![\"redemption-road\"](\"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/redemption-road-195x300.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201c\u2026bad men and the things that happen in dark houses\u201d haunt the tough young woman cop. An ex-cop, convicted for a murder he didn\u2019t commit, gets out of jail, only to get arrested again. Two children, one poor, one privileged, are in peril. A serial killer not even in the public consciousness comes closer to his intended victim with each turn of a page.<\/p>\nAnd it\u2019s all happening in Rowan County, North Carolina.<\/p>\n
Or, at least, some place that looks very much like that countryside. Author John Hart has written a lyrical piece on the Web about that part of the world and its place in his writing: \u201cI no longer live in North Carolina, but I set my books there, and when I close my eyes it\u2019s what I see: Salisbury and Rowan County, the people and the land and the long, forever river.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s another side to the county\u00a0as well, a cityscape where \u201c\u2026the east side of town was paved with empty factories and broken dreams.\u201d Hart moves us through this landscape on plot twists and turns that make a verb out of the noun \u201cmaze\u201d: The ex-cop gets out of jail only to be confronted by the son of the woman he didn\u2019t kill, a boy cared for by the female cop, whose life was saved by the ex-cop, so she became a cop \u2014 and we\u2019re not even out of the first 50 pages.<\/p>\n
As the narrative careens around corners, it may go up on two wheels, but Hart never loses control or the reader. He stays busy injecting subplots right up through the denouement, and he manages to get every major character into the grand finale. It\u2019s a blistering, bloody read that will make you think about getting his next book, but also make you think twice about taking the I-85 exit to Salisbury on your way south.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bob Moyer reviews the latest thriller by John Hart, a fine North Carolina author. I scooped Bob by a few months: You can see my review of the same book that ran May 8 in the Greensboro News & Record here: http:\/\/www.greensboro.com\/go_triad\/arts\/books\/hart-s-thriller-redemption-road-is-well-worth-the-wait\/article_ae13edaa-bd4d-5e40-a496-51957f15bfd1.html Fortunately, Bob and I agree in our praise of the novel. Reviewed by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4,14],"tags":[910,911],"class_list":["post-2020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mysteries","category-southern-fiction","category-thriller-suspense","tag-john-hart","tag-redemption-road"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2020"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2022,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020\/revisions\/2022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}