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A review by shelfreflectionofficial
Break Every Rule by Brian Freeman
adventurous
dark
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.0
“That’s the question you need to answer for yourself. Are you willing to break every rule?”
Brian Freeman is usually an auto-read for me. There have been a few here and there that have not been my favorite but I usually really enjoy his books.
Break Every Rule is a stand alone thriller about human trafficking and the lengths one husband and father would go to get his wife and daughter back. It immediately added a new item to my bucket list: never visit Miami.
This wasn’t one of my favorites by Freeman, and I would say that is largely due to the nature of the plot. Human trafficking just makes me sick and angry. At least the book doesn’t glorify it and we do see some form of justice which is good, but it’s just one of those books you don’t necessarily ‘enjoy.’
This book also had a lot more swearing than some of this other books so I wasn’t keen on that.
In some ways it reminded me of Freeman’s book Immoral which very appropriately named. This one felt better to read than that one. The immorality felt more clearly defined in Break Every Rule and the good guys and bad guys more differentiated.
Plot Basics
The main character of Break Every Rule is Tommy Miller— an ex-soldier/ex-cop jaded by a system that can’t get to the worst of the worst because of corruption or money or the murder of witnesses. They are “untouchable.”
He gets roped into a group that manipulated that anger to use him to do secret ops. To do what the system couldn’t do— bring justice and get the bad guys: The Outsiders.
Until a mission with The Outsiders went awry and Tommy (previously known as The Tiger) had to go into hiding.
His wife, Teresa, has secrets of her own. When she and their (baby) daughter get kidnapped, Tommy starts to realize that the people after her are not the same ones that are after him. But trying to rescue his wife will alert his own enemies to his location and complicate his plans.
Not only is he evading his enemies, but the detective working his wife’s disappearance, Lindy Jax, has made this case personal and is going out of her way to figure out what Tommy is up to and who he really is.
But if there is one thing Tommy knows, it’s that to get his wife and daughter back, he’s going to have to break some rules.
“We can’t change the law, so we break it when the law stands in the way.”
My Soap Box
Break Every Rule is ‘Taken’ meets Epstein’s horrific private island. Down to the very same principle of being ‘untouchable.’
That’s what makes this book hard to read. It’s not fiction. It’s happening today in the Caribbean and all over the world. And anyone who turns a blind eye to it is despicable.
“She was consumed with outrage that no one would help us. That the rich and famous would gather around Fell and not let the truth come out.”
That is what I feel. Outrage. Because there is no doubt in my mind that the rich and famous and influential are blocking the truth from coming out in our real world about so much injustice. To protect their own cash flow or their own reputations. It’s sick.
If only Tommy Miller was a real person who could infiltrate, expose, and bring justice. That’s the thing about this book and Taken. Yeah, these men have special skills that help them get their loved ones back, but that’s not normal. That’s not reality. The reality is most of these girls and women either don’t have anyone looking for them or anyone with the resources and capabilities to rescue them.
This is a soap box I’ll stand on all day: the pornography industry and the legitimizing of ‘sex work’ are both intimately connected to sexual abuse and increase and support the market for human trafficking. There is no doubt.
It’s shocking to me that people think ‘sexual freedom’ has no consequences. Either they are blind to the horrors of the very real trajectory of that line of thought or they are aware and they simply don’t care.
I hope that if you read this book and Martin Fell and his ‘use’ of women angers you, that you will think about the parallels to the real world and consider helping dry up the market on sex for sale. Check out Fight the New Drug and its facts and resources surrounding this topic and more information on what you can do to educate others and support a good cause.
One of the characters that’s part of Martin Fell’s ‘enterprise’ admits, “We’ve built our lives around stealing the innocence of little girls.”
Help protect innocence.
Other Comments
I thought it was weird that Tommy so quickly and easily started referring to Teresa as Alina after finding that out. Maybe Freeman did that for clarity for the reader but it seemed unnatural.
I like to make connections to other books I’ve read and there are two to be found here:
- Teresa and Tommy talk about classical music a bit which reminded me of the book Every Good Boy Does Fine: A Love Story in Music Lessons and I think they would have both appreciated that book.
