She Treads Softly: Ruthless

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Ruthless

Ruthless by John Rector

Thomas & Mercer: 6/1/2015
eBook review copy, 270 pages
trade paperback ISBN-13: 9781477827628
http://johnrector.blogspot.com/

My Thoughts:
Ruthless by John Rector is a highly recommended crime novel that pulls off the feeling of a vintage noir novel in a contemporary setting.

Nick White is down on his luck man who is separated from his wife and drinks too much. While having a drink at his favorite bar a blond woman he does not know mistakes him for someone she is supposed to meet. Nick flirtatiously plays along for fun and she ends up giving him a manila envelope meant for the other man. The envelope contains $20,000, a flashdrive, and the picture of the young woman she wants gone. Nick tries to contact the police, but when circumstances result in the hired killer who was supposed to get the envelope spotting Nick and getting his address, he flees.

Nick eventually, with help from his ex-cop father, figures out the young woman in the picture is Abigail Pierce, and the woman who hired him is Patricia Holloway. They both have a connection to Daniel Holloway, and Nick thinks he knows why Patricia wants Abigail killed. Instead of leaving and hiding out for a while as his father suggested, Nick decides to warn Abigail and soon they are both clearly in danger from a trio of ruthless killers.

Ruthless is a fast paced thriller where the action moves quickly along (except for the variety of occasions where Nick takes a lot of time to drink) so there is a real sense of urgency. Nick is basically a likeable protagonist who is trying to do the right thing and save Abigail, even though he doesn't quite know the best way to proceed and is clearly not a match for the men threatening them. The hired killers are creepy-old-school and very sinister and threatening which keeps the tension high. Rector throws in a nice plot twist that raises the narrative above a routine scenario.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of the publisher and TLC for review purposes.

TLC Book Tour

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: That combination of noir and contemporary sounds quite intriguing!

Thanks for being a part of the tour.; June 4, 2015 at 11:13 PM

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.