Book Review: Big Time

This year I'm keeping track of what I read. Whether I enjoy the book or not, I'll post a blurb and brief review. Most will be speculative fiction in some form—genres I gravitate toward in my own writing. Today, it's the sci-fi thriller Big Time by Ben H. Winters:

What if time could be taken from us—the minutes, the hours, the years of our lives, extracted like organs taken for transplant? Grace Berney is a mid-level bureaucrat in the FDA, a woman who once brimmed with purpose but somehow turned into a middle-aged single mom with a dull government job and a melancholy sense that life has passed her by. Until the night a strange photo comes across her desk, of a young woman in a hospital bed who has been subjected to a mysterious procedure. Against orders and against common sense, Grace sets out to bring the girl to safety, and finds herself risking her job, her future, and her life on whether she can find the missing girl before a violent mercenary does. 

I've been a fan of Winters ever since his Last Policeman trilogy. Underground Airlines was a winner, and Bed Bugs (recycled recently as The Bonus Room) was engrossing, but some of his other novels have just been disappointing. Great premise and solid execution, yet the characters were too mundane to hold my interest. The same issue plagues Big Time, unfortunately. The idea of stolen time is fascinating, but very little of the novel addresses the science fiction of it. The rest is a paint-by-the-numbers thriller that reads like an after school special with stock characters you've seen on any number of prime time TV shows from a decade ago. 3 out of 5 stars.