The Terror of Living

Bobby Drake #1

by Urban Waite

Phil Hunt is deep in trouble. For twenty years he's lived in Washington State, raising horses with his wife on his small farm and trying to stay clear of the law. But when a less-than-legal side job goes horribly wrong, Hunt is suddenly on the run from two men: Drake, the deputy sheriff who intends to incarcerate him, and Grady, the vicious hitman with a knife fetish who means to carve him limb from limb.

An explosive chase ensues, and Hunt is forced to use all his willpower and toughness to rescue his quiet life and save his skin. Headlong and gorgeously written, with memorable characters and a vividly powerful sense of place, The Terror of Living marks the arrival of a new master of narrative suspense.

Genres: Fiction, Crime, Thriller, Mystery, Suspense, Mystery Thriller, Contemporary

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Urban Waite is the author of The Terror of Living, named one of Esquire's Ten Best Books of the year. His latest book is The Carrion Birds, an Indie Next Pick and the recipient of starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist. His short fiction has appeared in the Best of the West anthology, the Southern Review, and other journals. He has degrees from the University of Washington, Western Washington University, and Emerson College. He lives in Seattle with his wife.

Reviews

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 4 out of 5]

”Do you ever just think of just doing a criminal thing sometime? Just doing something terrible. Change everything.
Richard Ford, Rock Springs, from the story “Winterkill”

Deputy Bobby Drake was up in the mountains of Washington State for purposes of relaxation, at least that is what he told everyone. When millions of dollars of cocaine start floating down out of the sky. The relaxation becomes one cop against desperate men who never want to see the inside of Monroe prison again.

Hunt is one of those men. He’s been inside. He’s done his stupid thing and paid the price in time. ”Hunt had grown up over the years, but the idea of being a continuous failure had stuck with him. He was sure of himself in all the wrong situations. A good man, made up of all the bad things in the world.” He has a beautiful wife and a small business boarding horses, but he can’t make enough money to meet his mortgage needs. He has to mule drugs out of the hills for his friend Eddie. Pretty safe occupation most of the time except when you run into a Deputy Sheriff doing some camping in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Hunt could become a wage slave, but he just can’t do it. He’s given up enough time in a cage and can’t stand the thought of doing mindless work for just enough money to keep scraping by. He needs the big score, something that will cushion him from poverty and allow him the freedom to exist the way he wants to exist.

He just got unlucky.

Drake, has his own baggage to haul. His father was the sheriff and is currently serving time for doing something similar to what Hunt was trying to do. The Sheriff was tired of being broke. When Drake calls in the results of this unexpected drug bust, because of his father’s record, he is a suspect before he is a hero.

Meanwhile powerful, impatient people are very unhappy.

The same group are using Vietnamese women to smuggle heroin into the country. Their intestines are full of thousands of dollars of pellets. Two women worth no more than a plugged nickel to these people are suddenly worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $200,000. It is Grady’s job to collect them and extract the heroin.

Grady has a penchant for knives. He calls himself a chef, but he is really a butcher.

”In one motion, Grady pushed the blade up into the skin beneath the chin, up through the soft palate, and into the brain. There was a slight tremor on the attendant’s face as Grady twisted the handle of the knife and scrambled the man’s brains. The attendant’s warm blood came dripping down off the knife into Grady’s gloved hand and the sleeve of his sweatshirt.”

Grady is one of those people with scrambled circuitry in his brain, or maybe he actually has streamlined circuits that allow him to embrace impulse and not have a flicker of remorse for any of the results. Whenever he entered a chapter every sense of self-preservation I have was instantly activated. I felt uneasiness for even the most casual interactions that he had with people. He is sent after Hunt, but when Hunt proves elusive he decides that Hunt’s wife Nora will bring Hunt to him.

”He hoped Hunt loved his wife. He was counting on it, and he knew people did stupid things for love. They did stupid things all too often. And he thought this was probably how they had all come into this mess. How it had all begun for them. Stupid.”

Everyone is looking for Hunt and everyone is looking for Grady. Hunt and Grady are looking for each other. Drake finds himself in the middle trying to save Hunt as best he can and at the same time redeem himself for the sins of his father.

Urban Waite has written a literary level mystery that hopefully has crossed over between genres. Mystery readers should definitely read this neo-noir novel if they are fans of hardboiled Chandleresque novels, but there are also elements of Jim Thompson lurking in the prose to add some Pulp Fiction spice. Waite fills a niche recently vacated by the great Elmore Leonard. He was a writer deemed worthwhile to read for those looking for an entertainment between heavier texts of established classics or history.

The book is plot driven, but there are certainly a plethora of reflective moments when the characters are wrestling with issues of past mistakes and trying to ponder their way into a better future that gives the book substance beyond just a snappy plot.

In the acknowledgements Urban Waite listed the books and writers that influenced his need to be a writer. Poachers by Tom Franklin, Spartina by John Casey, Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone, No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy, and The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene. I really appreciate it when writers do this, especially when they list more than just the authors, but the actually titles of the books as well. The result, I went to my library and pulled a copy of Dog Soldiers off my shelf to read next. A book that has been there for decades.

4.25 out of 5 Stars

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[Kemper · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Welcome, gentlemen. I’m John Keller from the Society of Literary Hit Men. And you are?”

“Grady Fisher from The Terror of Living.”

“Anton Chigurh from No Country For Old Men.

“Thank you for coming. We’ve got a position open with SLHM and you two were nominated as likely candidates. However, I’m afraid we only have one spot so only one of you will be invited to join. Mr. Fisher, please tell us why you think you’re qualified for the SLHM.”

“I did hits for a crooked lawyer involved in heroin smuggling from Asia through Canada and into the Pacific Northwest. I’m a complete psychopath who combines my killing skills with a love of butchery so not only will I slice up any one you pay me to, I can carve up a side a beef into some first rate steaks. I carry around a bag of knives and an assault rifle while working. Recently, I got mixed up with trying to kill a guy who got on the bad side of some drug dealers and was running around with a large amount of their heroin. I was chasing him down, but he was pretty slippery, and I ended up having to threaten his wife to try and get the job done. I killed a whole lot of people along the way and PETA is probably not very happy with me either. Oh, and I also got mixed up with this cop who was trailing after the guy.”

“And how about you Mr. Chigurh?”

