By Gregg Hurwitz. Grade A.

From the eleventh story of a Los Angeles high-rise, Nate looks out on the city - the traffic, the trees, the beach beyond. He breathes deeply. And then he moves one foot off the ledge and into thin air.

But before he can jump, gunshots ring out from within the building. A robbery is in progress. And Nate, with nothing to lose but the life he was about to give up, decides to intervene.

What happens next plunges Nate into mortal danger...and reunites him with the family he hasn't known for years - a family he will do anything to protect.

Have you ever seen a person commit suicide - in real life? I saw it once. I was in the mall, hanging out with friends, when a man jumped from the fifth floor right in front of my eyes. There was a loud thud, blood seeped out from his clothes and he was declared dead. I'll spare you the gory details and jump to the point: some say that the people who commit suicide are cowards, but I say that every person has a breaking point, and he can fight the cruelties of life only so much. Sometimes, the only option is to give up.
That was the moment I decided that if a thought of committing suicide ever came to my mind, I would definitely die while doing some noble job. If you are already wasting a gifted life, you may at least make the sacrifice mean something. That was exactly what the main protagonist Nate did, and in some twisted way, he is my role model.

The book starts with a bang when Nate—a soon-to-be-divorced former solider suffering from PTSD and slowly dying from ALS — is preparing to jump from a ledge down into the dumpster. He is feeling sorry for the people who would witness the suicide and the poor man who would have to clean his blood, when he hears some robbers burst into a bank and start shooting people. With nothing to lose, Nate barges in and manages to kill five out of the six robbers. People know him as the bank hero. But what those people don't know is that this bank hero was given a deadly warning by the sixth robber: "He [the robber's boss] will get you."

Nate soon learns what that message meant. He is kidnapped by a Ukranian mobster and threatened to steal a document for which the robbery had been framed or see his daughter killed on a slab of ice, right in front of his eyes. The daughter whom Nate loved very much but lost - when he came back from Iraq a broken man - with his soon to be ex-wife.

The last thing he wants to do is leave the world while leaving the only people he loves in grave danger because of him. He vows to find a way to keep them safe even if it is the last thing he is able to do.

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Despite reading hundreds of action-packed thrillers in the past few days, I am still taken aback how the threads suddenly come together at the end. Seemingly simple statements are actually obvious clues, and you wonder how you could have missed it. The same thing happened here. And the best part was that the parts which weren't so action-packed, like where Nate tells his family of the illness or the part when his family finally forgives him and they are re-united are very poignant and been written artfully. Brings to mind some of the works of Baldacci and David Jackson.

The first half whizzes by, so fast that you have no option but to go along with the ride. Things slow down then, and you fall for the characters. His terminal illness is terrifying and despite knowing that there is no cure, you wish for some miracle as the end approaches. His love for his family is very real, and the way he puts them above him would win over many hearts. The book comes alive in Hurwitz's capable hands, and no doubt I am going to check out the other books in his shelf.

Worth your time.


Originally reviewed at : www.the-vault.co.cc