Afraid

This is the first book I’ve read by this author. I kind of stumbled across it by accident and I’m so glad I did. Jack Kilborn is a pen name for the author J.A Konrath, and this was his first novel writing under that name. It is a simple tale, wrote simply and in no way completely original and yet this didn’t put me off. The action in the book was fast paced enough to keep me hooked, there were a few ideas in the book that appealed, and while the story isn’t a very knew one it had all the right modern day elements in it to keep it fresh.

There was quite a few instances I had to put the book down because I struggled with the content, a man hacking his own foot off to get out of a bear trap will do that to you. In this instance it reminded me a lot of early Shaun Hutson, mixed with some cool horror films of the present day. What Jack managed to do in this novel, is to take a classic plot line, mix in a sprinkle of gore, a smattering of action and a dose of tension and provide us with a novel that does exactly what it says on the tin, make us Afraid.

It is essentially a story about some rogue Special Forces soldiers who have crash landed in a small rural village in the woods of Wisconsin who go on a tortuous killing spree while they look for a guy most people have never heard of. Their ignorance sure isn’t bliss though as the soldiers use their sadistic tendencies to cause pain and death in ways never before imagined until now.

The novel is fast paced and the ending slightly cliché but after all you have to end a book somewhere and it isn’t really the type of novel which keeps you guessing, it is much too brutal for that. Overall a very good read, and an author I will definitely be on the lookout for again. Give it a try, you won’t be too disappointed.