Review: A Really Good Story, But...
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 12, 2014
I didn't like "A Hunted Man" as much as some reviewers did. But I did enjoy the story and the main characters, Hunter and Cameron. Cameron just finished ten years in prison for killing a man and was paroled to Halfway House for six months before he was quit of the system. Hunter Donovan is an Assistant State's Attorney, a real straight-shooter out to rid the streets of Miami of its worst malefactors, determined to bring safety to the city he loves.The two run across each other in a local diner where Cam was working as its first-ever Barista, as part of his release program. Insta-love ensues. It's that "old Gay Romance" thing, all right, with the eyes that lock and the electricity that sparks between them when their fingers touch as Cam hands Hunter his latte. Nothing very innovative there.What is interesting, however, is the series of crimes that all seem to be connected, and are, in fact, related to Cam's incarceration. Of course, Cam was railroaded, and then virtually tortured in prison - you'll have to read the book to find out why. It's enough to say that all the bad guys get what's coming to them, in the end, and the guys get their "happily ever after". But not until they suffer a number of close calls and a smashing climax in which Hunter uses his Force Recon training to mangle almost a whole mob of bad guys and save them both. The climax comes about a hundred pages before the end of the book, but it's pretty darned exciting to read - at the same time that they survive the attack, they discover who the bad guys are (as do you).I gave it only four stars because, though the book managed to move me in more than a few places, I didn't find it to be particularly well-written. There were awkward moments in the prose. As other have mentioned here, the dialogue sometimes drifted far from believable (no, people really don't talk like that), and the research on the Law was really bad. For example, hearings don't have "minutes", they have transcripts; meetings have minutes. Criminal records don't get "expelled", they get expunged. And it's not "Witness Security Protection", but rather, Witness Security Program.Had the writing been a bit more polished, the dialogue more believable and the terminology accurate, the entire story would have been more credible. As it was, these things made some of the book a bit jarring for my taste. Otherwise, I might have been tempted to give "A Haunted Man" five stars, instead of four.Ultimately, it was a great story with rich characters and long enough to develop them effectively. I do wish the writing were a bit better.