- This book reminded me of The Spy Coast which details an ex-CIA agent pulled out of her quiet, hidden retired life when another agent disappears. They too have a local detective on their heels investigating them while they’re ‘breaking the rules’ to find those hunting them down. But at least Brian Freeman made his detective more legitimate and not the foolish, bumbling variety that Gerritsen did. Plus Freeman did what I was hoping Gerritsen would have: force the main character to work WITH the detective. Although that book is the first in the series so that will probably come eventually.
- A couple nonfiction books that relate: Taking Down Backpage or The Porn Problem
Speaking of the detective, Lindy Jax: “She was a Black woman recruited to the department right out of college, and the white men— hell, even some of the Black men— made it clear that they considered her nothing but a diversity hire. So she’d had to out-hustle all of them, and they didn’t like that.”
The interesting argument here isn’t even that DEI hires are unqualified people— Lindy was qualified and that would be a whole different conversation— but just the idea of that is making it hard for diverse people to feel belonging in their job because people can speculate that you were hired because of your gender, race, or sexuality rather than your merit. I’m not at all convinced DEI does what it claims to do for diversity but rather muddies the waters. I don’t doubt that Lindy is up against it working in the environment she does as a black woman! And I don’t think the DEI groups helped her out much just by their mere existence.
Last comment, the characters encounter Alina’s foster parents and I appreciate that they portrayed a good foster home. I know the system is broken but I also know of a lot of good people that take really good care of foster children and love them very much. We don’t recognize that enough so I’m glad they chose to show the positive side of that in a book that exposes a lot of corruption.
Recommendation
While, this book isn’t my favorite of his, I would still recommend it in general. The subject matter of the plot could be enough to hinder readers especially if that would be a trigger, but I can at least attest that there is some form of justice in the end. I think, for me, I would need to know that before reading a book like this, so I will share that ‘spoiler’ but I won’t tell you the specifics.
If this plot doesn’t appeal, I would still try some of Brian Freeman’s other books: stand alones like Thief River Falls, I Remember You, or Infinite, or his Frost Easton series or the latter part of his Jonathan Stride series.
[Content Advisory: 86 f-words; 28 s-words; 5 b-words; mentions of rape and human trafficking]
**Received and ARC via NetGalley**
Brian Freeman is usually an auto-read for me. There have been a few here and there that have not been my favorite but I usually really enjoy his books.
Break Every Rule is a stand alone thriller about human trafficking and the lengths one husband and father would go to get his wife and daughter back. It immediately added a new item to my bucket list: never visit Miami.
This wasn’t one of my favorites by Freeman, and I would say that is largely due to the nature of the plot. Human trafficking just makes me sick and angry. At least the book doesn’t glorify it and we do see some form of justice which is good, but it’s just one of those books you don’t necessarily ‘enjoy.’
This book also had a lot more swearing than some of this other books so I wasn’t keen on that.
In some ways it reminded me of Freeman’s book Immoral which very appropriately named. This one felt better to read than that one. The immorality felt more clearly defined in Break Every Rule and the good guys and bad guys more differentiated.
Plot Basics
The main character of Break Every Rule is Tommy Miller— an ex-soldier/ex-cop jaded by a system that can’t get to the worst of the worst because of corruption or money or the murder of witnesses. They are “untouchable.”
He gets roped into a group that manipulated that anger to use him to do secret ops. To do what the system couldn’t do— bring justice and get the bad guys: The Outsiders.
Until a mission with The Outsiders went awry and Tommy (previously known as The Tiger) had to go into hiding.
His wife, Teresa, has secrets of her own. When she and their (baby) daughter get kidnapped, Tommy starts to realize that the people after her are not the same ones that are after him. But trying to rescue his wife will alert his own enemies to his location and complicate his plans.
Not only is he evading his enemies, but the detective working his wife’s disappearance, Lindy Jax, has made this case personal and is going out of her way to figure out what Tommy is up to and who he really is.
But if there is one thing Tommy knows, it’s that to get his wife and daughter back, he’s going to have to break some rules.
“We can’t change the law, so we break it when the law stands in the way.”
My Soap Box
Break Every Rule is ‘Taken’ meets Epstein’s horrific private island. Down to the very same principle of being ‘untouchable.’
