Review: Excellent dark crime novel...  I was sorry to see it end.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 29, 2008
Vengeance by A.J. Scudiere was one of two books I got from Scudiere's publisher for review.  I read Resonance first, and really enjoyed it.  I had saved Vengeance for last because it was written after Resonance and I didn't know if it was a follow-up with the same characters.  I quickly found out...  it's not.  It's *completely* different, and *really* good.  I had a harder time putting this one down than the first.  I'd have been perfectly happy had it gone even longer than its 400 pages.Lee Maxwell was an accountant with a nice happy family.  That is, until he discovered that he was working for a business run by the mafia.  His attempt to contact the authorities and leave his job only led to the gruesome death of his wife and daughter.  He went off the grid, buried his identity, and started working on getting revenge for the killings.  During one of his operations, he runs into another killer, "Sin", who is young, female, dressed in leather, and an expert in knives and slow, painful deaths.  It quickly becomes obvious that they have the same purpose in life...  revenge on the mafia and other assorted lowlifes who need to be stopped one way or another.  Owen Dunham, the FBI agent on the case, has to figure out who the "Grudge Ninja" is, and why "he" is killing all these people.  But should the truth be known, he'd rather allow the killings to continue, as it's a swift and deadly form of frontier justice.  Lee and Sin have to come to some sort of arrangement in order to stay out of each other's way and maximize their efforts.  Why should they both spend time researching the same target, only to find out the other one got there first for the kill?  But Sin has her own dark history that drives her revenge, and opening up to another person is not something she's able to do.  The revenge killings reach a crescendo as the FBI starts to get their first real evidence left behind at the scene.  The question becomes whether Lee and Sin will finish their list before the FBI (or the mafia) gets to them first...The story starts out from three very different perspectives, that of Sin, Lee, and Owen.  And it's not clear at first why Lee is gunning down scum, and why Sin is leaving dead bodies with multiple cuts and slices, complete with crime documentation, all wrapped up (literally) in a big red bow.  Dunham has his own issues, as he really wants to get out of the business and take time to enjoy his wife and daughter before she tires of his demanding job and leaves him.  But once Sin and Lee start to confront each other, the story and characters really start to jell.  Neither of them want to trust each other, but neither of them wants to eliminate the other, either.  This tentative truce gives way to the beginning of trust, all to seek vengeance against those who have destroyed their lives.  I was also quite satisfied with the ending, as I wasn't looking forward to how I *though* it was going to conclude.Very dark, plenty of action, and character interaction that was stellar...  An excellent read.