Note: this review
contains slight spoilers
Clyde Barr is a
soldier and mercenary who's been gone for 16 years, including the
last two in a Mexican jail. Now he's back in Colorado, communing with
nature and staying away from civilization, when he gets a broken-off
cell-phone call from his sister Jen, who's been kidnapped. She's his
sister, and their childhood was traumatic, so Clyde comes back to
society, low-down society, to find her, and free her. And there's
nothing short of dying, as Kris Kristofferson sang, that's going to
stop him (though in Kris' case it was only getting dressed and going
out of the house he was talking about).
Easier said than
done, and soon he's fighting a war against meth dealers, aided by his
Mexican prison-mate Zeke, who happens to live just a few Colorado
hills away, and Allie, a beautiful barmaid from a biker bar who's
attached herself to him. But sidekicks don't have great prospects
with Clyde, who's strategic sense is as limited as his luck in
avoiding and surviving impossible situations is infinite. This is a
dangerous combination for bystanders. Of course Clyde is skilled, and
the body-count mounts rapidly: I started keeping score in the book's
margins until I got tired of that.
What makes it work
is first-time novelist Storey's sense of pacing, and the way he's
able to combine Clyde's extreme existential thoughtfulness with his
limited practical version of the same. Almost like a zen version of
Jack Reacher, except he's totally unaware of it. The cast of
characters is well-drawn, because the villains need to be when you
have this kind of tarnished
white-knight invincible hero, and the inevitable searing loss of
Allie, the best character in the book, is well-handled. As action
thrillers go, it's got the action, and the thrills, and a bit of
decent characterisation is not to be sneezed at.
When it's all over
Clyde drives off into the sunset and sees a small herd of wild
horses, what in a western might be called mustangs or broncos,
running 'because they felt like it'. He realises they are following
Allie's advice and 'living in the moment'. And he realises he could
'go in any direction...doing what needed to be done'. If only he'd
read Jack Reacher, he wouldn't have needed the horses.
Nothing Short Of
Dying by Erik Storey
Simon &
Schuster, £7.99 ISBN 9781471146862
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