Heroes or Gangbangers?
Four young men enter the Lake Michigan Credit Union to rob it and while Chris and Alex go into the vault to empty the contents of one certain safety deposit box, Mumbo and Rob shoot two tellers, a little girl and a couple of other men. Alex kills one on the way out. When the four young men get to an old farm, Chris shoots Alex without any apparent reason. A few days later, the police call on Alex’s father, Will Daniels and his wife Allison, to report they had found Alex’s body burned in a van. Actually, Alex is not Will’s blood son. Will had been a wild young man, a gangster type, an alcoholic and one day a girl whom Will had been sleeping with dumped a baby with Will’s mother, stating that the baby boy was either Will’s or another man’s she had been sleeping with. By then Will was married, they couldn’t have children, and took the baby as their son to raise. Will eventually gave up his drinking and became a bartender and after several years at that, he turned his hand to writing novels. His long-suffering wife had put up with him, although no one knows why, and both Will and Allison struggled to raise this baby to be a decent citizen, but no matter what they tried, he ran with gangs and broke the law continuously, much like Will had years prior.
When Will found out about his son’s murder, even knowing that Alex had probably killed a person at the bank, he was determined to find out who did it and then burned the body. He went to one of his old time gang buddies, Jason, who had been in jail for several years and Will would have been there too, had he gone to the rendezvous that night, but he didn’t and escaped arrest. Will knew that he had to find somebody still in touch with all of the gangs and Jason was a dangerous man. But he went to Jason anyway and after telling Jason that he might be the other man who was the father of Alex, Jason became interested in finding the killers of Alex.
The story then encompasses Jason, with Will in tow, seeking out the other three young men, torturing and killing, sometimes necessary, sometimes needlessly, until they reach the crux of why the Credit Union’s safety deposit box was so important, and why Alex was killed. Jason and Will fight themselves in and out of gang fights, and a winter storm that almost destroys the countryside until everybody is wounded. But in the end, justice prevails in a diabolical sort of way. This is certainly a different type of action story and may be enjoyed by men more than women. For those readers who would enjoy a different type of mystery and action story, then this would be it. Although this isn’t my usual “cup of tea,” I did find it rather intriguing.