A reviewer of my second Kristin Kerry novel, Justice is for the Deserving, wrote that “The idea of a nurse serial killer murdering babies in a hospital is preposterous”, so I couldn’t resist buying Thomas Perry’s A Small Town (The Mysterious Press, $26.00) after reading the cover flap and finding it far more preposterous than anything I could have thought of. But he’s sold a lot of books so let’s talk about it.
A maximum-security federal prison with state-of-the-art construction sits in a rural town in Colorado holding over 1,000 convicts, 12 of whom of having special skills in everything from electrical wiring, firearms, electronic eavesdropping to anything else you can think of. They have managed to manipulate the transfer system, getting themselves incarcerated together where each skill is vital to the caper.
After years of planning, they seize control of the prison, kill the guards, and then storm the town, with the mass of killers and robbers taking particularly vicious vengeance on the guards’ families. After a brutal night of rape and murder, theft and pillage, the order is finally restored. Only the 12 masterminds of the plot are missing. One of the perpetrators is an expert in producing fake documents and after two years of searching, none of the twelve can be found.
Enter Leah Hawkins, a six-foot-two former star basketball player, resident cop, who has been placed on sabbatical so that she can tour the country learning special police and FBI procedures in order to hunt down and kill the 12 ringleaders. With this, I thought we might have a pretty good read, though perhaps a preposterous tale.
As it begins, we see Leah as an expert in locating the first villain and I would hate to have Leah trying to find me, were I on the run. The first couple of offs go pretty smooth and then Perry gets, in my judgment, a little lazy, assembling several of the bad guys together in one location and having them make a foolish mistake, giving Leah a chance to wipe out several in one blow.
Leah is a fairly interesting character, but the book could have contained more depth along the lines of Mark Burnell’s Petra Reuter series, published in England several years ago and now out as a movie, The Rhythm Section. This was intended as a fast airplane read and it largely succeeds. Overall, I would give it a B-. Another one to “fly” through but not bother to keep.
Steve E Clark as seen in the New York Times is Author of Justice Is for the Lonely and Justice Is for the Deserving, Kristen Kerry Novels Of Suspense. Steve is a 2017 NY Big Book Award winner and a 2018 Independent Book Award recipient. You can purchase his books via https://steveclarkauthor.com/buy-the-book/ or request it at your local book store. Want to know more about Steve Clark, read more reviews or speak directly with Steve? Learn more about Steve at SteveClarkAuthor.com
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