Everybody pays.

Conway Sachs, one time mechanic and ex-NASCAR driver, was also a recovering alcoholic. He'd been in AA for years, the fiercely protective and radical version, which is where he'd met Eudora, elderly perhaps, but more feisty than most women half her age. She'd eventually become his friend, and sponsor, defying the convention of male for male and female for female. So, when dying from cancer, she asks Sachs to find and bring back her now disreputable ex-Hollywood star son before she dies, of course he agrees. Even though it means rescuing him from a kidnap situation where Kenny (with the same startling blue purple eyes as his mother) is being held, naked, in an old jack-off parlour by a dangerous low life gang. And, as added bonus for Eudora, Sachs gets Kenny mostly clean for the return to his mother. Hours later she is dead but not by the cancer. And Sachs is determined to find out why.

Steve Ulfelder has written a thrill filled novel with plenty of action. But it is the characterisation which makes this book so good. There is a feeling of real people walking, or more likely runnibg, through these pages albeit it in unconventional circumstances. Told in the first person from Conway Sach's perspective, there are numerous little throw away comments which further enhance the reality, from the coats worn by two greyhounds to keep their almost hairless bodies warm in the snow, to the absent minded mental ramblings to postpone doing something of which he's fearful but knows has to be done. And the many times when he 'said nothing.'
All is further enhanced by the excellent performance of Josh Brogadir, who impeccably follows the text in emotional response, all the while reading clearly with good intonation and voicing the different characters with distinctive differences. Some are really quite funny. And that is another aspect to the book: although at times violent and unremitting, there's humour here, too, to lighten the read.

My deep thanks to the rights holder of Wolverine Brothers who, at my request, freely gifted me with a complimentary copy, via Audiobook Boom. Not having read any of this author's works before, I was very pleasantly surprised and will now certainly look out for more by him in the future.
A good pairing of book and narrator, and definitely recommended.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!