice, morality, and the law in a corrupt world. It is important for how the characters individually resolve or deal with these conflicts to understand how they see themselves and how they see the world: their master narrative.
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