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Hunter Cell
They are a well-oiled killing machine given the legal authority by their government to assassinate US criminals. The agents’ targets are clueless as to who they are, when they’re coming, or where these assassins will ultimately take their lives. Conspiracy theorists speculate on their existence. The local authorities turn a blind eye to their aftermath. That’s exactly how the Hunter Cell wants it to be.
Now the threads of the Cell’s perfect system are unraveling. A simple embezzlement contract in the Pacific Northwest turns into a nationwide manhunt. Faceless vigilantes are interfering with it and other contracts across the board. A segment of the nation’s citizens will no longer stand for the wool being pulled over their eyes. Hunter Cell agents’ identities are being leaked into the mainstream. Now their lives and families are on the line. America’s best hunters are becoming the hunted.
Now the threads of the Cell’s perfect system are unraveling. A simple embezzlement contract in the Pacific Northwest turns into a nationwide manhunt. Faceless vigilantes are interfering with it and other contracts across the board. A segment of the nation’s citizens will no longer stand for the wool being pulled over their eyes. Hunter Cell agents’ identities are being leaked into the mainstream. Now their lives and families are on the line. America’s best hunters are becoming the hunted.
ebook
First published March 9, 2013
About the author
Joshua Dyer
28 books8 followersJoshua Dyer writes speculative fiction, westerns, and horror in both novel form and short stories. His works have earned national and international recognition in competitions and have appeared in award-winning anthologies and journals.
As J. E. Dyer, he writes historical fiction, romance, and literary fiction works. His novels have won national awards and made the short list for Chanticleer’s Van Goethe Award for best historical fiction novel. His shorter works have appeared in various journals and magazines.
Dyer also works as a slush reader for Empire & Great Jones Press and as an associate acquisitions editor for After Dinner Conversations. He has read and judged for the League of Utah Writers, and the Romance Writers of America. He’s mentored numerous fellow writers via SFWA and privately.
As J. E. Dyer, he writes historical fiction, romance, and literary fiction works. His novels have won national awards and made the short list for Chanticleer’s Van Goethe Award for best historical fiction novel. His shorter works have appeared in various journals and magazines.
Dyer also works as a slush reader for Empire & Great Jones Press and as an associate acquisitions editor for After Dinner Conversations. He has read and judged for the League of Utah Writers, and the Romance Writers of America. He’s mentored numerous fellow writers via SFWA and privately.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 29, 2013
(Originally posted on Red Reader Reviews)
We find ourselves in a not too distant future, in a time when the government has legalized assassination for those found guilty of the highest tier of crimes (murder, treason, etc). These assassinations, also known as “contracts,” are handled by an elite and secretive team of governmental assassins, each of which has his or her own signature style and personality. Then something goes wrong, and suddenly the assassins’ identities are no longer secret. With their lives on the line and the standards unraveling around them, will the new world order be destroyed? This sounds like the basic formula for an edge-of-your-seat thriller, but that’s unfortunately not the case; at least, not until you’re already 9 chapters in.
The first chapter starts out with one of our band of assassins getting ready to carry out a hit on a mob boss. I found this a fitting start for any story about assassins and was instantly ready to see what happened. That initial interest soon stagnated when I realized that this assassination had nothing to do with the main plot. In fact, none of the first seven chapters do. Instead, each of these chapters introduces a different member of the assassin team as they’re pulling off a hit that, like the first one, is unrelated to the main story. This makes these chapters seem more like a collection of disjointed short stories meant to show off how cool and unique the assassins are than as a part of interconnected plot.
That wouldn’t be too bad if these chapters allowed me to really get a feel for who the assassins were as characters, but they didn’t. More time was spent in most of these seven chapters introducing the characters and backstories of the hits than those of the assassins. Even that wouldn’t have been too bad if there were only one or two of these chapters. In fact, that would have been a great way to establish the world of the future and draw the reader in before getting to the main action as, in and of themselves, the individual hits are far from boring. However, when you get to the sixth hit in a row where you’re being introduced to yet another fresh and unrelated cast of characters, it gets a little tedious. (I should mention at this point that Dyer does use these intro chapters to establish a good deal of his futuristic reality, a lot of which I found quite clever, but I’m not going to talk about what exactly I found clever as that would spoil a big part of the novel to first-time readers.)
Another issue with these intro chapters is that the assassins who got the longest intros really didn’t feature much in regards to the main plot when we finally got there. The assassin who is arguably the main character of the assassin’s team (or at least the one who we follow around the most) barely left an impression on me in his very short intro chapter. I actually had to go back to remind myself who he was. So after seven chapters of a never ending parade of new characters, when I got to chapter nine and found myself meeting yet another one I was almost ready to call it quits. This was also the chapter that reminded my why my policy of always reading a book to the end no matter how tedious it seems exists. By the end of this chapter I had gone from barely interested to the edge of my seat.
