I don’t read many modern thrillers, but I’d seen enough good comments about Taylor Moore’s debut novel DOWN RANGE that I decided I’d give it a try. Plus, it’s set in Texas which is always a nice bonus as far as I’m concerned.
The protagonist is Garrett Kohl, a DEA agent who’s working for the CIA in
Afghanistan. That’s where this novel begins, but the setting switches quickly,
and logically, to the Texas Panhandle, where it remains for the rest of the
book. Garrett, who grew up on a ranch near the town of Canadian, is tasked with
protecting the life of a little Afghan boy who witnessed a massacre. He figures
going home will be the best way to do that.
Unfortunately, he hasn’t figured on landing up to his neck in an even worse
mess that will threaten the life not only of the boy he’s charged with
protecting but also everybody else in Garrett’s family.
It takes a while to get everything in the plot set up, and consequently the
first half of DOWN RANGE is a little slow despite a few bursts of action. But
then the second half is almost all action, and Moore does a great job with it.
I know from experience as both a writer and a reader that it’s hard to do
lengthy firefights without them getting boring, but Moore pulls that off and
kept me flipping the pages with enthusiasm and eagerness to find out what was
going to happen. However, as much as I enjoy action in my reading, that’s not
the main appeal of this book for me.
I said up in the first paragraph that I don’t read many modern thrillers, and
here’s the reason for that: they all sound alike. Too many of them read as if
they could have been written by any of a hundred different contemporary
thriller authors. My theory—and this is only a theory—is that many of these
authors haven’t read extensively among older thriller authors and mostly read
the work of their peers. They’ve had so many rules hammered into their heads
that they don’t know any other way to write. And so everything they produce
reads the same.
To be honest, there’s some of that in DOWN RANGE, too. There are scenes that
could have come out of any of a thousand other books. But then . . . ah, but
then . . . there’s a bit of description, or a line of dialogue, or an interaction
between characters, or even a throwaway moment of transition, and a grin
appears on my face as I think that nobody else in the world would have written
this particular thing this particular way. Only Taylor Moore. And that’s what
makes DOWN RANGE an excellent novel. He knows the place and he knows the people
and he writes about all of it in his own voice.
Now, there are a couple of quibbles I can make. I don’t think it takes two and
a half hours to drive from the Joint Reserve Base in west Fort Worth to Possum
Kingdom Lake (but I’m thrilled that a contemporary thriller even mentions
Possum Kingdom Lake). I think I could make it in an hour and a half, two tops.
But you know what, I could be wrong about that, especially since Moore doesn’t
specify exactly where on Possum Kingdom Lake Garrett is going. The other thing
(and I’ll die on this hill) is that y’all
is spelled y’all, not ya’ll.
You see why I called them quibbles.
Anyway, all in all, DOWN RANGE is an absolutely superb book, and if you enjoy
thrillers, I give it a very high recommendation. It's available in e-book, hardback, paperback, and audio editions. I don’t know if I’ll become a
fan and read everything Taylor Moore writes, but I’ll definitely read the next
book in this series.
1 comment:
I love the hell out of this review and the aside about modern thriller writing is burned into my brain. Thank you, pal.
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