Author foreshadows too much in this thriller

Allow me to foreshadow the end of this assessment: I won't be giving “Fifteen Digits” (Mulholland Books, 329 pages, $14.99) a rave review.

Newly out in paperback, this thriller by Nick Santora - whose credits include writing for TV's “The Sopranos” and “Prison Break” - almost lost me in the early going because of excessive foreshadowing.

From the prologue: “And all of it - every cry of agony, every drop of blood - it all began with that conversation …”

From chapter four: “It was also where Rich would soon make choices that would get some very good men killed.”

From chapter six: “Almost seventeen years exactly from his first day of employment, Eddie Pisorchek would be dragged out of the basement's loading bay in the middle of the night - scared, bleeding, and crying.”

Now, a little foreshadowing is an excellent thing in a thriller. But as Santora reminded me again and again that things were going to go badly in the end, I found myself less and less interested in the specifics.

Plowing through, however, I was rewarded with some interesting character development as four men who want better lives for themselves and their families agree to do a bad thing. Santora's plot is “road to hell is paved with good intentions” fare, but he does a good job making the reader wish things could turn out better for the protagonists.

Unfortunately, we know that things are not going to go well. That makes the book's payoff less than satisfying. And as I promised, that means I can't fully endorse “Fifteen Digits.”