Richard Doetsch knows how to write a thriller!
I have another of his novels, Thieves Of Darkness, which looks like a Himalayan adventure, and look forward to reading it, but thought I would try his earlier book The 13th Hour first. Fitting in with my love of timelines and time travel, this thriller is told backwards, like the film Memento.
It begins with the killing of Nick Quinn's wife and his arrest for her murder. While in the police detention room, a man walks in and hands him a pocket watch. It will be explained later, but as long as he is holding the watch when the hour turns over, he will go back to the previous hour. The novel begins with Chapter 12 at 9pm and the next chapter is 11 at 8pm, and so on.
The interesting thing that happens, besides his remembering the pieces of the story from hour to hour, is his state when he travels. At one point, he finds himself chained to a weight at the bottom of a river, looking at previous victims floating beside him and running out of breath. He can't get loose, but does a time travel back to his starting place, his home study. He is once again an hour ahead, and soaking wet from being in the river!
As well as the murder, there is a vault heist of rare treasures from a wealthy citizen of the town by an unknown gang of thieves, and a spectacular plane crash involving a Cessna colliding with a commercial jet airplane filled with 200 passengers. With the entire police force involved with the plane crash, the heist takes place, and through a chain of events, Nick's wife is killed.
Can he not only save his wife in 12 hours, but prevent these other events from happening?!
As the hours go by, he realizes whom he can trust, what plans worked and which created more chaos, and what he needs to do to prevent it all from happening in the first place. Written with a fast pace, it manages to include intriguing characters, and original twists in each chapter which I did not see coming. You gradually learn of each characters angle, who is involved with what - and the way Nick can manipulate the time line.
A time travel thriller is just what I like, and I was hoping I wouldn't be let down. I wasn't! I thought this was ingenious and a real page-turner. I'd recommend it and read it again.
2009 / Hardcover / 336 pages
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