Title: Pursuit
Author: John C. Owens
Publisher: PageTurner Press & Media
ISBN: 978-1098025939
Pages: 308
Genre: Fiction / Crime / Mystery
Reviewed by: Jake Bishop
Hollywood Book Reviews
Things get freaky early in author John C. Owens’s novel of strange goings-on in Michigan…make that Minnesota…well, Las Vegas too, but that comes later. Did I mention Viet Nam? No? Well, I will, eventually. The point is there’s a lot of crazy going down and once it starts it just keeps getting more and more weird.
Lou Decker is a detective in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Already in hot water and still on suspension for coloring outside the lines of appropriate police procedure when apprehending an alleged child molester, Lou gets a call from his brother-in-law who informs him that his wife, Lou’s sister, is missing. He goes on to say he thinks she may have been kidnapped by a wacky religious cult. This gets Lou’s attention. Not because he trusts his brother-in-law, but because he cares deeply about his sister. He agrees to help look into it. But before he can do much, the brother-in-law receives a missive from his missing spouse that causes him to dash off to Minnesota to help save the day. Before you know it, the brother-in-law is dead – under suspicious circumstances. The sister is still missing and Lou is off to the Land of 10,000 Lakes to try to make sense of it all. That’s hard to do because, as you might assume in stories such as this, nothing is actually as it seems.
Soon, Detective Decker is being set upon by a couple of halfwits and either a wily Mexican, a smiling cowboy, or a flying Dragon, depending on your point of view. Lou winds up going off a cliff, in the lake, and atop some rather nasty rocks. This puts him in the hospital where he awakens to find that the two individuals who fished him out are quite a bit more than good Samaritans. One happens to be a lovely lady named Lenore whom he will have a lot more to do with before story’s end.
Owens is a deft writer, quick with a quip and smart enough to let his plot stew in a slow cooker until its narrative fragrances have you turning page after page. When you do, you’ll find not only an exercise in police procedurals, but also a walk through the wilds of supernatural terror, religious debate (folded nicely into the sinew of the story), native American sweat lodges, and spooky coincidences (the Viet Nam item I mentioned earlier). All of the aforementioned plus unscrupulous preachers, princes of darkness, and a hotel clerk with a wicked sense of humor, make this a detective novel unlike most detective novels. If you like your reading fun, strange, and definitely out of the ordinary, this is a Pursuit you won’t want to miss.