The Shadow Priest by D.C. Alexander
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Thriller, Vigilante
“Awareness and fear of death = destructive yearning for false feelings of immortality provided by myriad sources—power, control, victory, an enduring legacy, fame, a place in one of the afterlives promised by the world’s religions = evil!”
Nate Arkin was once on the rise within DCI, Counter Intelligence. Making a name for himself by running some big Ops, he was taken under the wing of the director himself, and became like a son to him. Then it was all taken away because of “Politics and a failure of character” within DCI and he was the scape goat. He was banished to Four Corners, Colorado and transferred to a bureau of the DOD no one has heard of.
6 years later, Arkin is called to the scene of a murder of a fundamentalist reverend who ran a hate camp of sorts. Killed with a .50 BMG sniper rifle with armor piercing ammo, clearly this was an assassination and not just a murder.
“There were some things about the crime scene that reminded me of the Priest.”
Things about the crime scene start to nag at Arkin, pulling him in the direction of long ago and the case that was ripped from him right when he felt he was getting close. A case that he had put behind him. Working together with an intradepartmental team, he provides the Intelligence officer assigned the case guidance and direction on where he should look or turn to next.
“We’re from different agencies,” Arkin said. “I work for one you’ve never heard of. A bureau within the Department of Defense tasked with tracking and prosecuting illegal distribution, possession, and use of military-grade weapons. Agent Morrison here is a jack-booted thug with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. And Pratt, in the back, well he’s the underutilized and poorly positioned regional representative of an outfit called the Directorate for Counter Intelligence—DCI, for short—a post-9/11 inter-agency counter-terrorism task force that has more or less become permanent.”
As the team start digging, they bring to light more and more evidence they gets them closer to the Priest. However, the closer they get the more dangerous it becomes and Arkin must ask himself if there is a mole on the inside watching their every move.
“He stood on a high wraparound porch on the north side of a cheaply constructed clapboard house, a few miles east-northeast of the small town of Cortez, Colorado, his back to the wide, wooden front stairwell as he examined the fragment—glazed, blood-speckled, and pale gray, no bigger than a dime—with a flat magnifying glass taken from the breast pocket of his dark wool suit. He wondered what it might have held only ninety minutes earlier when it was still part of an intact and functioning mind. Perhaps the cherished memory of a first kiss, or a wedding day, or the birth of a child. Perhaps some component of the victim’s personality—part of the essence of who he was. Maybe it compelled the heart to beat or the lungs to draw breath.”
I love a good thriller that starts Chapter 2 off with a gruesome murder! You are captivated from the start with this one. In his Acknowledgments, D.C. thanks Sue Grafton for helping with his writing skills and you can tell. She is great mystery/thriller writer and this book was very well written, someone was certainly paying attention. The plot is well thought out and full of the little details that new authors tend to miss. This did not read like a second novel but rather one written from a pro. I will definitely be putting Book 2 on my TBR list.
“Well, you’ll have to save South America for the sequel, 007.”
