Nothing Short of Dying

Hard-bitten tough guy Clyde Barr has been absent overseas for 16 years fighting other people’s wars. On his return home to the US, he receives a frantic call from his sister, Jen. She is being held hostage and in fear of her life. Unfortunately, the line goes dead before she can tell him where she is or who is holding her.

Clyde and Jen – along with his two other sisters – have a chequered relationship going back all the way to childhood. Like Barr, Jen was always a wild child and looking for the next challenge, and he’s worried at what trouble she may have gotten involved in.

Reaching out to a friend from a long way back, Barr finds out where Jen was last seen, and discovers that she is involved with a man named Lance Alvis, a big-time drug producer and dealer with an operation deep in the back country of Colorado.

Getting anywhere near Alvis if going to be hard, as he is constantly surrounded by gunmen who will shoot on sight rather than ask questions. But Barr has no choice; there is too much history behind him and Jen and he wants to make amends.

With a cute but tough bartender named Allie willing to help out, Barr sets off to penetrate the Alvis camp and rescue Jen, piling up the bodies along the way.

Compared by some to Jack Reacher for his hard man willing to help out others in distress, Clyde Barr has the same no-nonsense approach to anybody standing in his way; if they try to stop him, he’ll drop them where they stand. But, as he already knows from previous experiences, where violence is concerned, there’s inevitably a price to pay; and the cost to Barr is likely to be high.

Best read in one hit to match the furious pace of tension and eyeball-to-eyeball face-offs, this is a relentless journey of anger, revenge and released guilt in equal measure, where the main protagonist is willing to go down fighting for what he believes is right.