Review: a new series
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 30, 2012
Hope  Road is John Barlow's first novel in a new crime series set in England. John Ray is the protagonist who is trying to escape his past but that transition  will not be easy. Hope Road is not a police procedural novel but, rather, it is more of a criminal procedural novel. Barlow has methodically detailed how a criminal network functions and has outlined the type of mentality that is necessary for a criminal network to function.. The character of John Ray is equally complicated At times, the reader will see how John Ray is trying to escape his family's past while had other times the reader will wonder if John Ray is embracing his family's past.Barlow has developed a novel that is rich with a diversity of complex characters and plot twists. Counterfeiting, money laundering, stolen cars, jealousy and guilt are all issues that face John Ray. As a reader, I found John Ray to be an empathetic character while at the same time I found him to be a  character that is unsavory and deserving of everything that happens to him. Maybe the rest of the series will deal with the transformation of John Ray. However, will that transformation find John escaping his family's past or will it find him embracing his family's past?As an American reader, I was distracted, at times, by various British idioms and slang but it was nothing that the Kindle dictionary could not handle. While at times, the pace of the novel was slow, overall, I enjoyed the novel and look forward to the next book in the series.