Book Review: 30 Days

30 Days. G.R. Case. Cool Blue Books, April 14, 2014, Trade Paperback and Kindle, 398 pages.

Reviewed by Ray Paul.

Without question, 30 Days is one of the most compelling novels I have read in recent years. This plot-driven suspense novel is so intricately woven I did not suspect its conclusion until the very last page. The focus character, Marcus Freling, is a Manhattan postal worker who is fixated on avenging his young niece’s drive-by shooting death by a callous gangster. When the police can’t pin the crime on Troy, the drug dealer, Marcus devises and carries out his own elaborate plan to kidnap, torture, and eventually murder Troy and Troy’s own young daughter. For this reader, the story was a rough ride emotionally as I accompanied Marcus on his vengeful journey, but the characters are so well drawn I never questioned the validity of his purpose.

If I were to be critical of anything in Mr. Case’s novel it would be the following two things. First, is his tendency to change the point of view character in mid-paragraph and thus divert this reader’s attention from his powerful story. The second is a lack of sentence variety and a reliance on adverbs to color his story. Despite these weaknesses, 30 Days is an emotion-packed novel of retribution that transported me into an unfamiliar world. I liked it and I recommend it to any strong-stomached reader of suspense novels. I also believe the story would make an excellent movie.