Review – Avenged

Three juvenile gang members are shot, execution style, bringing fears of war between Las Playas’s two youth gangs. One of the three survives through Officer Carly Edwards’s quick first aid. While that survivor remains comatose, the presumption remains that the opposing gang is responsible. But then Carly stops a car containing weapons and explosives stolen from a military base in another state. So something more than local gangs is involved. What outsiders would want to start a local gang war? And if that is a planned distraction, then distraction from what?

But Carly has other pressing problems. She is the key witness in the forthcoming trial of a man who murdered the town mayor. But a recently released felon creates three incidents with Carly and files three citizen’s complaints against her, claiming overreach of her authority. And the felon is accompanied by a female reporter and renegade photographer who hate police in general and Carly in particular.  They break news stories portraying her as a rogue cop determined to harass and persecute the released felon. The accusations so compromise Carly’s testimony that the prosecuting attorney considers dropping murder charges against the man who murdered the mayor.

Difficulty piled upon difficulty occurs in the gang-war problem Carly’s husband is dealing with, and each accusation against Carly seems to make it more impossible for her to clear her name. The tension mounts steadily until the author brings matters to a head in a thrilling climax with a plot involving the entire city.

But this brief summary does not reveal the breadth of concerns in the novel. Janice Cantore presents the reader with a wide range of well-developed characters and brings them through a number of interesting subplots well-woven into the main plot. And through all of these runs the problem of how Carly, as a Christian, must deal with these threats without compromising her faith. The author’s experience in police work also lends the novel an air of reality. All in all, an excellent read that leaves the reader wanting more from this talented author.