You are on the run from a manipulative and heartless husband, just looking for a place for the night for yourself and your two kids. You have been pulled over on a lonely road by the sheriff who finds a baggie of ganja in your luggage. His deputy arrives to take the children to a place of safety while you are booked into the cells. Terrified, you demand to know where your children are going.
“What children?” queries the sheriff.
That’s when I started hyperventilating…
Brilliant stuff!
Haylen Beck, alias Stuart Neville
Haylen Beck is a pseudonym of the best-selling Irish author, Stewart Neville whose thriller, RAT LINES was reviewed with great enthusiasm back in April 2013 on MEAN STREETS book reviews.
“What have you done with your children?” The sheriff, the FBI, child services, the reporters and the public demand to know. It hits the news country-wide. Across the country, a man who lost his daughter in strangely similar circumstance and whose wife committed suicide under the pressure of the accusations, decides to come and take a look. In no time he is drawn into the search for what he becomes convinced are abductees.
Despite knowing who the baddies are right from the get-go, the tension is screwed up tight simply by everyone’s disbelief in her tale. She has a reputation for being a drunk and a druggy, while the sheriff and the deputy seem spotless.
Five star thriller entertainment, this one! Well written, solid character sketches and a believable plot.
Thank you to PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE, SOUTH AFRICA for this ARC for an honest review.
The portrait of the city slicker’s arrogance and inferiority complex is scarily realistic causing one to want to smack him at the same time as sympathizing. The cruel and accurate reading of his vulnerability by the unsavoury pump attendant as the last person to see the couple before they take a drive into the unremitting Mojave Desert is very well portrayed, as is his wife’s loyalty and support until she finally needs to act.
As is usual Cussler, history, treasure and world-threatening events intertwine to give us another exciting read from a master of adventure.
Harry Hole has embedded himself solidly into the top of the ranks of detectives; and this offering is no exception. Heart-stoppingly tense, Nesbo not only gives a tight story, his characters are so real, so deep and so subtle that I am totally envious of his ability to coat the atmosphere with apprehension. Harry just has to walk into a bar and I am holding my breath, praying that his alcoholic past does not reach out and grab him by the throat.
