Thanks to Netgalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I've read a number of Perry's book before, particularly the Jane Whitfield series, although I've also read a couple of his standalone books. Perry writes nonstop action filled books, and this was no exception (although I think the body count in this one may be a bit higher than the others I've read).

It's purely escapist fiction and that's really okay! You can, if you choose, have a nice internal debate about the morality of setting out to kill a bunch of bad guys, rather than arresting them, even though they did terrible things to this town, but you don't really need to. I'm a pretty nonviolent person, but when I'm reading action/adventure fiction, I'll just let it go!

There are some things that are a bit difficult to accept - for example, I still do not understand how one small town police chief can find these bad guys in virtually no time at all, when the FBI has supposedly been unable to locate them for 2 years. But, again, this isn't really a book for thinking and analyzing.

One thing that Perry seems to like is having extremely competent and kick-ass female protagonists - the first books I read by him were the Jane Whitfield series, and she is certainly tough, strong, and competent. In the standalone books I've read, I've seen the same things - the female characters are just as strong and dangerous as the male characters. The protagonist in this book is the female police chief of the small town, and she works on her own, even though there are men who probably have useful military skills who offer to help her. She knows that she can do it herself, and doesn't want to involve others or put them in danger- gender is simply not a factor, and I like that.

So, all in all, a good action/adventure book, not profound, but fun to read and never boring.

This book had me captivated, I really engaged with the characters and the plot was well thought out and nicely paced. I look forward to more from this author.

A SMALL TOWN
Thomas Perry
The Mysterious Press
ISBN 978-0-8021-4806-3
Hardcover
Thriller

Thomas Perry is firmly ensconced on my “must-read” list. He is within hailing distance of completing his fourth decade of writing solid and memorable crime and suspense novels, each and all of which stand in various ways of sterling examples of how the job gets done. He somehow finds something new to write about on an annual basis and, at the close of 2019, has presented us with A SMALL TOWN, a satisfying novel of the manifestation of evil deeds and resultant revenge.

A SMALL TOWN opens a couple of years in the story’s past in the small town of Weldonville, Colorado. Weldonville is a quiet municipality full of friendly, down to earth people. Its dubious claim to fame, however, is the local penitentiary, which over time has become the stopping place for long term and violent offenders. Everything changes on the night when a group of inmates initiates a long-planned escape, throwing the gates of the prison open behind them. The plotters go through Weldonville, spreading destruction, terror, and death in their wake, before vanishing into the night. The prisoners who follow behind them are either dispatched or captured by law enforcement, but the damage to the town and its citizens has been done. Two years later, Leah Hawkins, the lieutenant in the town’s shrinking police force, takes an approved leave of absence for the clandestine purpose of hunting down and dispatching the convicts responsible for the escape. It is here where Perry shows the true craftsmanship and genius that he has deservedly become known for over the course of his writing career. A lesser writer could have made plenty of hay by simply having Hawkins display good investigative work and hunting the doers down, one by one, across the country. Indeed, she does this at first. What occurs, however, is that the other members of the crew become aware that someone is hunting them. They decide to take steps to do something about it, with the result that things go off in a couple of different and unexpected directions. There are minor and major twists and turns throughout, some of which you may see coming and others which you’ll never predict, including a satisfying ending that resolves everything.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, A SMALL TOWN may never be mistaken for one of Perry’s best books. Perry stretches things just a bit more than usual. Hawkins is the beneficiary of good luck on a few too many occasions --- there is no one around when she breaks into a house; the bad guys on one occasion apparently go deaf at a crucial moment, to name but two --- to let the reader tiptoe past without cause. That said, A SMALL TOWN is most certainly one of Perry’s best stories. It is a solid tale of revenge, one in which the victims get their retaliation late, which is much better than never, and using an instrument --- Hawkins --- who (fortune notwithstanding) is a thoroughly believable heroine who knows her weaknesses and thus is able to strategically capitalize on her considerable skillset. Don’t let the late date of this book’s release in 2019 keep you from placing it at the top of your reading list in 2020. Recommended.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
© Copyright 2020, The Book Report, Inc. All rights reserved.

