Day: November 14, 2020

This one was a quick and easy read. In a crime thriller, that can be both good and bad.

There was quite a bit of good. The author did a fantastic job creating an atmosphere right from the beginning. It’s no spoiler to say that a girl is running through the forest (but why?). Simple enough.

But the author’s use of imagery, similes, and other descriptive phrasing made the scene literally come alive. It also put me right into the frame of mind for the story.

Once the real story takes hold, the author maintains the crisp writing. Everything moves along at a quick pace. In rapid fire we meet the main characters, are introduced other key players, and jump right into the investigation.

On the one hand, I liked the pace because it kept me interested. There weren’t long stretches of introspection (for the most part) that slowed the investigation down. That was good. I also liked how the investigation flowed with issues from the past coming to the present. Those all seemed accurately portrayed.

There were an awful lot of characters to keep track of. There were a few times that I had to go back and remind myself of who a person was and refresh their relationship to the investigation. That didn’t bother me.

And the author definitely captured the mysteries that small-towns hide, as well as accurately portraying the lengths to which people will go to keep secrets hidden.

However, in writing of this style, with many characters and a long-winding investigation, it felt like there were some things that were overlooked or otherwise missing.

Now, this next part of the review should probably be taken with a grain of salt. Being involved in and knowledgeable of law enforcement, I tend to be pickier about things than most readers. But I can’t let these go by because they did affect my interest in the story.

For example, our hero Reed is “death investigator” for the New York State Police. That’s not technically a position. NY has medical legal death investigators, more like forensic coroners (think Ducky on NCIS). But Reed doesn’t seem to have that background.

He’s military and works for the NYSP. His actions in the book are definitely more along the lines of a criminal investigator. He also works in the “Major Crimes” division (if I understood correctly) – a division that doesn’t exist in the NYSP.

I guess it’s just a pet peeve of mine that if using a real agency, effort should be made to using actual divisions that exist.

In a similar vein, there were other times that language choices seemed lazy. These jumped out at me because of the great descriptions early on. One instance was when the author referred to the “body-recovery people.” Really? How about the Coroner’s Office, or Rescue and Recovery team?

Again, these could just be my pet peeves, but the did taint the story a tad for me.

Other than those things (and a few similar, but I’m not going to list all of them), I thought it was a good read, and I would definitely recommend it to crime thriller/police procedural fans. I’m sure other readers will have a different experience from mine.

About T.J. Brearton:

T.J. Brearton’s books have reached half a million readers around the world and have topped the Amazon charts in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. A graduate of the New York Film Academy in Manhattan, Brearton first worked in film before focusing on novels. His books are visually descriptive with sharp dialog and underdog heroes. When not writing, Brearton does whatever his wife and three children tell him to do. They live happily in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. Yes, there are bears in the Adirondacks. But it’s really quite beautiful when you’re not running for your life. 

T.J. is the author of Into Darkness, Road to Mercy and other crime thrillers. ROUGH COUNTRY will be his third novel published with Inkubator Books.