A Small Town by Thomas Perry

 

After a couple of mediocre-ish novels, I was grateful to past me for picking this up last time I was at the library, Perry is usually a fun thrillerish read. This is pretty typical for Perry, dry and almost clinical, with a main character who manages to be both methodical and opportunistic as she pursues her well-justified mission of revenge. This isn't the most-satisfying Perry I've read, there's less in doubt almost from the start than there is in some of his others--the primary question is what it's going to cost the main to kill all the bad men she's after, her success seems inevitable pretty quickly. Still a good read, but it is interesting to me how "watch the person pursue inevitable revenge" is so much more satisfying to me than "watch the sociopath kill people pointlessly," even when the relevant body counts are about the same.