Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: No Mercy by John Gilstrap

John Gilstrap’s series of thrillers about a private investigator who specializes in rescuing kidnap victims has been on my TBR list for a while. The first book worked its way to the top a few weeks ago, and it was just the escape from reality I needed. Unfolding mostly in Virginia and Indiana, the two places I’ve called home the longest, the high-octane story was satisfyingly low in angst and high in action.

 

No Mercy (Pinnacle, 2009) opens with Jonathan Grave, loaded with high-tech surveillance equipment, on the ground in a small rural community in central Indiana, preparing to extract a hostage, a music student from Ball State University in Muncie, from his captives. The maneuver goes sideways, and Grave kills the kidnappers to save the student. In his rush to remove the student and himself from the scene, Grave leaves enough evidence that the sheriff of the quiet town pieces together a credible picture of what happened. She is determined that the rescuers, regardless of their honorable intent, should go on trial for the murder of the kidnappers. We’ll have no vigilantes in our town, thankyouverymuch.

 

Oblivious just yet to the knowledge that law enforcement is looking for him and back in Virginia, Grave learns from his ex-wife that her husband is missing and she wants Grave to find him. Grave loathes his replacement and agrees reluctantly. Before he can organize his resources and begin a search, she is savagely murdered and her home torn apart in an obvious hunt for something. The Indiana police going all out to find him and the Virginia police asking questions about just what he was doing while his wife was being killed, Grave hides from them while tracking down his ex-wife’s assassins and the missing husband.

 

Definitely a cut above the usual action hero, Gilstrap’s protagonist is a real person with friends who try to protect him and mixed feelings about what he does for a living. I liked him, and I liked the momentum of the intense plot which is far from routine. Book 13 in the series due out next spring, and I have 11 more to get through before then. Highly recommended to readers looking for a well-written and original contemporary thriller.

 

 

·         Mass Market Paperback : 464 pages

·         ISBN-10 : 0786020873

·         ISBN-13 : 978-0786020874

·         Publisher : Pinnacle; Original Edition (July 1, 2009)

·         Language: English

 

Aubrey Hamilton ©2020 

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Monday With Kaye: "Threat Warning" by John Gilstrap (Reviewed by Kaye George)

This Monday author Kaye George brings news of a thriller that could be all too real…

 

Threat Warning by John Gilstrap

There’s no need to wonder how Gilstrap gets the rave reviews and best-selling status that he gets. Just start reading and it all becomes clear.

A bizarre group calling themselves “The Army of God,” and calling each other Brother-This and Sister-That, have a secret goal so lofty it’s worth killing for. At least in their minds it is. The story opens with young Colleen Devlin preparing to mow down motorists on the Woodrow Wilson Bridge over the Potomac during the afternoon rush hour. She’s at one end of the bridge and Brother Stephen is at the other end.

Jonathan Grave is driving across the bridge at the moment they open fire, stuck in traffic, chatting with his friend and passenger, Father Dom D’Angelo. Jonathan instantly recognizes the sound of an automatic weapon, creeps out of his car, and whips out his Colt .45. Although he hits the shooter in the chest, she runs away just as he realizes she’s a female and not a young man. A misguided Secret Service agent gets the drop on Jonathan, thinking he’s the perpetrator, and both shooters escape detection.

Colleen commandeers a minivan for her getaway and, in the process, takes the driver and her teenage son hostage to a mountain hideout. The Army of God is well-organized and supremely motivated, but their captives, the wife, and son of a deployed Delta force operative, and their opponent, Jonathan Grave himself, are formidable. Grave and his team watch as other fatal mass attacks are carried out across America. They struggle to get to the people behind the carnage that continues splashing blood and leaving bodies across the country before even greater havoc ensues.

Hang on, it’s a wild ride!

Reviewed by Kaye George, Author of Choke for Suspense Magazine