An entertaining tale that provides a wide variety of troubles for its protagonist.
After saving family members from hit men, a writer and motorcyclist finds himself on the run and wanted for murder in Littrell’s (Lone Wolf’s Run, 2014, etc.) thriller.
Sam Forest, who writes travel stories for a biker magazine, is devastated by the news that his younger brother, Dave, has suffered a fatal heart attack. Sam stays with his cousin, Sue, in North Carolina while making funeral arrangements. Later, he’s horrified when the funeral home botches the cremation. When he returns to Sue’s house, he finds that two gunmen are threatening her and her husband; fortunately, he has a Glock and gets the drop on the intruders and kills them. It appears that the assassins were looking for him, although he doesn’t know why. Later, the funeral home becomes the site of arson and murder, and Sam becomes the police’s primary suspect. He manages to evade authorities, helped by a fellow biker named Boudin, whom he recently befriended. Sam may be able to prove his innocence with help from his pal and his biker family, as well as from Detective Vick Summers, the only cop in town who doesn’t think that he’s a vicious killer. But he and those close to him, including a new love interest, Betsy, soon find themselves targeted by an outlaw motorcycle club and pitiless smugglers. Littrell’s novel maintains a consistent pace, due to a slew of villains who keep Sam on the run, including corrupt law enforcement officers; the rogues’ gallery’s highlights include an enigmatic figure named Mr. B and an evil motorcycle gang leader named Slash. The latter’s unmitigated cruelty while torturing one victim establishes him as the main antagonist, and he has a significant part in the action-packed final act. The author is at his best, however, when describing scenes of bikers riding, such as Sam in the Appalachian Mountains: “The trees growing on the steep mountain slopes around him cast deep shadows as they filtered out the remaining light from the sky above.” The ending leaves open the possibility for a sequel, although the book reads well as a stand-alone.
An entertaining tale that provides a wide variety of troubles for its protagonist.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4582-2156-8
Page Count: 378
Publisher: AbbottPress
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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