Book Review: Rage

Rage. Sue Rovens, Plump Toad Press/Bowker, June 22^nd, 2021, Paperback and eBook, 232 pages.

Review by Susan Gaspar.

Straddling the genres of suspense, horror, and crime fiction, Rage is an affecting tale of human unravelling. Sue Rovens continues in the gruesome tradition of her earlier work Buried (2019) and brings us characters teetering on the edge who slowly devolve into ghastly, feral versions of themselves. For the reader, Rage feels like sliding into an unsettling yet fascinating shadow world.

The book’s first half is a slow burn that simmers with near-constant tension. The book’s title haunts and tantalizes with looming inevitability, and you wonder just when the Rage will explode. But Rovens makes us wait. For lovers of psychological thrillers and suspense, this book works from chapter one. 

The story begins with a suicide attempt—always an attention getter—and we are introduced to the two main characters: the deeply troubled Weston Cross, and his assigned therapist, Lindsay Yager. We soon learn that neither of these individuals is who they appear to be, and both are nursing old traumas and emotional wounds that drive them to make consistently poor choices. For both, petty annoyances and daily struggles pile up, chapter by chapter, and the stress mounts.

We watch Wes, a longtime victim of abuse, bullying, and neglect, fight and eventually lose a lengthy battle with self-control. As his grasp on reality crumbles, he sinks into a soup of shame, despair, and desire—a perfect recipe for tragedy. We see Lindsay, an unapologetic alcoholic in an unhappy marriage, hit rock bottom and blatantly put herself and others in peril.

There are two unwitting catalysts for Wes and Lindsay: Jay, Wes’ sociable but intrusive neighbor, and Jeremy, Lindsay’s doting but clingy husband. These two prove to be the incendiary sparks that drive the lead characters—and the novel—an explosive end. Without giving away the book’s secrets, it’s safe to say that people are not always who they appear, secrets and addictions often wreak havoc, and sacrifices must usually be made.

The structure of the book is perfect for a tale of this kind: the chapters are short, quick reads, but the chapters each progress in inches and not miles, so you hang on every word as anxiety slowly mounts. The novel flip backs and forth between Wes’ and Lindsay’s worlds—which are exceedingly different but strangely mirrored in hopelessness. The alternating viewpoints keep you equally immersed in both plotlines, and the action never flags. And when the stories inevitably collide, Rage comes to a rolling boil.

Rovens has a talent for drawing you inside the heads of her characters—which are often unpleasant places to be. And once you are firmly ensnared, she is not shy about dishing out the most grim and grisly aspects of human vice, deviance, and depravity. But by then you are bewitched enough to stay, and if you are curious about psychological motivations and the “why” behind criminal behavior, you will get your answers. Thoroughly gripping, Rage is a taut tale of human horror that doesn’t disappoint.    

Book Review: A Dangerous Freedom

A Dangerous Freedom, John Ruane. Permuted Press, March 31, 2021, Print and Kindle, 236 pages.

Reviewed by Sue Merrell.

John Ruane’s latest book, A Dangerous Freedom, is a tale for our times. Mass shootings, so realistic they appear pulled from the nightly news, dot scene after scene in the book. This provides a pretty convincing background for the book’s central question: Is it time to get a gun?

The book opens on 9/11/2001 when the main character, Dylan Reilly, is a sophomore at a Chicago Catholic High School. It’s a great way to instantly grab the reader’s attention because there isn’t an American over 25 who doesn’t have vivid memories of where they were that day.

Then the tale fast forwards more than a decade to the day when Dylan and his wife Darlene are in New York visiting the recently opened 9/11 museum. Almost instantly, they find themselves caught in one of the senseless mass shootings that seem to have become a daily occurrence. As common as such shootings are, most of us have never actually seen one. Yet, in a matter of months, this unlucky couple manages to be caught in three. It’s the kind of unlikely coincidence central to most thrillers and mysteries, and it provides the necessary motivation for a religious peace lover like Dylan to grab a gun and start shooting back.

Actually, Dylan grabs a pair of guns, pearl-handled Smith & Wesson six-shooters that are so out-of-step with today’s high-magazine automatics that his magical transformation becomes more fantasy than bloody revenge. In each of the book’s remaining mass shooting scenes, Dylan shows up at just the right moment, a cross between Wyatt Earp and Superman, offering the bad guys a chance to throw down their weapons and surrender. When they refuse, he blasts them away with lightning speed. He is lauded as America’s hero and the fastest shooter in the world.

Everything about the new Dylan is just a bit over-the-top, including his perfect marksmanship. However, this exaggeration is a wise choice on the author’s part because it paints the “good guys with guns” scenario as the victory we want to imagine instead of weighing the story down with the inevitable angst and mistakes a world of armed good guys could create.

In addition to Dylan, the book follows three other stories. Haydon Huff is the troubled son of a famous 1960s activist (ala one of the Chicago Seven). Arman Fazan is the American-born son of Persian immigrants facing school bullies. And then there’s a group of irredeemable jihadists. All the stories intersect eventually. It’s an ambitious project difficult to pull off well. Unfortunately, too many lengthy scene-setting pages get in the way of the action.

Despite these rough spots, I think Dylan Reilly might just have the chutzpah to become an American hero.

Book Review: The Coming

The Coming, Dan Coffman. Covenant Books, Murrells Inlet, SC, September 1, 2020, Paperback and Kindle, 320 pages.

Reviewed by Andrew Reynolds.

Dan Coffman has written numerous novels that center on the idea that the world we live in is not as it appears. Many of these stories take the form of fables, and through them, Coffman explores the idea that forces unseen steer the course of humanity. Are these forces spiritual, be they demons or angels? Or are they extraterrestrials whose visits have morphed into the legends we tell ourselves about the mystic creatures we regard as sent from our gods?

The Coming is the most recent incarnation of this storytelling continuum. Coffman posits a real-world struggle that is being fought behind the scenes between the governments of the world and shadowy forces inside the world’s religions. All the parties have one goal: to suppress the knowledge that aliens have been visiting the Earth for most of humanity’s history. Why they seek to keep this information secret varies. Many of the religions hope to maintain their hold over humanity by hiding the fact that humanity is far from the special creation of a supreme being. On the other hand, governments hope to use the alien technology they’ve accumulated over time to gain power in the world.

Shane Reid, a man who’s made a name for himself as a debunker of claims of alien visitations, is contacted by an old nemesis. Brad Shelton is a firm believer in UFOs who becomes friends with Shane over their shared interest in understanding the few alien encounter claims that can’t easily be explained away. Phoebe Braham, a genius freelance cipher sleuth, brings together this unlikely trio. 

As you can imagine, the people who want to keep alien encounters secret are not going to sit idly by as they begin to examine the evidence they have. From the novel’s opening scene—Reid engaging in a high-speed chase through the streets of Chicago—they are under constant threat. 

Coffman keeps the story moving with his protagonists striving to understand what’s happening while doing everything they can to keep things from getting worse. He gives them enough close calls to make the reader wonder if they aren’t under some form of divine protection. And perhaps it is that aspect of the novel that bothers me. At many points in the story, the protagonists should have failed. They shouldn’t have made the miraculous escape. They wouldn’t conveniently know someone who could answer the question that has them stumped. And the bad guys wouldn’t fail to take advantage of their superior resources, be it in intelligence about the situation or wealth, to bring about the end they desire. 

There are several instances of deus ex machina in the story, which may not appeal to all readers, but those who like diving into a good conspiracy will enjoy this sci-fi thriller.