Book Review: Hangman by Jack Heath
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About 15 years ago, I saw Jack Heath at a writers’ festival when he was primarily known as a children’s and young adult writer. He was young himself, a bit of a prodigy. I can’t remember the context but he was talking about reading a book while on an airplane and it contained a description of a woman grinding her heel into a man’s crotch. The scene was so vivid – in his head at least – that he passed out at 30,000 feet. Boy, he must have come a long way since then because as the main character in Hangman, Timothy Blake is the new Dexter Morgan (only worse).
The most important thing to note about Hangman is that while Jack Heath has written umpteen books for children, THIS IS NOT ONE OF THEM. If books were given ratings, this one would be 18+.
It’s not for the faint-hearted either. Blake is a monster and kills then mutilates numerous people throughout the story without any reluctance. When he’s not murdering people, he’s a civilian consultant for the FBI field office in Texas, offering advice on time-sensitive cases, usually missing persons. The deal? For every innocent life he saves, he gets to take a not-so-innocent one. It’s an unofficial deal with the field office director but it’s working out for both of them. The Texas FBI field office has an enviable solve rate for its cases and Blake stays out of jail.
When Cameron Hall, a fourteen-year-old student, is abducted and a ransom demanded, Blake is called in. He managed to get his old FBI supervisor shot (in the bulletproof vest he was wearing but he’s still injured) so he’s assigned a new one, Reese Thistle. Blake’s uneasy about it – he stays away from women for their sakes and his own – but he doesn’t really have a choice.
They go all over Houston chasing up leads but something feels amiss. And when Blake is kidnapped from home and dumped at the warehouse where Cameron Hall is being held captive, it starts to feel just a little too convenient. But then another boy goes missing, almost identical to Cameron Hall, and Blake thinks he’s stumbled onto a serial kidnapper with a predilection for blond teenagers.
Blake is supposed to be a bit of a savant – and he is – but obvious leads aren’t followed up and connections are dismissed as coincidence, so it diminishes him a little. When Thistle is revealed as someone from his very traumatic past, it starts to feel a lot like writers’ tricks instead of ingenious plot. And his traumatic past is contrived – when it is revealed how he survived as a baby after his parents were shot, you’ll roll your eyes at least a little because it is just ridiculous.
The reason the book is called Hangman is also a bit unfathomable. Blake literally says that he chose Hangman as the name for his online business solving Rubik’s cubes and other puzzles because the name he wanted – Problemsolver – was already taken. I suspect there was another reason in a previous version of the book, a plotline that later got written out, but Heath – or maybe his editor – was so attached to the name that he couldn’t bear to let it go.
The book’s best feature is that it is really well written, extremely readable – in fact, I read it all in one day. It keeps you reading because all the way through it feels like something big is right around the corner.
The reveal, when it comes, is underwhelming. I think it’s supposed to be a commentary on how nobody’s perfect, because in this book nobody is. But considering how long Blake is outsmarted, the criminal should have been outed a lot earlier. And the reasons for the crimes are a bit ho hum. The story relies too much on the shock of discovering exactly what Blake does in his spare time and these days we’re all a bit jaded.
I’m curious enough to want to read the next book in the series. Not straight away. But sometime in the next few years. If I come across the sequel on sale. Or in a second-hand bookstore.
In a word: okay.
3 stars
*First published on Goodreads 12 March 2020
