"Deadfall" review

Robert Liparulo is one of those writers I wish I'd found a long time ago. But I'm getting closer to being caught up on his works. I've only got two published ones left: Deadfall and Comes a Horseman, his debut novel. Now, the Barnes & Noble I went to only had the former of these titles, so I've gotten to read it first. Here we go:

Deadfall is the story of John Hutchinson, known to his friends as Hutch. Hutch and his friends decide to go camping up in the beautiful Canadian wilderness after a long year of troubles: divorce, depression, job loss, etc. They're going to spent their 10 days hunting and living on the land (easier than you might think, since cell phones don't work up there). No distractions.

That is, until Hutch is attacked by a group of people in a yellow Hummer who are testing the ultimate weapon-- which I'm not going to tell you about, since its full implications are something the reader needs to uncover. All I'll say is that it lends itself to some truly explosive scenes.

Hutch and his friends run for the nearby town of Fiddler Falls for safety, but there they find that the townspeople are being kept hostage. Some have already been killed. So now it's up to Hutch and co. to rely on their survival skills to liberate Fiddler Falls without becoming just a smudge on the map.

Liparulo's writing is great, with realistic characters and dialogue set in intense and surreal conditions, and it makes the nearly-500-page-long book go by in a heartbeat (Well, okay, several heartbeats. By the end, your heart is beating pretty fast.) He can be welcomed into the highest company of suspense writers, alongside Ted Dekker and Frank Peretti. I loved it!

On and there's a sequel coming out in March. It's called Deadlock. I can't wait. I guess I'll find a way to wait somehow (*cough* Comes a Horseman *cough*).

My rating: 9.5/10