John Rector (1)

Matt Caine's life is not going well. A former Marine, Matt brings home unwanted baggage from Iraq and Afghanistan in the form of PTSD. Beth, the love of his life, is killed in a tragic traffic accident. His daughter Anna barely survives the same accident and requires multiple surgeries to recover. If that isn't enough, the plant where Matt worked closed, putting him in the unemployment line. After using his savings to pay for Anna's surgeries, the mortgage company is threatening foreclosure. show more He borrows the money to stay the foreclosure from an old friend, Brian Murphy, who just happens to have ties to the mob. As if all that wasn't enough, Beth's parents have hired a lawyer to take temporary custody of Anna "for the best interest of the child." Anna is all Matt has left. She is the one small piece of Beth that remains, and he will do whatever it takes to keep her.

Enter Jay, another of Matt's old friends, fresh out of prison. Jay obviously hadn't learned that crime didn't pay, because he had a "can't miss" plan to make a quick $500,000. They would kidnap a wealthy philanthropists wife and collect the ransom. Jay had all the details worked out: where to hide the woman; where to have the money drop; how long to make the old man wait. All he needed Matt to do was drive. Since Matt owned a van, it would be perfect. Desperate for money, Matt finally agreed.

You could see it coming a mile away. Nothing ever goes down as planned. The woman had a driver, who became a witness to her abduction and could ID the van. Jay, who had been a long time drug user, overdoses after they get to the warehouse where they were hiding the woman. Matt decided to go ahead with the plan on his own, but he was woefully unprepared. The old man, Roman Pinnell, was a member of a South American drug cartel and had traced Matt's van back to him. Before Matt knew what was happening, Pinnell had turned the tables on Matt and kidnapped Anna. Again, Matt was faced with doing whatever it took to protect his family.

The book was very exciting and was very difficult to put down. The chapters were short and always seemed to end with a cliffhanger, causing me to read "just one more chapter." We see Matt as a flawed character, seemingly going from one bad decision to another. And although he was a Marine, Matt seemed almost totally inept in the urban jungles the mob called home. The fact that Matt was trying to right his mistakes and get his innocent daughter back tugged at my heart. If you like action and adventure, then this book is for you. show less

This book was a painful read. Not from a literary standpoint - Rector's writing is strong and compelling. And the book is short, so it's also a quick read. But it was difficult for me to keep reading on an emotional level - Dexter is a very troubled man, and it's hard to be inside of his head, watching his rationalizations for things that he says and does. But it's also kind of like looking at an accident on the side of the road - terrifying to look at, but impossible to look away from.

The show more book was relatively unique (the only other comparable book I can think of that I've read is Joyce Carol Oates's "Zombie") and definitely compelling. It did leave a few questions unanswered for me, and I wish a few areas had been fleshed out more (as painful as that would have been!) If you give it a shot, just be sure you're ready for something fairly dark and intense.

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Dexter, wakes up in his bed one morning, fully dressed, to find his friend, the local sheriff, standing over him and any memory of what happened last night gone. The sheriff is there because Dexter's wife called to tell him how angry and out of control Dexter was the night before, one reason she had left to move in with her mom for the time being. The sheriff also tells him that his tractor is gone from it's usual parking place and appears to have been driven into one of the fields, and is show more now stuck in a ditch.

Dexter has no memory of that either. Maybe because he has stopped taking his medication, medication that he has been taking since his stint years ago in the mental institution, and has started heavily drinking instead. Not good decisions, but two of only many, many bad decisions Dexter makes in this book.

When he goes out into the field to try and move the tractor, he catches a glimpse of something in the grove of trees that borders his farm. Thinking it is trash from the kids that sometimes hang out there at night, he is shocked to find a body, the dead body, of a young high school girl. At first, he starts to call the police, but then he knows that he will be their first suspect. And in fact, he is not at all sure that he did not kill her, since he can't remember the previous night.

So...he decides to investigate what happened himself. Not really smart.
But don't worry. He will not have to do it himself.
The bad new is that his companion is the dead girl herself, increasing horrible visions of the dead girl, urging him on to more ever more irrational and horrible things.
Dexter suffers from some unnamed metal disorder, which sounds a lot like schizophrenia, and is not helped by the fact that he has stopped taking the medication that have kept the voices at bay for years, or by the fact that he is drinking continually for most of the book. A very bad combination.
He is a man spiraling out of control. As we find out, something terrible has happen in Dexter's life in the previous year that has set off this decline and now his wife has left him and he is losing his tentative grasp on reality.Could he have killed someone in a drunken, mentally impaired blackout?
Well, he has before…

To have any sympathy for the narrator, you have to accept that there is, to him, some sort of logic in his endless series of bad, drunken, mad decisions. And I am not sure why, but I did. Maybe the concern of his friend, the sheriff and his wife is enough to convince us that he was once a different man and could be again. I did indeed find something likable and sympathetic about him. Yes, he is doing some very irrational things, all seeming just making the situation worse. But the reader still has some hope that maybe it will all work out, although it seems increasing unlikely. This book is a quick read and one that I found a real page turner. It is well written in a very direct style that suits the slightly bizarre story perfectly. Dark and creepy and disturbing and, luckily, short enough to be read in one long, scary sitting...all alone..in the dark...in the cold wee hours of the night. show less

Nick White is down on his luck, he's broke and his wife, Kara, has just left him. On a rainy day he tries to drink himself happy at his favourite bar. Enter a sexy blonde, dressed in black. The woman mistakes him for a hitman, she was supposed to meet and before he knows it, he has been handed an envelope with 20k and a photo of his target, Abigail Pierce.
After the initial shock, he tries to clarify the situation, but it's too late, before he can think straight, the blonde woman has left the show more bar.
When the blonde's "real date" turns up, the barkeeper makes a mistake and now the killer knows Nick's address and he will stop at nothing to get the money back.
Basically from one second to the next, Nick finds himself on the run. As it's too dangerous for him to go back to his apartment, his next stop is his father, who luckily is an ex-cop and still has a few connections, which might come in handy.
Given the choice to either run and hide in Mexico or try and contact the victim, he doesn't listen to his dad ("You met a bonde in a bar? Any story that starts like that isn't going to end well.") and he tries to get in touch with Abigail.

The plot kept me nicely hooked and I found myself turning the pages and enjoyed the twists and turns the story takes, when Nick tries to get to the bottom of it all. Something about Abigail didn't feel quite right to me, but what the author had in store, I didn't see coming. I could live with most of it and the one thing which made me cringe a bit, I can easily forgive, because otherwise I loved the suspense and thrill of the book. Luckily John Rector doesn't bore with overlong descriptions, his writing is straight to the point, which makes Ruthless a gripping and fast paced read. show less