I'm not a big fan of thriller novels, but there are a bunch of terrific stories in this book. The gimmick is that each story features two members of the International Thriller Writers, one male and one female, bringing their most popular characters together. In this case it is Karin Slaughter and Michael Koryta (making his second appearance in this space) and they decided to dive into their protagonists' backstories.
It's 1993 and Jeffrey Tolliver, is a young Birmingham cop. He is in a small town in Georgia on a long weekend that has gone terribly wrong.
How wrong? Before the tale has gotten fairly started he finds himself standing in a hotel parking lot in front of a busload of missionaries and...
"Holy crap,mister. You're in your underwear."
"Running shorts," he said, resisting the urge to cover himself. "Training for a marathon."
"With just one shoe?"
"Half marathon."
That has a nice Groucho Marx surrealism to it, doesn't it? And pretty soon Tolliver is in jail on suspicion of murder.
Meanwhile, up in Cleveland, Ohio, veteran cop Joe Pritchard and his green partner Lincoln Perry are being asked by the DEA to help them track down a local drug dealer who has gone national. Seems he has been spotted in a small town in Georgia...
A lot of stuff goes on here - in spite of its title, this is the longest novella in the book -- and there are some nice surprises along the way.and more witty lines too, as when a bad guy says:
"This ain't no Batman movie, mister. I don't got to explain myself."
That last line is a real winner, Rob. I'm going to buy this book for that sentence alone.
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