Review – Parabellum by Greg Hickey @greghickey5 #crimefiction #suspense
Synopsis
Why does this keep happening?
A shooting at a Chicago beach leaves several dead and dozens injured. In the year before the attack, four individuals emerge as possible suspects.
An apathetic computer programmer.
An ex-college athlete with a history of head injuries.
An Army veteran turned Chicago cop.
A despondent high school student.
One of them is the shooter. Discover who and why.
Review
Parabellum opens on the crime scene – a beach littered with dead bodies. But who is the killer? Why did s/he kill all of these people? The answer is a little surprising, but looking back, perhaps not so much. Then the book flashes back a year and we meet four possible shooters – the Veteran, the Student, the Programmer, and the Ex-Athlete. During the course of the book, we learn more about these characters, their lives, what they have endured, and their hopes and dreams. What we don’t learn is their names until the very end. In fact, no one seems to have a name until the very end and then there is an onslaught of characters with names. All of the characters are male with the exception of the Ex-Athlete who is a former soccer star that has hit her head and had one too many concussions during her young life.
It felt odd to read the book and not know names, but perhaps that is to not draw any conclusions or stereotypes based on the person. I will say that all of these characters have issues of some sort. The Veteran suffers from PTSD, the Student is socially awkward and perhaps bullied a little bit, the Programmer is smart but has his own anger issues, and the Ex-Athlete has issues from the brain trauma. There are flashbacks of their life and what they have experienced and endured. Each one of them is unhappy for various reasons but will they let that unhappiness control their lives or move them forward?
This book took time for me to digest with the various characters, their flaws, their situations, and wondering when we would learn what happened at the beach. I was taken aback at the end when all of a sudden there were people with names. It took me a bit to realize that these were the people that would be affected by the incident on the beach. You will figure out that one of the characters is not involved in the killings based on the opening scene. But what about the other three? One of those three seems unlikely until we discover this character’s irrational thoughts and dreams.
I enjoyed learning about each character, their history, and what made them tick. I wonder how many people we know in our own lives are similar to them?
This is not a happy read but it does make you think about what is going on inside someone and is there anything we can do to create an alternate outcome.
We give this book 3 1/2 paws.
About the Author
Greg Hickey started writing his first novel the summer after he finished seventh grade. He didn’t get very far because he quickly realized he preferred playing outside with his friends.
Eight years later, he began to find a better balance between writing and life. He wrote the early drafts of his first screenplay Vita during his last two years of college. Vita went on to win an Honorable Mention award in the 2010 Los Angeles Movie Awards script competition and was named a finalist in the 2011 Sacramento International Film Festival.
After college, he spent a year in Sundsvall, Sweden and Cape Town, South Africa, playing and coaching for local baseball teams and penning his first novel, Our Dried Voices. That novel was published in 2014 and was a finalist for Foreword Reviews‘ INDIES Science Fiction Book of the Year Award.
Today, he still loves sharing stories while staying busy with the other facets of his life. He is a forensic scientist by day and endurance athlete and author by nights, lunches, weekends and any other spare moments. After his post-college travels, he once again lives in his hometown of Chicago with his wife, Lindsay.