“I usually work for drug dealers in Texas along the Mexican border. I’m a complete psychopath. I like to use a cattle bolt gun and a silenced shotgun on my victims. Recently I got mixed up with trying to kill a guy who got on the bad side of some drug dealers by taking a pile of money he found in the aftermath of a shootout. I was chasing him down, but he was pretty slippery, and I ended up having to threaten his wife to try and get the job done. I also killed a whole lot of people along the way, but I don’t give a shit if PETA is happy with me or not. Oh, and my guy also had an old cop trailing him.”

“I have to say that your stories are remarkably similar. Mr. Fisher, can you add anything that makes your qualifications stand out?”

“Uh… Did I mention my bag of knives?”

“Yes, you did. Mr.Chigurh, anything to add?”

“I inspired such a sense of overwhelming dread and terror that most felt it was hopeless to confront me, and some of the people involved in my story just gave up in the face of such unrelenting nihilism and unrepentant evil.”

“Very impressive indeed. Mr. Chigurh, I believe the position is yours.”

“Hang on a minute! I didn’t spend years cutting up people just to get passed over for a guy with a Dorthy Hamill haircut!”

“How about we flip a coin for it, friend-o?”

****************************************************

This may be one of those books that suffers from unrealistic expectations. With all the raving blurbs from authors I like on the cover, and seeing it compared to No Country For Old Men, my hopes were high. Unfortunately, it didn’t come close to meeting those standards.

None of the characters seemed that exceptional or interesting to me. Phil Hunt is an ex-convict and expert horsemen who has been making a living muling dope over the Canadian border. When one of his pick-ups gets ruined by Deputy Bobby Drake, Hunt finds his head on the chopping block with his employers. Drake is trying to live down the reputation of his father, a former sheriff who moonlighted as a drug smuggler and got sent to prison for it. Hilarity ensues when crazy hit man Grady is brought in.

Other than not being able to get over to the similarities to No Country For Old Men, I just wasn’t that impressed with this. The author was obviously trying to take a crime story and make it into capital L- Literature, but the characters weren’t that original or groundbreaking. The writing was good, but nothing special. Even the oodles of gore and ultra-violence seemed curiously listless to me. There was one interesting idea introduced about how law enforcement should be about maintaining order and not judging morality, but even the exploration of this lacked any real depth.

Sadly, the book fails to be a compelling post modern crime story or a good hard boiled crime thriller.

[M · Rating 2 out of 5]

He sat in the near-dark, one finger running thoughtfully along the deckle edges of the pages, remembering how his dad used to love him an awful lot then less so. Or so it seemed. But you never know. Love worked that way.

In another room in the city, the blond man ate his popcorn but it didn't fill. The hunger creeped up and tapped him on the shoulders, wondering politely when he was going to get his knife bag out.

The drug-runner ran some drugs, his hand on the pommel, guiding the horse along the trail. He stopped and dismounted, his fingers on some very specific kind of flowers that they have here, remembering some very specific information about their biology, before sniffing the air cautiously. Like a bear. He was full of regrets. Not hungry at all. He thought of his dad.

The blond man got his knife bag out. He smiled.

It was still near-dark in the room, and the book read fast but flawed. He didn't care. He was just trying to do what he was trying to do. And the world rolled on, the way worlds do. He wished he had some popcorn. Maybe that would satisfy.

The drug-runner's drugs fell out all over the floor. They opened up a hunger in him, but not that other kind that drugs sometimes pretend to satisfy, but a different kind, about money, that drugs also don't fill. Hunger was like that. His dad went away when he was little. That opened up a hunger that the drugs couldn't fill. But neither could the drug money. Still, he was a good man, and he was full. Full of shame.

The blond man smiled all the way, changing trains in the station, the hunger waiting patiently, not tapping his shoulders any more but occasionally looking at its watch, raising an eyebrow, meaningful-like. Then the blond man noticed he'd left the bag in that last train. It was so unlike him. The hunger looked pretty pissed now. Someone was going to pay.

This review is a bit snotty, maybe, or maybe just silly. The book was a bit silly, or maybe just slow. The action stuff moved, and once we get to it there's a clean crisp attention to the mayhem that is admirably achieved. There is also a lot of dad stuff, and Hemingway kept tapping me on the shoulders, at least until Cormac snorted with exasperation behind Hemingway, said he didn't know what the hell Hemingway was on about 'cause it was his stuff being all homaged and shit. The two men stared daggers at each other, literal daggers. The reviewer again slipped into being an asshole, and decided enough was enough. The hunger wasn't filled.

[James Thane · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a young man, Phil Hunt made a terrible mistake that sent him to prison and that has effectively dominated the rest of his life. For twenty years after being released, he has lived in Washington State. He's worked a variety of jobs but was fortunate enough to win the love of the proverbial good woman. Now in their fifties, the couple is eking out an existence on a small horse farm and Hunt supplements their meager income with the occasional job that falls outside the letter of the law.

As is almost always the case in a book like this, Hunt is hoping for one last score that will enable him to put his outlaw days behind him and allow him and his wife to live happily ever after, if not in great wealth, at least in some comfort. But, as always happens in a case like this, the "last" job goes horribly wrong and Hunt finds himself on the run, chased by a deputy sheriff who is trying to appease the ghosts of his own past and a hired killer who is charged with extracting payback for the job that went wrong.

This is a well-written book set in the majestic Northwest, and Waite captures the beauty of the setting as well as the thrill of the chase. The plot itself is hardly new, but the author puts his own spin on it and has produced a very enjoyable thriller.

[Annet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read. It's been said here by others, makes me think of Cormac McCarthy (no country for old men), but also Castle Freeman (go with me; all that I have), major favorites of mine. Great story, keeps you going continuously, beautiful style, especially the descriptions of the mountain area, rain, snow etc. very atmospheric. Loved it. I am a big fan of camping out in Canada, so I almost imagined being there much of the time. Understand this is a debut novel, I think this author is on his way to a great career. Looking forward to his next book.

[Dustin the wind Crazy little brown owl · Rating 5 out of 5]

"A hell of a good novel, relentlessly paced and beautifully narrated. There's just no letup."
- Stephen King

We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.
-Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

This is a very interesting title. The Terror of Living has been staring at me from my bookshelf for over a decade. I attempted on two or three occasions to read the book, but it wasn't until 2022 when I obtained an audiobook that I was able to break through those initial pages and explore the contents.

