Over the years, I had heard many good things about Dustin Stevens, but I had read none of his books until I grabbed The Driver off my E book bookshelf a couple of days ago. Believe it or not, I have had five of his books on that shelf waiting to be read for a very long time. I’m into K-9 thrillers, so I figured that The Driver, which is book 8 in the Reed & Billie K-9 Thriller Series, was a good one to start with. Billie is the K-9, a solid black Malanois.
One thing that had kept me from reading any of his books was the fact that people who had read his books told me he wrote dialogue that was clean, dialogue with no overt vulgarity, and I didn’t see how anyone could write realistic dialogue without using some profanity. I mean, profanity is a big part of every criminal’s vocabulary. Dustin knew that too, but he also knew that using it would offend some of his more genteel readers, so he alludes to its use of description instead of vocalizing it through dialogue.
I also shy away from stories that keep the reader hopping back and forth in time because few writers can pull that off and still keep the story moving forward. Dustin Stevens is one of those few. He makes it feel natural. The driver's main story plot is Detective Reed Mattox’s search for the miscreant that killed his partner and he keeps switching back and forth between the time leading up to her cold-blooded murder and the present day. This story has more subplots, more twist and turns then rattlesnake path across the desert sands.
This story is a roller-coaster thrill ride from start to finish. It’s more than a page-turner, it’s a page-burner. there’s enough violence, enough blood letting to satisfy even the most addicted thriller reader, even without the gratuitous vulgarity and sex. If you only read one K-9 Thriller this year, make The Driver by Dustin Stevens that thriller.