Sharing Links and Wisdom: The Gun Review Tour

Blurb:

Garda Detective Tadhg Sullivan leads a special unit that investigates politically motivated crime. A man known only as The Deerstalker is a cancer who has infected the Irish political system.

Sullivan teams up with journalist Helen Carty, and together they try tracking down the mysterious killer. Carty adds to Sullivan’s problems, when he finds himself falling in love with her. And further complicating things, he starts losing trust in his partner, Detective Pat Carter, who appears to be on the side of the Garda Commissioner, who Sullivan is rapidly falling out with.

Sullivan’s case is further thrown into confusion when a copycat killer, Tommy Walsh, is shot dead by the CIA. When the CIA discovers that they've killed the wrong person, the two agents involved--Simon, who has become disillusioned by his time stationed in the Middle East, and Joey, a psychopath who confuses zealotry with patriotism--are also in pursuit of The Deerstalker.

Sullivan finds himself in a race against time, if he is to arrest The Deerstalker before the CIA take him out, and use his death as a pawn in a political game of chess. Who will win out in the end?

Excerpt:

He stared at the gun lying on the bed. It was in his possession for nearly half his life and he’d never known what to do with it. The funny thing was, he’d always hated guns and yet, here he was.

He heard his wife moving around downstairs and knew that very soon she would call him for a cup of tea. He had to get the gun back into its hiding place.

He thought back to the first time he’d seen it. A late night knock at the door and a man from down the street had handed the gun and ammunition to him, wrapped in fertiliser bags.

“What the hell is this?” he’d blurted out.

“It’s a gun,” the man had said showing no expression.

“What are you giving it to me for?” he’d whispered, not wanting his family to hear them.”

“Because I trust you,” he’d replied.

“What the hell do you mean, you trust me? You hardly know me! And all I know about you is that you’re mixed up in the IRA. I have a family and I don’t give a damn about the North. Now please get away from my door and take that thing with you.”

My Review:

3.5 stars

I have mixed feelings regarding this book. To start, it was an interesting thriller. I loved the details the author put into the story: the police work, the in-depth character studies (especially with the bad guy, not just making him some mysterious crazy person shooting up the place), the political struggles, the scenery…everything was detailed and really helped me get a feel for the environment and helped pull me into the story. Unfortunately, this eye for detail also bogged down the story at times. For example, I was confused behind why we were getting so much information about a character that I knew from the beginning was going to be a throw away character, a red herring. If something he mentioned or did would be relevant later, I could see why the author would include this, but it just seemed irrelevant and dragged down the story for me. On top of this, some conversations and scenes dragged on at times, to the point where I skipped ahead a bit just to speed the story along. While I don’t mind in-depth and highly detailed scenes and conversations, I don’t really expect them too much in thrillers, just because they can often drag down the pace that is very important to a good thriller, IMO.

Second, I enjoyed the plot twists introduced, though I wasn’t as surprised at the biggest ones because I already knew about them going in. So they lost some of their surprise since I was expecting them. The romance was okay, not too over the top, which I appreciated, yet it did feel a bit forced at times. Nevertheless, I thought the romance overall worked out well in the story. As for the rest of the writing, while there was room for improvement, I still thought it was a good job for a debut novel.

Overall, this was a good debut novel, an intriguing thriller with an interesting set of characters, several of whom I cannot wait to see again. I was drawn into the story and enjoyed it, and I will definitely be reading the sequel to see how the author improves and where the story goes from here.

*I received this a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.*