Over the years, the title The Terror of Living spoke to me - I felt if I could read this book, my anxiety would somehow be alleviated. Having enjoyed this impressive short novel, I think I will seek out more books by this author.

Re-read in 2024 and still enjoyed The Terror of Living immensely.

Favorite Passages:

BY AIR
On his thin frame he wore a red shirt, so worn the material had turned the color of a dried peach. Locked up, he hadn't worn the old shirt in years. The smell of him, in his new old clothes, was something of dust, something of mildew and dark, locked-away places, so deep it seemed to come from his skin itself.
_______

This land, these mountains and valleys, carved by glacier and erosion, were about all Drake had left of a former life. A life that had seen horses raised in his father's field, now taken and gone. A life built of apple orchards and fall harvests, sold off and forgotten, nothing there now but a wooden fence melted away with age into the ground, trees left behind as withered and bony skeletal hands. From one side to the other, Drake's life so cleanly cut in half as to be unrecognizable.
________

He watched the wind come down from the mountains along the trees. Heard the rush of it through the branches, evergreens moving all at once, like cresting water on the tip of a wave, rolling smooth and fast down the face. The sky marvelous and clear above, he felt the wind play at the back of his neck. He didn't know what he was doing, why he couldn't just let it go, this car, this feeling, everything. He was battling an old, familiar sense of unease, some loneliness he'd been left with. Just he and his wife living up this way, in his father's house, now theirs, left to them for the keeping while his father was away.
_______

Afterward, in the middle years, life had felt as if they had been trying to fill something in, pour it like cement over the questions of their lives, the answers down there, but the liquid rock just flowing in. Again and again they'd been to the doctor, looking for answers, just to return to the same house, the same spare bedrooms and empty space.
______

They'd had nothing then; it had felt as if everything had been taken from them. And the truth - had he anyone to tell it to - was that the possibility of success scared him.
______

"Like I said, I can't do much with a history like mine. But, I can do a little, and what little I have I'm happy to hold on to."
"Two horses and one busted-up life."
"Not everyone that plays the lottery wins. You understand me, kid?"
Yeah, I get you. But it's like putting the winning ticket in my hand and asking me not to cash it in."
"Are we going to have a problem here?"
"No problem, man. I'm just saying. Just saying is all."
_______

The choices he'd made had brought him here. He could look back on them now, rationalize them, yet he still felt that dim excitement of possibility growing inside him like an old piece of charred wood, burned long ago and pushed aside, taking on a miraculous light.
_______

It seemed by the echo of the gun that the shot had come from a distance, but everything was happening outside the boundaries of time.
______

The world seemed to have gone volatile and unpredictable, the catalyst of chemical reaction he couldn't stop.
______

Somewhere in that long-ago time, back when he'd just been a man living in a prison cell, he'd realized there was no going back, as much as he'd wanted it all to disappear, for his life just to start over, like pushing a reset button. Life wouldn't give him that pleasure. He'd gone through a door that only swung one way.


BY SEA
Wherever Grady went, he carried with him his case of knives. Over the years he'd added to it as new situations presented themselves. If the job allowed, he preferred using knives, just as he preferred to see the face of the animal he was butchering. He worked a few odd jobs as a prep cook when he found the time, sectioning out meat, practicing his work, seeing what he could do. This bloodlust seemed to make sense to him. He felt a certain intimacy for the thing. A wonder that he thought had disappeared with his childhood. Disappeared with his time in Monroe, prison shrinks, and medication. But in recent years he had started to feel that wonder again, explore it, and enjoy it.
_______

It made him shiver, and briefly he had a vision of himself and Nora running, hands clasped tight, into an unknown darkness.
_______

Nora stood looking at him a moment longer. Maybe just to look him over. Maybe just to know if everything would be okay. She had felt his clothes when he came in, worn and crusted with dirt, so stiff and starched with mud, Hunt knew the felt as if they'd been washed in a bog, then hung from tree limbs to dry. He'd smelled it all the way home, jeans and shirt smoky with the odor of the forest, lichen and moss and something else, something he knew she hadn't smelled in years, something that he could see troubled her but that Hunt knew was fear.
_______


"That was ten years ago. What does the past have to do with any of this?"
"Some would say the past has everything to do with what happens today," Driscoll said. "What do you think?"
_______

"You are the only one, besides the kid, who knows anything about this man."
Drake tried to draw the man's face from memory. The only image he could find was of his father, fifteen years ago, riding slow up a game trail in the West Cascades. His father turning in his saddle to look back at him, face shadowed, church light filtering down through a patchwork of green forest branches, blue and green as stained glass, yellow slanted columns of sunlight, dusted through with tree pollen, floating, ghostlike. "I'm afraid what I do know is not much," he finally said.
_______

"Does it have a bearing on the case?"
"In a sort of fractured sense it does."
"Why do you say 'fractured'?"
"The cracks leading off from the point of impact."
_______

He never set out to be an alcoholic, a murderer, an ex-convict. But he was all of those things, and even if he could get out from under them, he would still be that man. He could never change that.
_______

"It's been a gift to have a life like ours, and I wouldn't have changed it one bit."
"I want you to promise."
"What do you want me to promise?"
"If it all goes wrong tomorrow, I want you to promise you won't keep going. You won't. You'll just turn around and come right back here. Do you understand?"
"I don't go through with it, there is no tomorrow, there is no here."
_______

"I feel bad for people like that."
"People like what?"
"People who get stranded. I hate passing them on the road."
"Why don't you pick them up, then?"
"I think I would if I saw them out there alone."
"No, you wouldn't," he said.
"Well, probably not, but I'd still feel bad for them."
"I always think maybe they had it coming."
"That's a terrible thing to say."
Drake believed wayward souls were responsible for their own salvation. He didn't have any other way of thinking about it, nor did he want to. The scars ran deep, and he thought that if healing was going to come, it would come from within and grow outward.
_______

He could see she was waiting for someone to carry her away, to make it all better so they could go on with their life, but he didn't know if that person was going to be him. He just didn't know.
_______

He told them all that he intended to kick the devil right out of his body, take him by the head and kick his front teeth right down his throat. They'd said that was a step in the right direction. Grady had grinned then, imagining his foot so far down the devil's throat, he was tickling that devil's heart with his toes.
_______

"What day they race around here?"
The man looked up and took his hand off the spray nozzle.
"What day they race around here?" Drake asked again.
"Sundays usually, though every once in a while they'll do a few races during the week."
"They any good to bet on?"
"Not if you want to keep your money."
"Good advice."
"Been working here almost ten years and it's the best I've got."
_______

