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If the year 2005 becomes known as "The Year of Hurwitz," TROUBLESHOOTER will be the reason why. Greg Hurwitz has written a number of fine books with nary a miss since THE TOWER, his debut novel. He began a new upward trajectory, however, with THE KILL CLAUSE, the first of his novels to feature U.S. Marshal Tim Rackley, and 2004's THE PROGRAM continued this trend. But neither will prepare you for the masterpiece that is TROUBLESHOOTER.
Any thriller, at its most basic level, needs a good, believable bogeyman that will scare the heck out of the reader. TROUBLESHOOTER has a whole group of them --- a biker gang known as the Laughing Sinners. The Sinners seem to run the streets of southern California with impunity, due to a combination of street smarts, mind-numbing violence, and the legal machinations of a cunning attorney. The book begins with the guarded transport of Den Laurey and Kaner, two members of the Sinners' nomad chapter --- so called because they have no fixed territory or home --- following their arrest for murder. Their brutal and daring escape leads to the formation of a task force charged with recapturing them, with whatever force it takes, and bringing the Sinners down.
Rackley, who is heading up the task force, almost recaptures Laurey but is outmanned and outgunned --- a situation that results in tragic personal consequences for Rackley mere minutes later when his pregnant wife Dray, herself a sheriff's deputy, is attacked and left for dead in the bikers' wake. Rackley must detach his personal grief and desire for revenge from his duties as task force director, even as these elements merge and intersect as the U.S. Marshal's Office and the Sinners play a continuous game of cat-and-mouse for the highest possible stakes. As the task force methodically pursues the gang, it learns that the activities of the Sinners have consequences that will affect not only southern California but also national security.
As always, Hurwitz's research is first-rate; combined with his considerable narrative talents, TROUBLESHOOTER gives the reader an over-the-shoulder view of a counterculture within a counterculture. The Sinners, self-styled "one-percenters" --- their name based upon the truism that 99 percent of bikers are law-abiding citizens --- are not merely societal nonconformists following a creed of "live and let live," but rather are outlaws at war with society, feeding off of it even as they provide vices such as sex and drugs so desired by some. The relationship, subtly but graphically demonstrated here, is more parasitic than symbiotic.
Hurwitz wisely refuses to blur the lines here, choosing instead to paint a clear picture of law enforcement and evil at their respective best and worst while providing a breakneck narrative that races to a conclusion --- two of them, actually --- that will satisfy everyone, on all counts. Ultimately, TROUBLESHOOTER is an undeniable winner.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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