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A review by usbsticky
A Small Town by Thomas Perry
4.0
Spoilers below:
A somewhat unusual story line. The book starts off with a prison escape where 12 masterminds manage to kill all/most of the guards of a federal penitentiary. Then they open all the doors for over a thousand prisoners to escape with them and create chaos. When they get to a small town nearby they murder and rape the families of some of the guards and escape. The staties and feds are called in and the rest of the prisoners are either killed (with some townspeople) or caught. The 12 manage to escape since they had prepared for the breakout.
Fast forward to a couple of years later, the town council (or the mayor and assistant) secretly authorizes the chief of detectives Leah Hawkins to hunt down and kill the 12. They give her a $1M credit line to use (from a federal grant).
Most of the middle of the book is Hawkins finding and killing 6 of the prisoners. The remaining 6 figure that the town has put a hit on them and decide to attack the town in order to kill the people who ordered their hit. They chance upon the town council meeting but Hawkins kill 3 of the attackers and the rest escape.
The 3 escape back to Arkansas(?) where one of them is the leader of a survivalist cult/movement. While there, two of them fight over a woman and are killed. The leader decides to go rob a bank to get funds for the movement. Hawkins tracks them down there and kills the leader in the act. The end.
Like all the Thomas Perry books I've read so far, all the characters operate in Easy Mode. Hawkins manages to track and kill easily. The bad guys also pull off their escape in Easy Mode. I don't really mind as it makes for easy and stress free reading. Also at about 66% of the book, it suddenly switches to one of the escapee's POV. This seems to be a common plot device of Perry but makes the book feel like unstructured or ill planned. Apart from that, I find these books are easy and quick to read action books. You'll either like them or not.
A somewhat unusual story line. The book starts off with a prison escape where 12 masterminds manage to kill all/most of the guards of a federal penitentiary. Then they open all the doors for over a thousand prisoners to escape with them and create chaos. When they get to a small town nearby they murder and rape the families of some of the guards and escape. The staties and feds are called in and the rest of the prisoners are either killed (with some townspeople) or caught. The 12 manage to escape since they had prepared for the breakout.
Fast forward to a couple of years later, the town council (or the mayor and assistant) secretly authorizes the chief of detectives Leah Hawkins to hunt down and kill the 12. They give her a $1M credit line to use (from a federal grant).
Most of the middle of the book is Hawkins finding and killing 6 of the prisoners. The remaining 6 figure that the town has put a hit on them and decide to attack the town in order to kill the people who ordered their hit. They chance upon the town council meeting but Hawkins kill 3 of the attackers and the rest escape.
The 3 escape back to Arkansas(?) where one of them is the leader of a survivalist cult/movement. While there, two of them fight over a woman and are killed. The leader decides to go rob a bank to get funds for the movement. Hawkins tracks them down there and kills the leader in the act. The end.
Like all the Thomas Perry books I've read so far, all the characters operate in Easy Mode. Hawkins manages to track and kill easily. The bad guys also pull off their escape in Easy Mode. I don't really mind as it makes for easy and stress free reading. Also at about 66% of the book, it suddenly switches to one of the escapee's POV. This seems to be a common plot device of Perry but makes the book feel like unstructured or ill planned. Apart from that, I find these books are easy and quick to read action books. You'll either like them or not.