Saturday, September 5, 2015

Hollow Man - Mark Pryor

Hollow Man
Mark Pryor
Seventh Street/Prometheus, Sep 1 2015, $15.95
ISBN: 9781633880863

The English solicitor Whitfield calls from Great Britain to inform Dominic in Austin that his parents were electrocuted while checking storm damage on the family farm.  Having not seen them in over a decade after being exiled at sixteen for shooting a man in the face; Dominic struggles with his quivering mind’s pictures of what they looked like.  No funeral to arrange or farm to sell, Dominic authorizes Whitfield to spread their ashes as his parents wished while he remains in Texas.

Dominic knows he is a Hollow Man with no moral compass that he conceals behind facades of normalcy like being a prosecutor and guitarist.  However a demotion to the Juvenile Justice Center angers Dominic, which makes it much more difficult to hide his psychopathic tendencies.  His friend immigration lawyer Gus Cronstedt tells him about a heist of a client who collects rents in cash only.  As Gus backs out of the planned robbery, Dominic recruits his computer savvy roommate Tristan Bell and former cop turned security guard Otto Bland as his robbery cohorts.  “The best laid schemes of Mice and Men oft go awry” (Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck) as nothing works the way Dominic thought it would; leading to two deaths and law enforcement seeking the bumbling trio.

As Hugo Marston (see The Reluctant Matador) takes a breather, Mark Pryor provides readers with an awesome stand-alone suspense starring a macabrely fascinating amoral protagonist.  The diabolically cunning and charming (that is his public mask) antihero turns the thriller into a superb psychological crime drama as he and his teammates affirm the “truism” of Murphy’s Law. 


Harriet Klausner

No comments: