Judgment and Wrath
Joe Hunter, one-time scourge of terrorists turned freelance knight errant, accepts what appears to be a simple mission: rescue young Marianne Dean from Bradley Jorgenson, her abusive lover, who is heir to a pharmaceutical fortune. Hunter goes to Miami to do just that and finds that the young couple is the target of a deranged assassin who fancies himself Dantalion, an angel cast out of heaven and a “Great Duke of Hell.” Hunter thwarts Dantalion’s first two attempts, setting up a mano-a-mano confrontation with the wraithlike killer in the swamps near Lake Okeechobee. Although Hilton’s gun battles, car chases, and explosions are reliably entertaining, his greatest talent lies in creating over-the-top villains. Dantalion is as bizarre and monomaniacal as Tubal Cain, the serial killer from Dead Men’s Dust(2009) whose goal was to eclipse Ted Bundy as America’s worst. Plotting and dialogue remain works in progress, but if it’s straight-shooting machismo readers are after, Hilton and Joe Hunter fill the bill. --Thomas Gaughan