SAFE AND SOUND
J.D. Rhoades
St. Martin’s Minotaur
Thriller
ISBN-10: 0312354894
ISBN-13: 9780312354893

SAFE AND SOUND, J.D. Rhoades’s third Jack Keller novel, begins with a nightmare scenario. Remember that beginning. It’s but a premonition of what is to come in one of the darkest --- and best --- novels of 2007.

Keller’s emotions have always trolled out where the buses don’t run, and he finds himself slipping deeper and deeper into dark territory in SAFE AND SOUND. He is in the process of attempting to put a relationship together with ex-policewoman Marie Jones. Running a private investigation agency, Jones accepts a case that will have implications reaching far beyond its expected boundaries. She agrees to trace the whereabouts of David Lundgren, an Army sergeant who has absconded with his young daughter.

Keller becomes involved in the search, quickly surmising that Lundgren has ties to the special ops community. Not even the Army, however, knows where Lundgren is; he has, in fact, fallen afoul of DeGroot, a dark force of nature skilled in the ways of the arts of interrogation and murder. DeGroot is on a trail that began in the mountains of Afghanistan and will end in the mountains of North Carolina. His trail will intersect with Keller’s, with both men leaving --- and bringing --- death and destruction upon friend and foe alike with steel-edged certainty.

More than Keller’s happiness hangs in the balance; his sanity, already teetering on a fine edge, may well be lost to the abyss. And Jones, heretofore the shelter in the storm of Keller’s emotions, is in the path of both men.

Rhoades has a fine sense of irony that runs deep and true through SAFE AND SOUND, beginning with the title and continuing all the way to the very last page. The author's narrative, which reads much like that of Dashiell Hammett, is strong, stark and sure, just like his plot. One never gets lost, but one is never safe, either. This is a work of quality that hints of even greater things to come.

   --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

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