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Undercover in a sect

mick dubois 22 oktober 2020
The job description of Colter Shaw is rather absurd for non-Americans. Untrained random citizens that can make a living by getting big pay-offs from fulfilling jobs that the police can’t be bothered or don’t have the resources for searching for runaways or wanted criminals. Not that he seems to need those rewards for in this book he’s very generous in giving away, his earnings. So, he is a professional reward seeker and no detective or lawyer. It is, of course, an excellent premise for a series. As you can imagine that he encounters all sorts of situations.
Here he is chasing 2 men who allegedly vandalised a church and shot the preacher and janitor. Later it turns out to be a little different. But 1 of the men commits suicide by jumping off a cliff at the moment that Shaw apprehends him. So Shaw has a lot of questions and discovers that the dead man recently visited a retreat. He goes undercover to find out more and discovers a cult with some truly evil intentions and practices. On his first day, he witnesses a man being severely beaten and subsequently threatened and later another one murdered followed by the killer’s suicide.
Shaw’s real goal is to find a secret that his deceased father discovered and hid somewhere. But some evil corporation, led by an unscrupulous woman is after that same secret. Not much is said about this matter at the start of this story, but I think that the previous book in this series would have solved this ignorance. At the end of the book though, a lot more about this subject is revealed and you can get by without reading the first book.
Colter Shaw is a decent human being with a very unusual upbringing by a father who trained him and his siblings from an early age in survival techniques. He’s an experienced tracker and hunter. Now he uses his skills to reunite families with their lost loved ones or to get serious criminals behind bars. He’s not an invincible super-hero though and doesn’t like getting into close combat. Such a character with flaws is more realistic. His closest competitor is Dalton Crowe, who’s almost the antitheses of Shaw. Not that Shaw is very likeable at first, he’s the kind of person that has to grow on you, and in that aspect, he’s similar to Lincoln Rhyme.
I admit that I was a bit hesitant to start this book because I loved Deaver’s Rhyme series and I doubted if this new series could be as good. Well, I didn’t need to worry. Although they’re distinctively different in characters and style, this new series is just as good. The only thing I regret is that I missed the first book in the series.
The story grips you from the start and becomes ever more suspenseful with a few twists and turns that I didn’t see coming. It is told in short crisp chapters that mirror the fast pace of the story. It definitely was an exciting read from a great storyteller.
The author seems to have done extensive research on cults and sects to be able to create such a chilling cult and the people in it. The motivations of both leaders and followers are clearly voiced as well as their practices and the techniques to lure them in and keep them docile. Maybe he did his homework a bit too good; if you’re an evil person, this can be a blueprint to start your own cult.
My biggest criticism is that all the women in the story end up needing to be saved, even an experienced soldier who saved Colter a couple of times prior to that.
I thank Netgalley and Harper Collins UK for the free ARC they provided me with and this is my honest, unbiased review.

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