"You always prelude a question like that?"
"Like what?"
"By asking the question, 'Can I ask you a question?'"
"I didn't want to be impolite."
_______

"What's in the case?" Hunt asked.
"Oh, this," he said, as if he'd just remembered he'd been holding it. "These are my knives." Hunt gave him another look. He was ready to leave, but the idea of a man carrying knives around in broad daylight interested him. It seemed completely rational when he thought of it. He probably passed a chef every day of his life, with a collection of knives sitting shotgun right beside him. "Let me show you." Grady put the case down on the dock and unzipped the top. "I've been collecting them for years."
The only two things Hunt could identify were a hacksaw and a large chef's knife - he guessed the blade to be about twelve inches long. "Those look very nice," Hunt said.
_______

"That's a boning knife. I use it mostly for small jobs." He pointed to his own shoulder and showed Hunt where the ligaments and tendons ran.
_______

Year after year after year, he kept adding, putting the time together in his mind, adding it all up, his life and what it amounted to. "Two decades," he said. "I'm building this life for that long and this is what it comes down to."
_______

"You ever think what would happen if you lost your vision?" Eddie said. He hadn't meant it to sound threatening, but it had, like he was going to do it. "You know what I mean, go blind. You ever think of that?"
"Doesn't seem like a very nice question."
"It's not."
"Not a question, or not nice?"
"Not a question. Forget it, Nora. I'm just thinking out loud, that's all."
"Well, then no. No, I'd expect it doesn't feel very good."
"I'm saying I feel like that. I feel like I've gone blind . . ."
________

"That's horrible," Sheri said.
"In the cell? With the guards standing by?"
"No one seems to have seen it."
"There were ten men in that cell last I saw it."
"There's nine now," Driscoll said dryly.
_______

"We still have the horses," Drake offered.
"One is dead. And unless the other one learns to talk . . ."
_______

"The kid had only been out of Monroe for a week when you picked him up."
"No kidding."
"It's probably better this way. He would have been on the return flight for sure. Better not to waste the money on the ticket."
______

It felt to Drake like two worlds coming together, the past and the present, like his father's small orchard. Shooting apples off the branches with the old .22. All of this before he'd gone away to college, before a lot of things, all of it mixed up together, gun smoke drifting through orchard light, broken apples in the wet evening grass, the smell of cordite and freshly fired rifles.
______

Fear gave him courage.


BY LAND
He unscrewed the iodine and let it fall freely, feeling the iron-colored liquid enter into the torn flesh. Quick as he could, he wrapped the gauze, then secured it all down with the Ace bandage, his leg swollen with blood and pumping beneath the bandage like some monster trying to break out.
_______

And on his back, the bright orange bag, like a warning.
_______

"Do you have any laxatives?" Hunt asked, his head beginning to nod.
"You need a little more than that," Roy said.
_______

"Water out there deepens quick."
_______

"Does it seem right to you?" Nancy asked.
"Nothing has seemed right to me for a while now."


CONFESSIONS
The driver made his next cut, and for a moment there was only the sound of the second knuckle falling to the floor, then the scream, and the blood pattering on the floor.
When the man looked down at his pinky, he saw first the red nub and then, farther down, the kittens at his chair and the blood falling. One of the kittens had looked up and was standing with its back legs on the floor and its front on the leg of the chair, and it was licking at the drops of blood as they fell from what remained of the finger.
"Where's is the heroin?" the boss asked again.
______

He was still bound, still naked. The pool of blood had grown to a puddle, and the kittens sat licking at it and mewing to each other. When the driver closed the door, the last thing he saw was the little cat that had leaned upright against the chair with blood all over its face, climbing the leg of the bound man, using its new-found claws to dig into the man's flesh and pull itself up.
______

Something had gone wrong somewhere; despite all his efforts to lead a good life, to support his wife and make a living, he had failed. What good had running bets and smuggling done him? What had been wrong with an honest job? Jobs that paid him as much as he needed, nothing more, nothing less? But he'd never liked the feeling of answering to someone, like he was back in prison, like he was being watched, like he wasn't his own man. He wanted his actions to count for something. He didn't know what that was yet, but he thought that if he could just get free of these drugs, of Grady, maybe he could make a go of it.
______

"I'm pregnant," Sheri said.
"That true?" he said, without skipping a beat.
Sheri didn't say anything. Then: "No."
______

He wanted to say more, he wanted to tell her it was all going to be fine, it was all going to work out, but he didn't know that, not for sure.
______

He stared down at this woman he didn't know, a stranger, someone who hadn't asked for this. He had caused this. Looking at her, he was aware he'd become someone he no longer recognized, someone terrible, something drawn up from the deep abyss, with no real purpose, an unquenchable thirst, a bottomless hunger, searching out some demon inside him.
______

From above, the red vacancy sign left a layer of dull blood-colored light on everything, like a film of dust in a forgotten room.
______

There was nothing to do but stuff Nora in the trunk.
______

A leg came out at him. He sidestepped and grabbed her ankle as it passed. Holding her with one hand, he gave her a quick punch with the other and hoped that would calm her.
______

"Well, let's treat it like an experiment. If we know that the conclusion of the experiment is that you die, then I guess I would have to go back and look at the choices you made to get there."
______

A real screamer, she'd been a pleasure to put a knife through, just to shut her up. Hell, he thought, if they wanted her back, he could do that. He had her packed up real good in the downstairs freezer, sectioned out and ready for disposal.
______

He left his bag on the benches, walked over to the freezer, and opened it. He pushed a human leg aside and dug out the heroin, frozen through and covered with a think pink hue. The freezer smelled sour. Though he'd washed everything down and bleached it as best he could, the freezer smelled of stomach acid and human excrement mixed together with all the things the girl had been carrying around inside her.
_______

He could hear whispering, but it couldn't tell him which direction it came. He rose and opened the door wide enough to pass through, that urge already working away inside him, floodgates open, devil riding down on a cascade of blood and fire.
He found the first man pressed just inside the kitchen doorway. Without even a word, Grady slid the twelve-inch blade across his throat and severed the man's neck nearly to the spine. Blood in glossy strands, from wall to doorframe, like red waxen candle drippings. Grady caught the body and eased it to the floor. The weight of the man's blood on Grady's shirt, pleasure, wet and warm, on Grady's skin.
In the front room, he saw the door hung open and a shadow waiting on the porch. The cheap metal screen door rested against the wood frame. Grady charged it, and the door swung open with his weight and pinned the man on the porch to the side of the house. Grady stabbed him so hard the knife went all the way through the mesh screen of the door, through skin and skull, out the other side, and nailed the man's head to the wood siding of the house. Pressurized blood welled from the man's head and ran through the mesh screen door.
Grady was struggling to take the knife handle back when the first bullets hit the porch.
_______

"What happened to your leg?" the man asked, taking the cash Hunt offered him.
"Hunting accident."
"Someone thought you were the deer?" The man laughed He'd probably said it a million times.
"It was the deer who shot me," Hunt said. The man smiled and have Hunt his change.

