Michael Harrier is no stranger to violence: At just 8 years old, he witnessed his white supremacist father murder his mother, an incident that sparked a lifetime of guilt and self-harm. After honing his own violent tendencies hunting poachers on the plains of Africa as a teenager, the adult Michael resides in California and makes a living as an assassin-for-hire with one rule: he will only kill those he is \u201ccertain to see in Hell.\u201d His violent but simple routine comes crashing down when he rescues Chensea Gray, a former runner for a gambling ring who knows too much. As Michael tries to help Chensea find a way out of her predicament, he must also complete the most unusual assignment of his career: murder a priest guilty of molestation and make it look like God\u2019s divine judgment. All the while, a nosy detective gets closer to uncovering his violent deeds. Michael finds himself struggling with the rules he has made and quickly running out of time to make things right. Cary has crafted an absorbing thriller that piles on the twists and turns before arriving at a brutally shocking conclusion. Despite a brief scene where unnamed fighters are unfortunately referred to simply by their race (\u201cTwo men standing, the Asian and his bald sidekick\u201d), the narrative voice maintains just the right amount of smoothness and snappiness to move things along. The real standout element is the character of Michael; haunted by his past, he is a morally gray character with a death wish\u2014in other words, a delightfully complex protagonist whom readers will alternately love and loathe. The novel is both a nuanced and action-packed study of generational trauma and violence.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Michael Harrier is no stranger to violence: At just 8 years old, he witnessed his white supremacist father murder his mother, an incident that sparked a lifetime of guilt and self-harm. After honing his own violent tendencies hunting poachers on the plains of Africa as a teenager, the adult Michael resides in California and makes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5820,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5819"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}