Two in the Head

by Eric Beetner

When Samantha awakes she is half buried in bricks and the smoke still swirls in the air. The car bomb didn’t kill her—small miracle. Her unfocused eyes see a figure coming nearer. A shape she recognizes somehow. As the person passes by the orange glow from the car fire’s light, she sees the face. Her face. But how?

The other Samantha stands over her and regards her twin. Something is off about this new face. It is her, sure, but harder somehow. The new Sam turns and walks away, back toward the building she came out of before her car exploded. Back to see the two drug kingpins in the top floor offices. And somehow Samantha knows—back to take the deal she just turned down.

Samantha Whelan is a DEA agent, and not always a straight and narrow one. She’s been taking bribes and doing favors for Calder and Rizzo—twin brothers and big players in narco traffic in southern California—for years. She turned down a deal that night, a deal to make her millions, but it meant killing her fiancé, an assistant district attorney building a case against Calder and Rizzo. And it meant betraying her DEA brethren more deeply than she had so far. It was too much. So Calder and Rizzo tried to blow her up.

What happened then…she split. Samantha became Samantha and Sam. Two halves of the same person. The good side and the bad side. The two opposing forces living within her for so long were now free to fight it out to see who will win control.

So begins a nightmarish rocket ride for Samantha to save her life and the lives of everyone she holds dear before Sam, her bad half, can burn it to the ground.

223 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 18, 2021

About the author

BIO:
Eric Beetner has been hailed as “the new maestro of noir,” by Ken Bruen and “The 21st Century’s answer to Jim Thompson” by LitReactor.
He has written more than 2 dozen novels and his short stories has been featured in over 30 anthologies and along the way he’s been nominated for an ITW award, a Shamus, Derringer and three Anthony awards. He’s won none of them.
Novels include There and Back, All The Way Down, Two In The Head, Rumrunners, The Devil Doesn't Want Me and many more.
For more visit ericbeetner.com

Reviews

[Jim Thomsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another sunny high-speed splatterfest from self-described "pulp hack" Eric Beetner, with a little extra special sauce. This time, Beetner takes a headfirst dive into the speculative with the story of Samantha, a bent DEA agent who splits into two people — her good and evil halves — during a double-cross assassination attempt by her Mexican cartel handlers. Evil Sam is bent on fulfilling the original Sam's mission — kill all her DEA colleagues and cap off the blood trail with Samantha's prosecutor fiancé. Good Sam, in hot pursuit, gets alternately behind her evil twin as the bodies stack up higher than a shootout at the Walking Dead Corral. I sometimes got tangled up in the details of the specific properties of the divided Sams — Good Sam is limited in her ability to mentally track and physically impede Evil Sam, and vice versa, and neither supposedly can kill one without killing the other, or something — and trying to parse that sometimes got in the way of Beetner's otherwise assured plotting and pacing.

But overall, TWO IN THE HEAD is another professional outing from a guy who keeps churning out the cyber-dime thrillers with enviable industry. and quality. You know what you're getting when you get any Eric Beetner novel, and that's not something that can be said about many other authors.

[Nev March · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a thrill ride where the bodies fall fast and furious. It is noir to the core and you will see what I mean on the very last page. Yup, Eric Beetner keeps one last twist of the knife all the way out, a twist that you will not see coming.

Samantha is the good twin, Sam the bad one. But they used to be the same person and can see though each other’s eyes. This sets off some unique conundrums as a crooked DEA agent finds her evil twin going off on a rampage.

How many ways can one kill? You might lose track, in this hard bitten thriller where a sassy, tough chic finds herself literally split into Dr Jekyll and Ms Hyde. No one has plot armor in this race to the inevitable finish in a psychological mind-meld fantasy where nothing is really off limits.

[Mark Richardson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book starts with a bang and just keeps delivering the fireworks. It’s a face-paced, noir fun ride, told in a hipster first person narrative. I really enjoyed it.

[Poppy Gee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two in the Head is written in the tradition of hard-boiled noir - a fallen detective operating in a lawless city feels compelled to break the law with the goal of restoring order or justice. Eric Beetner's Southern Californian city is a gritty, drug dealing, corrupt and dangerous place where innocent people's lives are at risk from an encroaching violent underbelly. This thriller is a playful rollercoaster ride of ambiguous morality, gallows humour, sharp twists, creative violence (a stapler is a very efficient weapon), and intriguing side characters. Best of all, the robust plot is fueled by an underlying question about good versus evil and what it takes to be a hero in this uncertain world. I lost count of how many people died but I never felt too sad about them; there was no time for pity. The protagonist is Samantha, a compromised DEA agent bearing a hefty load of secrets; her nemesis is the evil Sam. The novel makes you wonder: would you destroy yourself to save those you love? We all have three lives - public, private and secret... Two in the Head made me think about what could happen if one's so-called 'secret life' personality became dominant. I especially enjoyed that this thriller had a female protagonist. The twist at the end made me re-read the last few pages to make sure I got it. I love it when an author does that! An interesting, original and humorous read.

[Todd Morr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seriously you can't go wrong with Beetner. Never disappoints. Read them all.