A uniformed officer led Driscoll to the freezer.
They followed a trail of blood into the basement, careful to avoid the small pool that had accumulated at the base of the stairs. They found one bloody handprint and the outline of a set of knuckles on the cement floor.
"How many pieces was she in?" Driscoll asked.
"Had to cut her legs off to get her to fit."
"She still around?"
"They're thawing her out down at County."
"How frozen was she?"
"At least a couple days."
"A real stiff, huh?" Driscoll laughed and the officer stared back at him flatly.
_______

She waited. Something dark and liquid began to creep beneath the door. She knew already what it was, the light slowly. disappearing as the blood spread out along the floorboards.
_______

He felt himself fade back, the outcome now set, the future decided.

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(reached my review character limit on second reading)

[Daniel Villines · Rating 4 out of 5]

While reading The Terror of Living the realization struck me that this was just about the same story as No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy: a chaotic good guy reluctantly finds himself bound up in the drug trade and violence ensues. Both stories include a pursuing country sheriff who carries around the emotional baggage of his past. The biggest difference between the two novels is the difference in setting: Washington State versus Texas.

In its own right, The Terror of Living is a well-crafted story of violent realism. The suspense is created by characters acting upon their inherent human condition. Love, fear, and loyalty are the main driving forces. There is no final big reveal and refreshingly, no hint of a sequel, only the end of the story which left me feeling contemplative. Waite allowed me to live through the events he depicts even though I would never want to experience them in real life.

If there is a criticism, it’s primarily based on the comparison between McCarthy’s and Waite’s approaches to their similar stories. At times, The Terror of Living felt a bit over-the-top with respect to the action taking place in a mostly urbanized setting. I think that McCarthy mostly avoided this perception by placing his story in the wilds of the sparse borderlands along the Texas-Mexican border where violence can often go unnoticed.

[Lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story covers ground that's been covered so don't expect great surprises. The writing started off slow and i was bit hesitant from first 80 pages or so in finishing it, but it all picked up momentum halfway and leading to a showdown of sorts. The writing became more gripping and flowed better. Story is written in the similar vein of No Country For Old Me, involving drugs and things going wrong. The story opens a view into a realistic world of drug mules.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful and engrossing this book reminded me so much of "No Country for Old Men" with its violence and relentless psycho killer. I'm not quite sure who the protagonist is in this one: Drake, the deputy or Hunt the drug smuggler. Hunt wouldn't be in the situation he was in if Drake hadn't stopped his drug delivery. Hunt seems to be a decent guy who wants to do the right thing but just can't. Drake is living in the shame of his father, a crooked sheriff and trying to atone for his dad. Just a riveting read-so much more than a thriller. I've read three of Waite's books and this might have been his first and is his best. There's a sequel to this story which I read first and even though I had read it first it didn't spoil anything in this book. More people need to know about Urban Waite.

[Cynthia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't decide how to rate this. I might have to copy Mag and give it a 3.75 and round up to 4.

The law and the outlaw pit themselves against one another. I wanted to add ‘as always’ but it’s not true in this case and I suppose sometimes it’s not true in life either. Drake is the Seattle law man, Hunt is the appropriately named hunted drug runner. Drake takes his work seriously attempting to make up for his dad’s crimes. His dad was also a Sheriff but he combined that with drug smuggling and wound up in prison. One man is running from his father’s criminal paste. The other is running towards a mystically secure utopia.

The outdoor horsey setting and the casual killing reminds me of McCarthy. The writing is nowhere near Cormac’s level but it’s serviceable. The amount of blood and gore isn’t egregious because it jibes with the reality of the criminal world but it’s hard to stomach page on page of gore. Just as in McCarthy’s work the gems in this book are the relationships. Both Drake and Hunt have wives they’re devoted to and who are devoted to them.

[Debra]

Stephen King recommended. August 2011 EW Summer Reading list. He says: "Phil Hunt is a decent guy who supplements his living by muling hard drugs in the Pacific Northwest. Bobby Drake is the deputy sheriff who's trying to hunt him down. The resulting chase is pure dynamite. This is one of those books you start at one in the afternoon and put down, winded, after midnight."

[switterbug (Betsey) · Rating 5 out of 5]

A provocative thriller will fasten a reader to the proverbial edge of the seat, either by laying a trail of clues to "whodunit" or leading us on a mad and oscillating cat-and-mouse chase through the landscape of the novel. In the case of Urban Waite's contemporary, reflective and rousing cat-and-mouse debut, I was glued to the pages of perilous pursuit and quickened by the torn and haunted rogue heroes--Deputy Bobby Drake, and ex-convict and owner of a struggling horse farm, Phil Hunt.

There's the law (Drake), the lawless (Grady), and then there is that equivocal and tarnished outlaw, Hunt--the name brimming with metaphor--whose reckoning is tethered to Drake's by plaited doubts and dark obstacles reaching back to a coiled and inextricable past. In short, they are each other's nemesis. The wives in this story are resolute and strong, providing a mirror for the reader to reflect on their moody tormented husbands. The northwest territory of Washington State becomes its own penetrating and terrifying, living character.

In the mountain wilderness passes between Washington and Canada, drug smuggling is a lot more challenging than it used to be, now that boundary crossing between Canada and the U.S. requires a passport and the roads are policed. Bricks of cocaine dropped from planes in the blue-black night below the high treetops and picked up by horseback, as well as human "mules" carrying condoms full of heroin implanted by ingestion, are the methods used to foil the law.

