Nick Petrie

I've had THE DRIFTER in my bookcase for a while. I put off reading it because I hadn't read a Nicholas Petrie book before and thought I wouldn't care for it. But I was pleasantly surprised for more than 100 pages.

This is the first book in a series about Peter Ash, a war veteran with PTSD who has been living in the mountains because he can't bear living indoors. But now he has come back to civilization to help the widow and two children of a good friend he served with in the Marines.

While clearing debris from under the widow's front porch, Ash finds a suitcase full of money. And there begin, first, the mystery of the money and, then, thrills and suspense as Ash discovers who wants the money, their big plan, and what they'll do to accomplish it.

Petrie does a fine job of setting up the story. He made me wonder why I hadn't read this a long time ago.

As the story progresses, though, it can be annoying that Ash seems to deliberately goad people while they have him at a disadvantage, e.g., when they have his hands tied behind his back. Also, near the end, I found the story dragging probably because of the way Petrie was portraying panic attacks. I have had panic attacks in the past and know that they cannot be managed; you cannot just power through them and become suddenly stronger as a result.

Since THE DRIFTER, Petrie has written other Peter Ash novels. So I wonder, what will Ash do with his life now.… (mehr)

Apparently compared (even by Lee Child) as the 'Next Reacher' it has a similar vibe but doesn't quite work as well.

Peter Ash is a marine vet, returned to the US with almost claustrophobia, the noise and bustle of modern living builds a pressure/noise until he has to leave for the peace and quiet. He's spent a year living in the wilderness in the hope that he can forget some of the trauma, but still isn't fully recovered when news eventually reaches him that one of his sergeants has committed suicide. This seems a bit unlike the man he used to know, and in any case he feels a sense of guilt, duty and responsibility, for not looking after the men who were in his care, so he musters the fortitude to travel to the widow and see if he can help. Living out of a truck, he finds that she could use his carpentry skills, so he's rebuilding her porch when he discovers a mildewed suitcase full of cash and plastic explosive. Now he has to find out what his friend has become involved with.

Giving a hero a mental illness is a bold choice that needs to handled carefully, and I don't think the author has quite achieved this. You can't just 'power through' such things when it's convenient, you can't have them sometimes able to to cope and only bring the sensations back when they can be managed. For those truly afflicted, there is no choice or willpower involved. Other than that the complex motivations and carefully clues and plotting seemed well contrived.… (mehr)