That’s what makes this book hard to read. It’s not fiction. It’s happening today in the Caribbean and all over the world. And anyone who turns a blind eye to it is despicable.
“She was consumed with outrage that no one would help us. That the rich and famous would gather around Fell and not let the truth come out.”
That is what I feel. Outrage. Because there is no doubt in my mind that the rich and famous and influential are blocking the truth from coming out in our real world about so much injustice. To protect their own cash flow or their own reputations. It’s sick.
If only Tommy Miller was a real person who could infiltrate, expose, and bring justice. That’s the thing about this book and Taken. Yeah, these men have special skills that help them get their loved ones back, but that’s not normal. That’s not reality. The reality is most of these girls and women either don’t have anyone looking for them or anyone with the resources and capabilities to rescue them.
This is a soap box I’ll stand on all day: the pornography industry and the legitimizing of ‘sex work’ are both intimately connected to sexual abuse and increase and support the market for human trafficking. There is no doubt.
It’s shocking to me that people think ‘sexual freedom’ has no consequences. Either they are blind to the horrors of the very real trajectory of that line of thought or they are aware and they simply don’t care.
I hope that if you read this book and Martin Fell and his ‘use’ of women angers you, that you will think about the parallels to the real world and consider helping dry up the market on sex for sale. Check out Fight the New Drug and its facts and resources surrounding this topic and more information on what you can do to educate others and support a good cause.
One of the characters that’s part of Martin Fell’s ‘enterprise’ admits, “We’ve built our lives around stealing the innocence of little girls.”
Help protect innocence.
Other Comments
I thought it was weird that Tommy so quickly and easily started referring to Teresa as Alina after finding that out. Maybe Freeman did that for clarity for the reader but it seemed unnatural.
I like to make connections to other books I’ve read and there are two to be found here:
- Teresa and Tommy talk about classical music a bit which reminded me of the book Every Good Boy Does Fine: A Love Story in Music Lessons and I think they would have both appreciated that book.
- This book reminded me of The Spy Coast which details an ex-CIA agent pulled out of her quiet, hidden retired life when another agent disappears. They too have a local detective on their heels investigating them while they’re ‘breaking the rules’ to find those hunting them down. But at least Brian Freeman made his detective more legitimate and not the foolish, bumbling variety that Gerritsen did. Plus Freeman did what I was hoping Gerritsen would have: force the main character to work WITH the detective. Although that book is the first in the series so that will probably come eventually.
- A couple nonfiction books that relate: Taking Down Backpage or The Porn Problem
Speaking of the detective, Lindy Jax: “She was a Black woman recruited to the department right out of college, and the white men— hell, even some of the Black men— made it clear that they considered her nothing but a diversity hire. So she’d had to out-hustle all of them, and they didn’t like that.”
The interesting argument here isn’t even that DEI hires are unqualified people— Lindy was qualified and that would be a whole different conversation— but just the idea of that is making it hard for diverse people to feel belonging in their job because people can speculate that you were hired because of your gender, race, or sexuality rather than your merit. I’m not at all convinced DEI does what it claims to do for diversity but rather muddies the waters. I don’t doubt that Lindy is up against it working in the environment she does as a black woman! And I don’t think the DEI groups helped her out much just by their mere existence.
Last comment, the characters encounter Alina’s foster parents and I appreciate that they portrayed a good foster home. I know the system is broken but I also know of a lot of good people that take really good care of foster children and love them very much. We don’t recognize that enough so I’m glad they chose to show the positive side of that in a book that exposes a lot of corruption.
Recommendation
While, this book isn’t my favorite of his, I would still recommend it in general. The subject matter of the plot could be enough to hinder readers especially if that would be a trigger, but I can at least attest that there is some form of justice in the end. I think, for me, I would need to know that before reading a book like this, so I will share that ‘spoiler’ but I won’t tell you the specifics.
If this plot doesn’t appeal, I would still try some of Brian Freeman’s other books: stand alones like Thief River Falls, I Remember You, or Infinite, or his Frost Easton series or the latter part of his Jonathan Stride series.
[Content Advisory: 86 f-words; 28 s-words; 5 b-words; mentions of rape and human trafficking]
**Received and ARC via NetGalley**
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing
Moderate: Rape and Sexual assault