In the near-opening pages, newly married Deputy Drake, on his day off, sights Hunt's abandoned horse trailer on the logging roads of Silver Lake and suspects an imminent transaction. He camps out and waits, haunted by memories, by the ghost of family history. Drake's father, a once formidable sheriff, is serving time in prison. He supplemented his earnings as a drug courier, as Hunt is doing now. Hunt's wife, Nora, is not too keen on her husband's extracurricular activities, but their love is a firm and unalloyed bedrock that never diminishes. Hunt's curled past as a convict is something for the reader to discover, a piece of information that is teased out and explored over the course of the novel, magnifying the psychological heft of this better-than-genre story. Hunt's demons correlate Drake's, and propel them and the story.

The plot mobilizes early on when Drake comes face to face with Hunt and Hunt's young rookie in the midst of collecting the goods. Phil is a skilled horseman who escapes, but the "kid" is apprehended and suffers a gruesome fate in jail. The chase proceeds with a measured pace, hypnotic and bracing. The dead bodies pile up, thanks to the main supplier's lackey, Grady, a former chef and sociopathic killer on the trail of Hunt and Drake alike.

Rounding out the cast are DEA agent and straight shooter, Driscoll, working with Drake; "the lawyer" (nameless) and drug deal maker; Hunt's long time friend, Eddie; Bobby Drake's perceptive wife, Sheri; and an array of cold-blooded, one-dimensional thugs. Then there's the female mule, Thu, a Vietnamese women who lives in Seattle. The thugs and mule are necessary to the plot, but the theme is amply filled by the invisible relationship between Drake and Hunt.

I was additionally impressed by the nuanced juxtaposition of Sheri and Nora, and how they counterpoint Drake and Hunt. Phil is used to Nora's capacity to know his essential nature. Drake, a newlywed, still grapples with Sheri's tacit understanding of his confused motives. The counterpoint between the two marriages was lightly but substantively rendered, endowing the book with weighty subtext that accumulates as the story progresses. This was a testosterone-infused novel, and yet, in the final assessment, it is the women who impel their men.

Waite may not have broken the mold in this somber thriller, but he deftly contributed his own achievement. The spiritual struggle between good and bad is a conventional theme that the author probed with a fresh eye. There were a few scene contrivances to advance the plot, but they did not distract from this taut, intense story.

The prose is stark and shadowy, lambent and sensuous, weaving in the geography of the northwest so ably that I heard the wind like a susurrus whisper--and sometimes a howl--through the trees, and I lurched through the snaking roads. There are tendrils of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, but less antediluvian, and Waite, at this juncture, is not as seasoned. But I did relish at some of the turns of event that will inevitably be compared to McCarthy's work, and I suspect that Waite deliberately paid a nodding homage--as evidenced by the character (although minor) identified as "the kid" (viz. Blood Meridian, but with a lower-case "k"). Some readers may decry it as essentially formulaic, but that would be a limited view. What makes this novel stand out is the ethereal prose and the ever-strengthening bond between Hunt and Drake.

The events in this book are graphic, explicit and occasionally disturbing, but with a controlled restraint. There's also a choice twist on the Mexican standoff. For squeamish readers, this is a fair warning that the novel isn't for the faint of heart or for readers who abhor violence in literature. This was executed like a noir-western-opera-suspense-drama-slash-thriller fusion, with a harmonic equipoise of physical action and interior torment. The story is a hybrid brew of nihilism and romanticism, summoning a cauldron of terror and stirring it with an ache and longing for tranquility.

[Jim Thomsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A remarkably smooth, self-assured debut, Urban Waite's literary thriller does a masterful job of keeping the action propelling forward while developing interesting characters, patiently plumbing themes of loss and redemption, and giving readers a sublime and deeply seated sense of place. The prose in the Pacific Northwest tale of hot pursuit is wonderfully cool and controlled, giving readers the sense that they can settle back because they are in the hands of a strong storyteller.

I could nitpick at a few things -- I wasn't particularly impressed with Waite's male-female interactions, and sometimes the dialogue steered away from how I feel that real people talk, and it was occasionally maddening, as a fellow Washington resident, to figure out just where the action was taking place -- but in the end, those things don't really detract from an absolute crackerjack piece of storytelling. Urban Waite does a first-rate job of stripping the story down to the bones in this bone-chilling exercise in terror. His near-universal accolades from professional reviewers are well-deserved.

[Jenny · Rating 2 out of 5]

If Miami Vice and Dexter met in a bar, did the dirty and produced a child that didn’t quite get enough oxygen during its birth, it would look a lot like this book.

Main players: Hunt—once killed a guy and has been helping put drugs on our streets for 20 years because a guy with a record finds it hard to get honest work (yeah, right). Drake—cop whose father is in prison for doing exactly what Hunt is doing. Grady—garden variety psycho who likes cutting things up. When a drug drop goes wrong, thanks to Drake, Grady is sent after Hunt. What ensues is a bloody chase that results in much mayhem.

According to many, this story is a rip-off of, No Country For Old Men. I haven’t read this but even I can see the plot is anything but original. While Waite writes well, his narrative isn’t what I’d call ‘beautiful’, as described by Stephen King on the front cover, and I won’t be ‘following Urban Waite for years to comes’, as predicted by Michael Koryta. In fact, narratively speaking, Waite tends to be repetitive and overly poetic. Why he felt the need to keep pointing out that the rain was falling ‘from the sky’ I can’t imagine (where the hell else would it fall from?). And this passage would have to be the most spectacular case of repetition I’ve read in years—check out all the ‘her’s:

‘What Drake saw was a small girl lying face up in bed; her skin seemed to be drawing away from her, as if the climate had hurt her, something shrinking up inside her and pulling all of her along. She was pale, her eyes closed, the dark fall of her hair on the pillow seemingly the only living thing about her.’ (p 243)

To be fair—and I really should try to be—the plot moves swiftly and the frequent viewpoint shifts prevent boredom setting in. Unfortunately, though, I found it impossible to care about any of these characters, either because of the shifting viewpoint, or perhaps because, with the exception of Drake, every one of them is a criminal. Which leads me to Waite’s incessant need to keep hitting the reader over the head with a theme that is really too simplistic: ‘Good people sometimes do bad things.’ Sure they do and this makes them BAD people. Honestly, it’s a stretch to generate much sympathy for characters who are not only killing thousands by their actions, but who have willingly chosen their path—regardless of their excuses.

How the publisher managed to get so many high-profile authors’ glowing recommendations onto the cover of, The Terror of Living, I’ll never know, but it goes to show how a mediocre story can be a best seller if the right people are behind it. King’s recommendation was the only reason I bought this book. I won’t be so quick to believe the hype next time.

