Review: Excellent character back story!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 16, 2011
"Becoming Quinn" by Brett Battles is the novella featuring Jack Oliver who would later become the cleaner known as Jonathon Quinn. We meet Jake as a young Phoenix police officer following the loose thread of a crime. Jake, a 22 year old rookie cop on patrol responds with his partner when a barn goes up in flames. Once the flames are extinguished a murder victim is found. Working on pure instinct, Jake tracks the killers but the killers are also tracking Jake.I really like Brett Battles style and Jonathon Quinn is a favourite character. I imagine that all authors have a back story written when they create a character and Battles has presented us Jonathon Quinn's backstory in a compelling and thrilling way. There are worse things than dying, you know. In my opinion, Oliver/Quinn is as relatable as he gets in this book where we're finally learning real information and seeing the real man before the training. He's a kid running on emotion, ambition and just unable to not pursue the killers no matter the personal cost - and danger - to himself. We read how Durrie finds him and why he trusts Durrie, despite what we learned of him in earlier books. This is a truly wonderful read and I recommend it as an excellent starting point for this series.....and I do recommend this series for any fan of thrillers. My sincere hope is that Mr. Battles writes follow up training novellas.