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JUDGEMENT AND WRATH
by Matt Hilton
Hodder & Stoughton, October 2009
320 pages
12.99 GBP
ISBN: 0340978244


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

An ex-Special Forces counter-terrorism specialist pitted against a crazed killer with a disfiguring skin condition and delusions of being a fallen angel should be a recipe for disaster, and in the hands of many authors it almost certainly would be, but Matt Hilton manages to pull the combination off with a flair sadly lacking in all too many books that I've read recently.

Joe Hunter is British rather than American, even though the book is set in the United States He works with ex-Ranger Jared Rington, better known as Rink. Hunter is offered a job by Richard Dean, a man who wants his daughter rescued from her abusive boyfriend, and isn't too particular how Hunter accomplishes this task, even though Hunter makes it plain from the outset he isn't that sort of gun-for-hire. It becomes plain quite quickly that the girl, Marianne, doesn't want Hunter's help, but he's been paid for the job so he hangs around anyway, which is fortunate. He only just manages to save her and, against his better judgement, her boyfriend, Bradley Jorgenson, from the attentions of a killer who has no objection whatsoever to leaving a rapidly-mounting body count in his wake.

Hunter and Rink get sucked rapidly into a fast-paced attempt to save both Marianne and Bradley from an assassin whose tenacity and ingenuity match the intensity of his total absence of empathy with other human beings. Dantalion claims he likes to give his victims choices, but in reality those choices amount to nothing more than asking his victim whether she would prefer her husband or her child to be killed first, or enquiring whether someone would prefer to die quickly and painlessly, or slowly and in agony.

The death toll rises alarmingly, and eventually for Hunter it becomes more than just about saving a young girl from an abusive lover. It becomes personal between him and Dantalion, the alias chosen by the killer. During a break-neck ride that never slackens in pace, Hunter is impressed by the concern Bradley shows for Marianne and begins to doubt the young man's role in the girl's previous injuries, which complicate Hunter's loyalties in an increasingly dangerous game of cat and mouse.

The book alternates between chapters related by Hunter himself with those concentrating on Dantalion and his view of events. I have found this a difficult format to get on with in some books, but here it worked well, lending an additional dimension to the story as the reader gets to see into the mind of the both killer and the man who is trying to stop him. Hilton weaves both strands of the story together skilfully as the book very rapidly hits its stride and doesn't falter.

I've seen a lot of books labelled 'impossible to put down' and numerous variants on the same theme, but almost invariably they don't live up to either their blurb or my expectations. This one doesn't make any such promises, but it certainly should do. I read it in two sittings, and it only stretched to two because I started the book quite late at night. This really was a great read, and the final confrontation between Hunter and Dantalion is up there with the best I've encountered. I want the first book in this series and I want it now. Joe Hunter is my sort of bloke.

Reviewed by Linda Wilson, March 2010

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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