Thursday, January 16, 2025

Redemption Road by John Hart


 This novel has nothing I noticed in the way of supernatural about it, and I have the sense that's probably something Hart's more comfortable with than having ghosts and stuff running around. I mean, I saw the Big Twist coming something like 200 pages before it landed, but Hart doesn't seem to be an overly subtle novelist, even among prize-winning crime novelists. There's a lot that happens in this novel, and it's kinda jumbled at times, but the various relationships ring at least mostly true, and the ending is--suitably, given the title--distinctly hopeful, if not exactly redemptive; maybe Hart gets that earning redemption isn't so easy, maybe he just wanted to leave the ending a bit more open-ended. It's not a great novel, but I don't feel as though I've wasted my evening; I might not jump at more by the author, however.

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