Book Review: Hard Return

Publishing company Thomas & Mercer was kind enough to give me an advance copy of J. Carson Black’s new novel Hard Return. This novel is the second thriller centering on Cyril Landry. The first novel in the series was called The Shop.

Hard Return picks up about three years after the events of The Shop. If you did not read The Shop do not worry, the author does a good job of filling in any bits of backstory that are needed for this page turning adventure.

Cyril Landry is a former Navy SEAL who went to work for a private military contractor. That contract work lead to doing a few assassinations for hire jobs. The life of a killer for hire has some danger that leads Landry to fake his own death. Now after three years of keeping a low profile Landry needs to jump back into action.

The story picks up with Landry working on a horse farm. Each afternoon he takes an extended lunch break. That break it turns out is to go catch a glimpse of his daughter as she exits high school. He might not be part of her life, but he can still keep an eye on her as she grows up.

Then one day the school parking lot becomes an active shooter scene. Landry jumps into action to stop the bloodshed then vanishes back into the shadows. Fearful that the shooter hired to kill his daughter, and make it just look like random school violence, Landry starts to investigate who could have been behind the shooting.

Overall the story is great. Along the way there are some good twists and turns to keep the reader wanting to check out the next page. There are some logical sub plots that for the most part all have satisfying conclusions.

I only have one criticism of this story. There are a few scenes that feel like the start of a sub plot that was eventually edited out to maintain the pacing of the novel. One example (I will be vague so as to not spoiling anything) is at the mid point of the book Landry prevents a kidnapping. Who is this kidnapper? Why is he targeting this victim? It is never explained.

One of the secondary characters in this story is a Officer Jolie Burke. Officer Burke exits the main narrative too early. I hope that in future stories Burke gets to do more to help the story. Or better yet I think she would make a amazing central character to her own series of novels.

Hard Return will release on September 9, 2014 so preorder it today!