I bought this book previous to my recent resolution (dropped a few posts ago) to ease back on buying thrillers. Just as I grow older and more mellow in my tastes, the thriller genre is on an increasing trajectory of ever-more-implausible cinematic violence and suspense too intense for my old heart.
James Phelan’s The Hunted isn’t actually all that extreme in those regards, but I had trouble getting into it nonetheless.
As you probably don’t recall, I liked Lee Childs’ Jack Reacher books, but swore off when he made it obvious how much he despises Christian Evangelicals. James Phelan’s Jed Walker is advertised as in the Reacher vein, and his last name’s Walker, so I figured I’d give it a shot.
Jed Walker, former Air Force commando (apparently such creatures exist), former CIA covert operative, is similar to Jack Reacher in size, strength, and fighting skills. Otherwise, he lacks Reacher’s intriguing Zen simplicity. Jed is basically a fairly normal guy, with relationships and everything. A couple years ago he was forced to fake his death and stay dead for a year – during which time his wife grieved and then remarried. He still loves her.
He also has a father, another covert operations type. Jed is searching for him, but not because of filial piety. His father is somehow involved with a project called Zodiac, a planned sequence of terrorist attacks, each to be the trigger for the next.
In his investigations, Jed learns that several members of the strike team that killed Osama Bin Laden have been murdered, all in a short period of time. He believes this is connected to Zodiac in some way. He heads to the Ozarks to locate the one survivor – a wilderness-wise Marine who lives in a remote compound, guarding his family. Jed races with a team of assassins to reach the man first.
On the way he teams up with the man’s cousin – who is, of course, a young, pretty woman who does her best to seduce him (but Jed is admirably resistant – he still loves his wife).
There was nothing particularly wrong with The Hunted. It kept the action going through many very short chapters. The characters were varied and individual, though they never really grabbed me. I thought the villains’ motives were a little muddled, and the climax confused me – though that may have been my fault for not paying close enough attention.
The author has an unfortunate tendency to repeat observational passages, and could have used better editing. He is apparently English, as he occasionally falls into Britishisms, such as “crisps” and “boot” (for a car trunk).
The Hunted was okay. You might like it. I found it a little thin.