Erik Storey's first Colorado crime thriller kicks off with a phone call to a remote Utah wilderness with sketchy cell coverage. At one end of the call is a young Grand Junction woman with a drug history, and at the other is her brother, Clyde Barr, who's a mountain man, ex-mercenary, game poacher, escaped Juarez convict and all-around hard case--but with a soft heart. Jen has been kidnapped by a ruthless dealer, and she pleads for Clyde's help before the phone signal goes dead. True to character, Clyde breaks camp and sets off to save his sister. Nothing Short of Dying is a breakneck vengeance and rescue thriller set on the Rockies' Western Slope, where the small northwest town of Craig is considered a metropolitan center.
Clyde is not a thinking-man's hero, but he knows his weaknesses: "Hunting people was much more frustrating than hunting animals, because it involved talking, which I wasn't very good at." He's more 24's Jack Bauer than Justified's Raylan Givens, more Jack Reacher than Harry Bosch. If a fist in the face won't do it, he dispatches deserving thugs with bulls-eye marksmanship. If his adversaries are too many for one man (which he rarely admits), Barr calls in markers from a collection of former mercenaries and outlaws who owe him. Nobody messes with Barr when he's on a mission--and for this hair-trigger crusader, everything is a mission. Storey's off to a good start, and Clyde Barr will be back. There are plenty of bad guys in western Colorado to corral. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.