[Chris Shaffer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Based on several factors (local author, my age, Woodrell blurb, comparisons to No Country For Old Men) I expected this to be great. It wasn't. It was good enough to finish reading, sure, but it lacked something. I think it comes down to the fact that the writing just wasn't that good. Maybe it was all the commas. Yes, too many commas where there should not have been commas. It's weird that that bugged me. Also, I felt like I was reading the same sentence over and over again, "...how had his life come to be like this? Where had it all gone wrong? Etc. Etc." It got tiresome.

[Bob Box · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read in 2011. Relentless and gorgeously written, with original characters and a vividly powerful sense of place. One of my favorites that year.

[Jenny Orozco · Rating 4 out of 5]

A drug deal gone bad has been written from here to there to everywhere. And that's what this book ostensibly is about? a huge crate of heroine is dropped from a helicopter somewhere in the mountains of Washington state. Instead of making a smooth delivery, the town sheriff hears the commotion (you'll find out why he's nearby later in the novel) foils the plan and takes one victim into custody. What happens thereafter is that the gates of hell are swung open: the drug dealers have turned against their own man, Phil Hunt.

But while a drug deal gone bad is the moving force behind it all, don't let that dissuade you literary-loving people from buying this one. It reads like a dream. This gorgeously written suspense thriller is about desperation, about the pursuit of a little peace, about trying to carve out a place in the world for yourself and how sometimes you get lost on the way. It's about getting in over your head, and then having to run like hell to keep it from catching up with you.

A little about the characters:

"He'd gone through a door that only swung one way."

Phil Hunt: A former convict who's been living in a beautiful secluded piece of land with his wife, Nora. They operate a small farm and raise several horses. Basically living hand to mouth, Hunt does a little on the side for extra income. He picks up the drugs and then shuttles them to their assigned destination. He gets enough out of it to keep paying his mortgage, but never enough to quit. And because he's served time for a 2nd degree murder years before, finding decent work isn't an option. In his mind, he's doing what he has to, to survive.

"This land, these mountains and valleys, carved by glaciers and erosioin were all Drake had left of a former life."

Bobby Drake: The town sheriff. But it's more interesting than just that: Drake's father, the previous sheriff, was busted years afo for smuggling drugs at Silver Lake, and just like that, Drake's entire life changed. He becomes a hardline man of the law, intent on integrity and honor. He makes it his personal mission to not be associated with the legacy of his corrupted father, and to sniff out the smuggling at its source.

"Keep your knives sharp and they'll cut through just about anything."

Grady Fisher: Bloodlust has never been so chillingly illustrated. A hired hitman for the dealers, Fisher is more like the butcher (and how appropriate, since he's also a cook). Instead of killing efficiently with a gun, he prefers to slice and puncture and eviscerate with his cherished collection of knives. The drive to kill is ever present, "humming away like a little bird trying to take wing." Grady is hired to take out Hunt before Bobby Drake can get to him first (and find more about the vast illegal operation). But his thirst for the kill isn't so easily focused; he will indulge himself wherever and whenever he can.

This is the male triumvirate of characters that provides the bellowing locomotive that is the plot. The secondary characters include a namelss lawyer that coordinates the logistics for the deals; Eddie, friend and fellow drug-runner of Hunt; and the DEA agent, Driscoll, who's in charge of the federal investigation.

Which brings us to the female characters, Nora and Sherie:

Why would anyone want to marry a convicted murderer and live a life of unease and the potential for disaster at any given moment? That's what makes the character of Nora so fascinating: she s no simpering subordinate. She owns up to choosing this fate and yet maintains some measure of morality and decency. In another writer's less skilled hands, this may not have worked.

Sheri, Bobby's wife, is also an engaging character. Every step of the way, in every decision he makes, she is there challenging him, his perceptions, his judgments, his ideals. She questions him relentlessly for his motivations and through her, we see Drake's development and transformation.

All in all, a great read. Typically, I lose the thread and have to convince and cajole myself to get back to the story. But not this time!

And now time for the excerpts:

"The smell of him, in his new old clothes, was something of dust, something of mildew and dark, locked away places, so deep it seemed to come from his skin itself."

"For a moment he'd dreamed of being back in prison, that locked-away, lonely feeling worse in his dreams than it had been twenty years ago. Hollow sounds of voices echoing down cement hallways. The poor, eaten-away souls residing there, the weak and starved, blubbering non-sense, rib cages like two claws come together across their sternum. He woke, stunned, his tongue pulled back in his throat, floating back there like something meant to suffocate him."

[Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

In The Terror of Living, Phil Hunt supplements his income from boarding horses with a little drug running. A pick-up in the mountains in Washington state goes sideways when a deputy sheriff follows a hunch. Hunt is forced to go on the run where his greatest challenge isn't avoiding law enforcement, it's the bad guys he has to watch out for. The movie, No Country for Old Men, kept playing in my head while reading which was distracting and perhaps not fair to Urban Waite. It was an okay read and the writing was very good in parts. For a debut novel, it's a promising start.

2.5 bumped up to 3.

[Karen Michele Burns · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shortly before the Orcas Island Lit Festival came to my attention, I came upon the memorable name Urban Waite in an article about up and coming authors, so I was excited to see his name on the list of authors coming to the festival. I had a few opportunities to hear him speak and meet him briefly and it was uplifting to find a new, young thriller writer of books set in Washington State. I just finished The Terror of Living and it met my expectations and kept me turning the pages from the beginning becoming absolutely relentless in its drive toward the finish. It is not for the faint-hearted as it has a literal “butcher” as the criminal pursuer tied to the drug trade gone wrong in the plot. One of the interesting features of the book is that there are three characters to root for, one an officer with the police and the others the husband and wife on the run. It is a strong debut and I’m eager to read more from Urban Waite!

[Elizabeth A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deputy Sheriff Bobby Drake is a man with a tremendous chip on his shoulder. Once a promising college football player, his life was turned upside down when his father, Sheriff at the time, was busted for running drugs across the US/Canada border. Drake returned home to his small hometown in Washington State and took a job as a deputy sheriff, determined to restore honor to his name and prove he’s a better man than his father.