This book was more of a thriller than mystery. It was well written and managed to keep me captivated. The tension throughout kept me flipping pages.
Many thanks to Grove Atlantic and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

A Small Town is an easy book to summarize. Twelve brutal inmates at a maximum security prison in a small town in Colorado mastermind a mass escape. The inmates quickly overwhelm the town raping, murdering, and pillaging. Fast forward two years, and the town council of a city that's all but a ghost town now authorizes their lead detective to find the twelve inmates who have eluded the police and FBI. What follows is vigilante justice.

I liked the lead character, Leah Hawkins, who is the cop the town sends out to settle the score. She is described as six feet two inches tall and bony, with unruly, wiry hair the cover of clover honey. She was a welcome change from the men who usually take the lead in novels like this. The book was also fast-paced and well written by an experienced author.

I'd say A Small Town is a good, solid thriller, but I found it monotonous . . . inmate #1 found, now go after #2, succeed and go after #3, and so on. Things get more interesting when they get down to just the last six inmates left, and those six band together to fight back. Mostly, however, this is a paint-by-numbers thriller best suited for an airplane ride.

My thanks to The Mysterious Press and NetGalley for providing me a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed this book, but it was hard to see Leah as a real person. She seemed like Rambo. Rambo as a small town cop seems a little far-fetched. Everything seemed to fall in place to easily for her. It needed a more realistic plot

A Small Town by Thomas Perry is a psychological thriller.

First, let me thank both Edelweiss and NetGalley, the publisher Mysterious Press, and of course the author, for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

My Synopsis:   (No major reveals, but if concerned, skip to My Opinions)

Twelve hard-core convicts escape from Weldonville Prison, leaving the doors open so that another 1200 could walk out.  Most were rounded up fairly quickly, but not before women were raped, houses were ransacked and burned, and many people lost their lives.  The original twelve escaped.

Two years later, and the town is dying.  People have been leaving in droves.   Work at the prison has dried up, and nearly everyone in town lost someone that day.   Economically the town is barely viable now, and emotionally, the residents are drained.

Police Lieutenant Leah Hawkins is given a leave of absence to study management styles of other police forces across the country.  In reality Leah Hawkins is going after the twelve convicts that destroyed her town.  She is going alone, and she plans to kill them.

Leah will travel across the U.S., and as her targets are taken down, the remaining ones band together to fight back.

 

My Opinions:  

I absolutely loved the premise of this book.  A tough, smart, and determined policewoman out for revenge.

The writing was clear, but really long.  The actual prison escape took forever, and yet I found the scene with the police stand-off riveting....and short.  Once Leah was on the road, things dragged again.   Unfortunately, I found myself skimming.   What should have been excitement and suspense and emotion, was turned into detail.  Too much detail.  Too much background information on each convict.  Too much detail as to Leah's every move.  Too much imagery.  Not enough dialogue.  I got bored.

Although Leah was a strong character, she felt emotionless.  Actually, most of the book felt that way, although I did like the survivalist camp.

One other thought.  I don't feel that the final chapter really tied up the loose ends, or even fit with the rest of the novel.  Yes, it was an epilogue, but it didn't feel right.

I know that I will be in the minority on rating this book, because Thomas Perry is a popular author, but this one just did nothing for me.

A Small Town hooked me with an intriguing premise, and it started out well enough. The problem is that it quickly started to fizzle, and in the end, I forced myself to just get through to the end. Don't get me wrong, I still think the idea of this one was great, but it came up sorely lacking in the execution in my opinion. First, it relies heavily on a massive suspension of disbelief. This is fiction, but come on, it really does need to make sense.
The thing here is that in order for this prison break to actually work, we either need a group of really smart bad guys or really incompetent prison guards, or both. Then the same goes for the twelve to manage to stay completely off the FBI's radar. Again, they're either some crazy smart bad guys or the FBI is completely incompetent, and the way this one reads, I have to lean toward the latter because these bad guys act like the run of the mill variety, and they are pretty much right where Leah expects them to be. So, a whole team of FBI agents can't find hide nor hair of these guys, but she just gets lucky?
Then we have Leah as a main character. I think it's great that Perry writes such a strong female character, but there really needs to be a balance. Leah is so cold that she often comes across as almost robotic. I get that she has plenty of reason to be out for blood where these guys are concerned, but a little character depth would've gone a long way toward being able to find a connection to Leah. And I really needed more where she's concerned.
As I mentioned, the story starts out well enough, and it has a fair bit of tension, but this never felt like a thriller to me. Procedural, definitely. This book takes procedural to the extreme at times, but not a thriller. And there's nothing wrong with a good procedural, but somewhere around the 40% mark, my interest started to wane. The story started getting wordy and repetitive, and at times, just plain boring. Things do pick up here and there, but overall, A Small Town just left me disappointed.

