4 out of 4 stars
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The town of Lawrence was once a popular destination for gold diggers during the gold rush. Now, long abandoned, just a small, quaint town remains. The streets, which are generally quiet, are filled with flashing red, white, and blue lights after a gunman is seen within the beloved Chen family home. Even though the police tried to stop anything from happening inside, there were two explosions, multiple casualties, and two missing people. Among the missing people, were a well-known gangster and the father of the Chen family, James Chen. Once a well-off family, the Chens have seen their fair deal of tragedy and this seemed to just be one more terrible thing to happen to good people.
In The Easter Make Believers (now called Good Hot Hate), by Finn Bell, police officers Tobe and Nick of the Gang Intelligence Centre and the rest of the police squad try to figure out exactly what happened in Lawrence that night and why many prominent gang members were in the Chen house in the first place. More importantly, they need to locate the missing James Chen and save him from a certain death. The search is long and near impossible, since the search area is large and filled with hundreds of hidden, abandoned gold mines. It becomes even more difficult as a huge snowstorm threatens any chance of finding James Chen dead or alive.
What I believed would be a typical mystery/thriller with a predictable ending, turned out to be quite the opposite. Bell does a great job captivating the reader and holding his or her attention until the very end. What I liked the most was that the plot is full of unexpected twists. I don’t want to give too much away, but in my opinion, the overarching theme of the book is a parent’s love for their children. The book starts with Nicolas beating up his father, who he never knew, in an alley and the theme continues throughout the novel as a linked thread. It makes you think about how circumstances can change someone’s life and how far a parent would or wouldn’t go to protect his or her children.
There wasn’t anything that I particularly disliked about the book. However, if I had to criticize anything it would be the separate chapters related to the storm. While, the chapters do make the reader understand the gravity of the oncoming snowstorm, the separate chapters made the flow of the book a little more choppy than necessary. Instead, I wish that Bell would have found a way to incorporate the seriousness of the storm into the existing chapters relating to Tobe and Nick and also with the missing gangster and James Chen. Overall, this small detail did not take away much from this overall great read.
Finn Bell recently had all his books re-edited, re-titled, and re-covered. The Easter Make Believers is now called Good Hot Hate. The book was very professionally edited. The minimal errors that I noticed consisted of a couple of missing apostrophes and commas, which could have been a stylistic choice. Due to the quality of the writing, minimal errors, and the surprising plot twists, I rate this book 4 out of 4 stars. You will love this book as much as I did if you enjoy a great mystery/thriller, but you might want to pass if you don’t usually like the genre.
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The Easter Make Believers
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