The Vintage Club-Darin Gibby

The Vintage Club Darin Gibby Koehler Books, Dec 1 2013, $18.95 www.koehler.com ISBN: 9781938467653 Reggie Alexander knows he comes a long way from his impoverished life as a DC orphan thanks to affluent Walter and Sherri Trudell who gave him shelter and sustenance from the street violence as one of their “projects”. Now married with a wife and son in Rockville, Reggie takes the o-dark commute to his work in Washington as a bureaucrat at the Patent Office. Reggie’s safe family façade collapses when someone murders Walter; as the philanthropist’s associates at the Vintage Club believe he killed his savior. Not long afterward, Reggie’s wife and son vanish while he goes into hiding to avoid the assaults on him that emotionally take him back to his brutal childhood before the rescue. What Reggie is unaware of is that the Vintage Club members seek the Last Supper wine of immortality and think he killed Walter for it. This Brownian thriller is an action-packed tale that removes a young man from his heavenly middle class existence and places him in hell with the return of his childhood PTSD; turning Reggie into an unconfident David facing presumptuous billionaire Goliaths. Though transitions are choppy (hazard of first books), fast-paced with fascinating interpretations from the bible, fresh use of customized nanotechnology, insight into patent law, and child trauma haunting the adult; readers will relish this engaging novel. Harriet Klausner