Review: Things That Go Boom in the Night
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 15, 2014
Generally, the shorter a story is, the less complicated the storyline must be in order to make some sort of sense. Authors who delight in twisty complicated plots have to simplify things considerably in their shorter works or they risk completely losing their readers. For that reason, I was quite pleasantly surprised by Ernie Lindsey's "Hard Place," a novelette about a very talented hit man that packs more surprises and plot twists in fifty pages than most novels ten times that long and does so in a manner readers can easily follow.As you might guess, it's difficult to summarize the story line of "Hard Place" in a paragraph or two but I'll try. Boom, formerly a top hit man for a clandestine agency called, unimaginatively, the Company, is dispatched to kill a scientist whose energy research could put a crimp into the profits of major oil companies. Boom's last mission was a spectacular failure, and this job represents somewhat of a probationary second chance for him. However, the mission doesn't start too well when he discovers the scientist missing and possibly killed by someone else. Now he must find her... dead to prove she's gone, or alive so that he can finish the job.As if that weren't enough of a burden for a man on possibly his last job, Boom's wife is dying of cancer and he learns that the missing scientist, in addition to being an energy researcher, had also been on the verge of a major breakthrough in cancer research, which could lead to a successful course of treatment for Boom's wife, who has advanced cancer. Now Boom faces a dilemma: do his job and his wife surely dies, or save the scientist and possibly save his wife, while also possibly dooming himself in the process.Lindsey could easily have stretched these events out to novel length, especially if he had gone into more detail about the specifics of the Company's inner workings, Boom's past and his relation with the other characters he encounters. However, Lindsey pares down his explanations to the essentials. We get an idea of who the various characters are and their relationship with each other, but not much more. What we do get in greater detail are the various twists and turns of the plot, worthy of Robert Ludlum at his best. For much of the book, it's difficult to say just who the white hats and the black hats are in the story, and readers probably won't figure it out on their own, but they'll enjoy watching Boom piece things together."Hard Place" is a masterful piece of story construction. Lindsey cleverly applies the "Law of Conservation of Detail." Just about everyone Boom meets and every seemingly insignificant item he comes across come into play later in the book. In addition, Lindsay takes his time revealing the details of just what went on in that failed mission in Morocco and, as he expands on his description of the earlier events, readers become increasingly aware they are tied into Boom's current assignment.Despite the tricky plot, Lindsey doesn't forget that he is writing an action story about a hit man on a dangerous assignment, so there's also a decent amount of well written action in "Hard Place." The action interludes make it easier for Lindsey to control the pace of the story, so that it doesn't get bogged down in long winded explanations. Readers who care to think about "Hard Place" carefully after reading it will notice a number of plot holes and implausibilities, but none of them will interfere with anyone's enjoyment of the story while reading it. "Hard Place" is a wild roller coaster ride of a tale that will have readers hoping they haven't seen the last of Boom or his creator.