Relentless by Simon Kernick

It's a normal weekend and you're in the garden when an old friend call you. He's in distress, telling you he's in deep trouble and you've got to help him. All of a sudden he's interrupted by some people and you hear your friend reveal your name and address before being killed. What do you do? Well, you toss the kids into the car to take them to a safe place. But it's really too late. The baddies know where you live, they know how to get to you and since they, in their pursuit, make you a suspect for murdering your wife's colleague you have little chance but to try and sort it out yourself.

It's summertime so it's inevitable that book stores have filled shelf upon shelf with crime-novels. I'd not heard of this book before picking it up and to be honest I only did it to get up to three books in the "3 for 2" deal that was on. But it was definitely a winner! I have rarely connected so immediately with a character. Sure. I'm not a guy, I'm not married to a woman (I'm not married at all), I don't have kids, I doubt a friend would call me up to ask for help in the midst of being murdered. But still, I connected because the main guy is a normal guy and not some hot-shot cop who drink a wee bit too much, who's been hurt in a previous relationship and with acanningly accurate sense for crime and murder. This guy is an Everyday-Joe and it could be you!

Relentless is exactly what its title says - relentless in it's pace and the panic you feel as the character is trying everything to stay ahead of the bad guys, trying to protect his family and staying alive while doing so. The book never slows down, there's not a page that's not grabbing you by the hand to pull you along. You can't wait to find out what happens next but at the same time you don't want to in fear of finding something that makes the character having to struggle even more...

I'm definitely getting my hands on another of Kernick's books. The only bad thing is that my expectations are sky-high and that's not always a good position to start from...