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Retribution: Some Sins Can't Be Washed Away.
Retribution
A John Durant Novel
John Durant has spent his life designing buildings meant to last—libraries, schools, civic centers—all testaments to his unshakable confidence. From his thirty-floor office in West Palm Beach, the city seems a flawless reflection of his exacting vision. Married to Lisa with two children, he is the picture of admired, powerful, untouchable.
But control is an illusion. One rainy evening, after a late-night zoning meeting, John’s Mercedes strikes a beloved local music teacher, Patricia Chambers, as she crosses the street. He pauses long enough to see her scarf flutter, kneels beside her, then—paralyzed by fear—drives away. When the story breaks, the community mourns Patricia’s death, but John’s secret remains buried beneath an “unfortunate accident” on page fifteen.
Enter Karen Mitchell, an investigative reporter who once profiled Patricia with intimate warmth. When she uncovers grainy surveillance footage suggesting the car didn’t simply “slam on the brakes,” she senses something a calculated pause, a moment when John saw Patricia and chose to keep going. As Karen traces every lead, she inches closer to the truth. But the closer she gets, the more dangerous the ripple John’s world unravels, Lisa’s faith shatters, and the children face a father they never fully knew.
Haunted by whispers of the women whose lives he shattered, John finds no sanctuary in the concrete fortress he built. As a hurricane pounds the coast, the very house he designed to withstand any storm begins to collapse. Walls groan in confession, windows shatter under spectral testimony, and John’s final refuge floods with the evidence of his own betrayals.
Retribution is a tense, character-driven thriller about the price of perfection, the fragility of reputation, and the inexorable power of truth. In a single heartbeat, John Durant’s carefully measured world turns into a ruin of shattered glass and rising waters, and he must confess before the storm tears him apart—or become lost beneath the debris of his own making.
A John Durant Novel
John Durant has spent his life designing buildings meant to last—libraries, schools, civic centers—all testaments to his unshakable confidence. From his thirty-floor office in West Palm Beach, the city seems a flawless reflection of his exacting vision. Married to Lisa with two children, he is the picture of admired, powerful, untouchable.
But control is an illusion. One rainy evening, after a late-night zoning meeting, John’s Mercedes strikes a beloved local music teacher, Patricia Chambers, as she crosses the street. He pauses long enough to see her scarf flutter, kneels beside her, then—paralyzed by fear—drives away. When the story breaks, the community mourns Patricia’s death, but John’s secret remains buried beneath an “unfortunate accident” on page fifteen.
Enter Karen Mitchell, an investigative reporter who once profiled Patricia with intimate warmth. When she uncovers grainy surveillance footage suggesting the car didn’t simply “slam on the brakes,” she senses something a calculated pause, a moment when John saw Patricia and chose to keep going. As Karen traces every lead, she inches closer to the truth. But the closer she gets, the more dangerous the ripple John’s world unravels, Lisa’s faith shatters, and the children face a father they never fully knew.
Haunted by whispers of the women whose lives he shattered, John finds no sanctuary in the concrete fortress he built. As a hurricane pounds the coast, the very house he designed to withstand any storm begins to collapse. Walls groan in confession, windows shatter under spectral testimony, and John’s final refuge floods with the evidence of his own betrayals.
Retribution is a tense, character-driven thriller about the price of perfection, the fragility of reputation, and the inexorable power of truth. In a single heartbeat, John Durant’s carefully measured world turns into a ruin of shattered glass and rising waters, and he must confess before the storm tears him apart—or become lost beneath the debris of his own making.
133 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 3, 2025
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About the author
John Fenzel
4 books34 followersJohn Fenzel is an Army Special Forces officer who has served on our nations battlefields throughout Europe and the Middle East. He has served as a military assistant on the personal staff of the Secretary of Defense, as a Special Assistant to the Vice President, as a Strategic Planner for the Army Chief of Staff, and as a White House Fellow during the Clinton and Bush administrations. He is the only active duty American military officer to testify at The Hague in support of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). John is a graduate of Tulane University, the Naval War College and the National War College. Born in Iowa and raised outside Chicago, John lives with his wife and three children in Annapolis, Maryland. The Lazarus Covenant (BREATHE, 2009), was his first novel. The Sterling Forest, an international thriller, is his second novel, to be released August, 2016.
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