NICK KOLAKOWSKI - BOISE LONGPIG HUNTING CLUB (2018)

Synopsis/blurb....

When you want someone found, you call bounty hunter Jake Halligan. He’s smart, tough, and best of all, careful on the job. But none of those skills seem to help him when a shadowy group starts taking his life apart piece by piece. 

First Jake comes home to find a dead body in his gun safe. He thinks it’s a warning—and when you drag people back to jail for a living, the list of people who want to send that kind of message is very long indeed. With backup from his sister Frankie, an arms dealer and dapper criminal, Jake plunges into the Idaho underworld, confronting everyone from brutal Aryan assassins to cops who want his whole family in jail. 

But as Jake soon discovers, those threats are small-time compared to the group that’s really after him. And nothing—not bounty hunting, not even all his years in Iraq—can prepare him for what’s coming next. Jake’s about to become a player in the most dangerous game ever invented… 

Boise Longpig Hunting Club is a wild ride into the dark heart of the American dream, where even the most brutal desires can be fulfilled for a price, and nobody is safe from the rich and powerful. 

Praise for BOISE LONGPIG HUNTING CLUB: 

“Nick Kolakowski spins a ripping pulp yarn of smart-ass bounty hunters and bad-ass crime queenpins caught in the Jean-Claude Van God-Damnedest take on The Most Dangerous Game since Hard Target, but with no bad accents.” —Thomas Pluck, author of Bad Boy Boogie and Blade of Dishonor 

A bounty hunter with a marriage to repair and a notorious sister who's an illegal arms dealer. Welcome to the world of Jake Halligan, a veteran of a few desert conflicts and currently contemplating the return into his life of his ex-wife, Janine and the loss of some weapons from his mostly legal gun stash. Recovering his guns from Zombie Bill might be problematic as Bill wants to trade the guns in return for Jake turning in his sister Frankie to the law. That's not going to happen. Keeping hold of his wife a second time around might also prove difficult.

The above scenario is effectively act one in our drama. Our second part concerns more trouble aplenty for the Halligan's as our uneasy trio of Jake, Janice and Frankie become unwitting pawns in a rich man's game - payback for a long ago transgression of the sibling's deceased father.

In no particular order we have - a kidnapping, a quarry confrontation, some sisterly support with heavy weaponry, a confrontation with a dodgy cop, a life and near death skirmish with an axe-wielding neo-Nazi, a death in custody, a dead girl in his gun safe, some tension in the family, a drop in on the neighbours, the downside of bounty hunting with a heart-wrenching take down of a grieving father, another dead kid connected to the gun safe girl, an investigation and a set-up, a less than pleasant chit-chat with some obscenely rich and powerful people full of their own self importance and an unshakeable sense of entitlement, leading to a compelling and climactic manhunt with the Boise Longpig Hunting Club, some familial bonding and a dusting off of those hard-earned military skills.

Plus points
Interesting characters - tick - and ones I wouldn't mind seeing in further adventures if time allows
Pace - tick
Story lines - tick
Action - tick
Setting - tick
Resolution - tick
Banter, dialogue, black humour - tick
Length - 155 pages - perfect - tick

Downside
Nothing really, one minor gripe - I probably didn't take too much to sister Frankie initially, but she'd grown on me by the end

4.5 from 5

Nick Kolakowski's books have been enjoyed before - A Brutal Bunch of Heartbroken Saps and Slaughterhouse Blues both earlier this year.

Read in October, 2018
Published - 2018
Page count - 155
Source - review copy received from author
Format - ePub file read on laptop