Your Son is Alive by James Scott Bell

This intense thriller is dripping with vengeance but ends with justice. And there’s redemption sprinkled in as well. It’s a fast-paced, suspenseful story with a situation that should haunt any parent.

Dylan and Erin are divorced because their marriage fell apart after their five-year-old son, Kyle, was kidnapped. This book is set fifteen years later. Someone slips a note under Dylan Reeve’s door at night telling him his son is alive. This is the first bizarre event that happens to Dylan and Erin.

The book is 328 pages long, but there are 112 chapters. This adds to the pace. I also appreciate the shorter chapters because it allows me to stop easier on a chapter break when I could not stay awake or had to stop reading. There are multiple points of view. Dylan and Erin are the predominant points of view. Who the other characters are is not clear until the end, thus adding to the suspense and mystery.

The situation of the story is complex. Dylan and Erin are put through the wringer. Just when it looks like things can’t get worse, they do. The only thing that bothered me a little is that me, the reader, did not have any chance of figuring out who was doing what was being done to the Reeves and why until two-thirds of the way through. I kept wondering why this was happening. What was their person or person’s end game. Don’t worry, you find out.

Well-written, gripping, and again a story that should shake any parent to the core. The book is clean. No profanity, no on page sex, and the violence is not over-the-top. It’s my first James Scott Bell, but it won’t be my last. I’ll rank this one seventh for the year. Definitely one of the better crime fiction thrillers I’ve read this year.

1. Thunder and Rain by Charles Martin
2. Love’s True Calling by Lori DeJong
3. Through Thorny Ways by Jennifer Q. Hunt
4. Book of Days by James L. Rubart
5. Whispers of a Southern Moon by Pricilla Bettis
6. The Seven Day Resurrection by Chevron Ross
7. Your Son is Alive by James Scott Bell
8. With Mercy’s Eyes by D.T. Powell
9. Justice by Jeff Hill
10. Already in the Kudzu by Hannah Hood Lucero
11. Dreamwalker by Carrie Cotten
12. The Last Wife by Matt McGregor
13. Loving the Rodeo Queen by Rebecca Reed
14. The Misadventures of Itchy Izzy by N.Y. Dunlap
15. Save the Last Dance for Me by Ed Gorman
16. Ranch Showdown by Tina Wheeler
17. The Unhired Hand by R.O. Lane
18. The Shocking Truth by Steve Rush
19. Daughter of Darkness by Ed Gorman
20. Burning Angel by James Lee Burke
21. Death in the Kremlin by E.J. Simon
22. White Gold by Michael E. Jimerson
23. Irresistible Impulse by Robert K. Tanenbaum
24. Line of Fire by Taylor S. Newport
25. The Longest Day by Terry Toler
26. Left to Die by Lisa Jackson

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