This is why I don’t live in small towns: In AFRAID, Safe Haven, Wis., turns out to be the polar opposite when a helicopter crashes there and some seriously bad shit starts going down. Like what? Like hulking men in black uniforms busting into your home and disemboweling you.
Why? Because of some secret government project that manipulates the minds of soldiers to decimate an entire town with extreme prejudice. It was meant to combat terrorism, but tell that to the good people of Safe Haven … if you could find any of them still alive, that is.
Jack Kilborn’s debut novel bounces back and forth between a handful of residents as they deal with these murderous, toe-chomping, throat-slitting newcomers. There’s a single-mom diner waitress and her 10-year-old son home alone. There’s a pair of firefighters, one of whom is newly engaged. There’s the crusty old sheriff, just days (and, thus, a cliché) away from retirement.
Oh, and there’s also a cinnamon-colored monkey who dances the Macarena, but we won’t go into that.
A bunch of the townspeople fall for a trick that they’ve all won the lottery, and should gather at a specified place to collect their checks. It’s a trap, naturally, and one that plucks at the ol’ suspension of disbelief. Lucky for Kilborn’s readers, that trap is strewn with gristle and goo, and a nerve-racking set piece that has the boy stuck in a dark, enclosed space with an elderly babysitter who’d rather send him to the Lord with a shotgun than await rescue.
AFRAID doesn’t waste any time getting started, and its short chapters, each dedicated to this person or that, maintains a quickened pace. It’s essentially a novel-length collection of chase scenes. But like any chase, it runs out of steam well before the finish line — even books should follow the adage of “it’s a marathon, not a sprint.” You’re likely to get worn out.
But tough it out, because Kilborn — aka crime writer J.A. Konrath, here clearly relishing the change of scenery — saves a few tricks for the end. And God bless him for not using to blaze a trail wide open for one of those so-in-vogue trilogies. He’s got a story, he tells it, he gets out. —Rod Lott
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THESE GUNS FOR HIRE edited by J.A. Konrath
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