The main plot, while not the most original in existence, is fast paced and gripping with a good deal of action and suspense. I can’t go into too much detail about it as, since we’re now at a point that’s half way through the book, I really feel that anything more than the most cursory details would be a major spoiler and a disservice to the author. The only major down side to this plot is, since the first half of the book is so slow and unrelated, I felt like I got only half of a story. Just when things are finally getting interesting, the book ends on a massive cliffhanger.
Now to the more technical side of this review: There are consistent, minor grammatical errors throughout the novel that, while far from making it unreadable, did have me twitching by the end. Also, at times the dialog is a bit shaky and doesn’t feel real, but some of that can be chalked up to the surreal nature of a world where assassination is considered a government approved line of work. My other main annoyance with the dialog often stemmed from a seemingly excessive amount of swearing, but that’s more my personal taste and something I can’t fault the author for. Characters’ decisions sometimes seemed a bit out of place, but as I didn’t really get to know the characters’ personalities that well due to the short length of what I consider the “true story,” I can’t say that with absolute certainty.
On the whole, I give Hunter Cell a rating of three out of five and recommend it to any reader who likes thriller novels and doesn’t mind a bit of a slow start. I also don’t recommend skipping straight to chapter nine either as, while the long intro does get a bit tedious, there’s enough important information there to make it a necessary read.
We find ourselves in a not too distant future, in a time when the government has legalized assassination for those found guilty of the highest tier of crimes (murder, treason, etc). These assassinations, also known as “contracts,” are handled by an elite and secretive team of governmental assassins, each of which has his or her own signature style and personality. Then something goes wrong, and suddenly the assassins’ identities are no longer secret. With their lives on the line and the standards unraveling around them, will the new world order be destroyed? This sounds like the basic formula for an edge-of-your-seat thriller, but that’s unfortunately not the case; at least, not until you’re already 9 chapters in.
The first chapter starts out with one of our band of assassins getting ready to carry out a hit on a mob boss. I found this a fitting start for any story about assassins and was instantly ready to see what happened. That initial interest soon stagnated when I realized that this assassination had nothing to do with the main plot. In fact, none of the first seven chapters do. Instead, each of these chapters introduces a different member of the assassin team as they’re pulling off a hit that, like the first one, is unrelated to the main story. This makes these chapters seem more like a collection of disjointed short stories meant to show off how cool and unique the assassins are than as a part of interconnected plot.
That wouldn’t be too bad if these chapters allowed me to really get a feel for who the assassins were as characters, but they didn’t. More time was spent in most of these seven chapters introducing the characters and backstories of the hits than those of the assassins. Even that wouldn’t have been too bad if there were only one or two of these chapters. In fact, that would have been a great way to establish the world of the future and draw the reader in before getting to the main action as, in and of themselves, the individual hits are far from boring. However, when you get to the sixth hit in a row where you’re being introduced to yet another fresh and unrelated cast of characters, it gets a little tedious. (I should mention at this point that Dyer does use these intro chapters to establish a good deal of his futuristic reality, a lot of which I found quite clever, but I’m not going to talk about what exactly I found clever as that would spoil a big part of the novel to first-time readers.)
Another issue with these intro chapters is that the assassins who got the longest intros really didn’t feature much in regards to the main plot when we finally got there. The assassin who is arguably the main character of the assassin’s team (or at least the one who we follow around the most) barely left an impression on me in his very short intro chapter. I actually had to go back to remind myself who he was. So after seven chapters of a never ending parade of new characters, when I got to chapter nine and found myself meeting yet another one I was almost ready to call it quits. This was also the chapter that reminded my why my policy of always reading a book to the end no matter how tedious it seems exists. By the end of this chapter I had gone from barely interested to the edge of my seat.
The main plot, while not the most original in existence, is fast paced and gripping with a good deal of action and suspense. I can’t go into too much detail about it as, since we’re now at a point that’s half way through the book, I really feel that anything more than the most cursory details would be a major spoiler and a disservice to the author. The only major down side to this plot is, since the first half of the book is so slow and unrelated, I felt like I got only half of a story. Just when things are finally getting interesting, the book ends on a massive cliffhanger.
Now to the more technical side of this review: There are consistent, minor grammatical errors throughout the novel that, while far from making it unreadable, did have me twitching by the end. Also, at times the dialog is a bit shaky and doesn’t feel real, but some of that can be chalked up to the surreal nature of a world where assassination is considered a government approved line of work. My other main annoyance with the dialog often stemmed from a seemingly excessive amount of swearing, but that’s more my personal taste and something I can’t fault the author for. Characters’ decisions sometimes seemed a bit out of place, but as I didn’t really get to know the characters’ personalities that well due to the short length of what I consider the “true story,” I can’t say that with absolute certainty.
On the whole, I give Hunter Cell a rating of three out of five and recommend it to any reader who likes thriller novels and doesn’t mind a bit of a slow start. I also don’t recommend skipping straight to chapter nine either as, while the long intro does get a bit tedious, there’s enough important information there to make it a necessary read.
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