Sunday, January 26, 2014

The Killing Question (Jack Reece) by Mark Allen

This is one dark and violent short story.
PI Jack Reece is paid a cool million to track down the monster that raped and killed the young daughter of a billionaire widow. He is also offered another 4 million dollars if he kills the monster. Jack decides to take her up on the first offer but declines the latter. But when he meets the monster he gets some serious doubt.
This is more a vigilante than PI story. There's little to none detecting done by Jack but the opening reads like a standard PI story, making the start of the story seem real familiar. When the story proceeds I soon realized this was a different kind of story. A dark tale of revenge and violence so graphic it seemed like a horror story.
I'm not a fan of explicit violence but it belonged to the story and gave it the dirty edge it needed.
Don't think this is Punisher / Executioner style vigilantism. It makes you think about the right and wrongs of playing judge, jury and executioner and the violence is so explicit it is never glorified or never makes you cheer for Jack's actions.
Jack didn't grow on me as a character yet, but there's some potential in his voice and Mark Allen know how to pace a story.

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