Phil Hunt is also a man struggling hard to make amends in his life. A 10 year prison stint for manslaughter has rendered him all but unemployable, and along with his wife Hunt now ekes out a meager living by running a horse farm. The money not being quite enough, Hunt supplements the family income by picking up shipments of drugs dropped deep in the forest just inside the border and delivering them to a distributor. It’s a process that’s worked smoothly for Hunt for nearly two decades. He even had a tacit understanding with Drake’s father…but Drake isn’t his father.

When Drake notices a truck and horse trailer parked on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere his radar goes on high alert. After the truck doesn’t move overnight, Drake packs up his gear and heads into the forest to find out just what’s going on. What he finds is Hunt and a partner collecting a drug shipment and, a few shots later, Hunt’s low key courier job has gone seriously sideways.

Now Hunt’s on the run from Drake, who wants to arrest him, and his drug connection, who want the shipment Hunt no longer has. As if that wasn’t enough to make Hunt’s life difficult, the dealers send a hitman, a particularly nasty piece of work named Grady, into the fray to tie up all loose ends. What follows is an overlapping game of cat-and-mouse amongst the players that unfolds at a suffocatingly relentless pace.

And yet, for all the action present in The Terror of Living – and there’s quite a bit, some of it extremely graphic – it is the wonderfully developed characters that ultimately drive the story. Hunt and Drake are both haunted by events from the past, but striving to move forward with some semblance of a normal life. Both men also draw strength and purpose from their wives, each of whom acts as the moral compass that keeps their husband from going completely off the rails.

That The Terror of Living is author Urban Waite’s first novel is quite an accomplishment, especially considering it is deservedly drawing comparisons to No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy; not too bad for your first rodeo. With a tour de force debut like this, it’s scary to think what Waite will serve up next. I, for one, will be eagerly awaiting.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deputy Bobby Drake has returned to his hometown, Silver Lake, Washington, and is following in the footsteps of his father who was also a lawman. The difference is that Bobby’s father supplemented his income by dealing with illicit deliveries through the mountain passes near his home. Bobby’s father was caught and is serving time in jail.

While on patrol Bobby find an abandoned horse trailer that prompted him to think something suspicious was going on. He decided to go up into the mountains and there he discovered two men who were no doubt participating in the same deliveries that had sent his father to jail. One of the men was caught but Phil Hunt escaped.

Phil Hunt is an ex-con who runs a horse farm with his wife near Auburn, Washington. He makes the occasional run for Eddie Vasquez and makes a little money to keep the farm going. When the latest delivery is messed up by Bobby’s interference the people that hired Vasquez and Hunt decide that they need to recover their losses and they send a hired killer to reclaim what is theirs.

Phil Hunt runs from the killer but Bobby Drake is still on his trail. When the two finally come together they both find that there are certain lines that neither will cross.

This is one novel where you cannot help but feel some sympathy for Hunt, the criminal while still rooting for Deputy Bobby Drake. This is a thriller that you will not want to put down until you’ve reached the brilliant conclusion of the book.

The Terror of Living has all the elements for a movie with the beautiful scenery and the conflict between two men on different sides.

This is Urban Waite’s first novel and I hope there will be many more.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m just going to go ahead and declare The Terror of Living the best book title of 2011.

What I learned from reading this book:

1. Don’t lose or steal heroin that doesn’t belong to you.
2. Don’t transport heroin in your stomach.
3. Don’t work at, or rent a room at a cheap motel where someone has done any of the above.
4. Don’t talk to over-friendly strangers, especially if they’re carrying a small, black bag. It’s probably full of knives.

[Gatorman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. Well-written, suspenseful and bloody without being gratuitous, with shades of McCarthy's "No Country For Old Men" without being a rip-off. It was well-paced with characters of surprising depth considering the short length of the book. Highly recommended.

[Dylan Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you like your thrillers edge-of-the-seat ...and bloody violent then this book is definitely for you ...fast paced and well written ...look forward to more by Urban Waite

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

4*

[Stacey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Funny to read this right after Matrix, because it is the most guy book ever. All needless violence and philosophical pondering at inopportune moments. Did have some good turns of phrase, though.

[Ari · Rating 3 out of 5]

An intense story very much in the style of Cormac McCarthy.

Actually too much like McCarthy's "No Country for Old Men". Almost similar to be honest. One of the main characters is a violent and merciless killer who is not exactly in his right mind - as Anton Chigurh in No Country...
The Mexicans have been replaced with Vietnamese and the money with drugs. But all and all the story is too alike to appear original. And the style is similar, striking and vigorous.
In his thanks Waite mentions McCarthy amongst other writers but that seems to be a bit lame acknowledgement thinking about the outcome.

But this was written well enough to be a compelling crime fiction. I have read many worse.

Probably this won't make to a film as the movie has practically been already made once by Joel and Ethan Coen with a cast which is difficult to match.

Suomalaisille lukijoille: Kääntäjä ei ole ollut paras mahdollinen valinta tälle aihepiirille. Hän ei osaa asiayhteydestä erottaa konekivääriä konepistoolista (tulee vähän rambomainen vaikutelma, kun jokainen rosvo riehuu konekivääri kädessään). Luodinsuojukselle on suomen kielessä selvä sana eli hylsy, haulikosta ei lähde luoti jne. Hinauskoukku tuskin on Taksikuski-tyylisen käsivarsitelineen osa (DeNirolla pieni revolveri, tässä veitsi).
Myöskään "kloppi" kaikkien käyttämänä sanana ei ole paras mahdollinen valinta.

Pelon rajalla
Karisto 2012

[Aaron · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have never written a review before, but I have to simply explain that I rated this book a one only because I couldn't rate it a zero. I was unable to get past the first 85 pages, it was so poorly written. The only good thing about this book is that it gives me hope that I could possibly write a book, one that could not be any worse than this one. And, get it published!!! Poppycock!!! If I did write a book this horrible, I would be embarrassed to show it to anyone. And, to the author, I apologize for my harsh tone--but damn.

[Heather Bennett · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book read kind of like a movie script would, definitely kept me engaged, but I can't even put my finger on what about the plot of this book bothered me. If you're a gore fan, this is a good read for you as well. Overall, worth the read but this may be a book I end up gifting instead of keeping.

[Claire Leo · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is a book that makes me long for a 3.5 rating. it was enjoyable, and quick, and the writing was a good blend of poetic description & clean simplicity. not particularly remarkable though and i would’ve liked just a little…more.

rounded up to 4 to account for it being a debut novel - and a very good one.