My first introduction to Thomas Perry was "The Burglar".  I absolutely loved it.  The writing style is a bit different, very straight-forward.  But I devoured it.  Couldn't put it down.  Then I saw "A Small Town" and thought it was an incredibly interesting premise with yet another strong, confident woman taking the lead.  We start with a prison break and the destruction of an entire town.  What do you even do and how do you begin to pick up the pieces?  This town, and this woman in particular, have some ideas.

All I can say is that I will be first in line when this is eventually made into a movie or tv series.  I absolutely loved it.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Thomas Perry is the greatest thriller writer I have ever read. His work in each book surpasses the last and each book is a marvel in plot design, thrills and absolute enjoyment . Thank you to the publisher and to Net Galley for the opportunity to read this amazing book.
I have read the body of work of all Thomas Perry books. His Jane Whitefield series is pure writing brilliance. I look forward to each new release and the thrills he creates for his readers. A Small Town quite took my breath away ! It was so shocking, so just in revenge and wonderful in the details. I loved it and read it cover to cover unable to part with it until the end.

Mr. Perry takes us to a small idyllic town where everyone knows each other and supports one another. The families are close in this town over generations. The town council decided years prior to approve the building of a nearby ,maximum security prison to help support their town. This was their mistake. Several inmates plan a escape that is so precise and so well planned that no one expected it. All the security measures failed. The inmates killed most of the guards and then descended on the town murdering their families and worse. ( I had to skip over some parts). The town is burned and many families are left devastated by the losses that occur. The local police are to small and to few to fight back. A group of 12 inmates that planned the event escapes and after the event the police chief and the town council begin to plot their revenge. Their town will never recover but they want these 12 taken out by a assassin.

The assassin is their own police Lieutenant Leah Hawkins. She is given enough money to investigate the 12 criminals and find them as she is a skilled investigator and sharpshooter. She wants revenge for the murders of her friends, her lover and the damage done to the town. She methodically and brilliantly finds them each in different parts of the country by following their past clues and the assassinations begin. How she goes about the murders of the 12 is exciting reading as she narrows them down to their well deserved deaths.

If you enjoy thrillers and cat and mouse chase plots you will love this well plotted well crafted story. .Its a fun read that I highly recommend.

Relentless and engaging, I did in fact have trouble putting this down. Author Perry's more recent works have emphasized character as much as story, and this outing creates the same kind of vibe as the recent [book:The Old Man|30316148]and [book:The Burglar|40642330]. In each case we spend the entire book in the company of one character who is involved in an extended "mission" arising from circumstances only peripherally within their control. This time our MC is Leah Hawkins, a dedicated cop who was on duty the night a particularly brutal prison break devastated and decimated the titular "small town." Two years later, after the feds seem to have given up on tracking down the ringleaders, Leah is sent on a mission of vengeance. Perry is good at devising devilish scenarios for inflicting mayhem on those who particularly deserve it, and Leah does so in lots of ingenious ways that still create tons of suspense. Honestly though, this extended revenge porn was a little grimmer than my personal predilections prefer. I look back at the multiple story lines and dark humor of a book like [book:Strip|7024516], for example, and kind of miss the more layered and likable Perry of yore. Still an awesome read for Perry fans and definitely recommended.

This is definitely a different type of revenge thriller!! A group of convicts plot meticulously to escape from prison, massacre a small town in the process and get away with it...or do they?? This was such an interesting and original premise for a thriller. It's not a mystery, there's not a lot of suspense, it's just a good old fashion grudge fest. I love the smart strong female lead character. She's steadfast and determined..she also suffered a loss of her own. The meticulous and calculating way she sets out to eliminate the ringleaders of this horrific crime makes for a twisted winding tale!! This is a good read!

This is a high speed, plot driven thriller of a novel. Thomas Perry has created a new protagonist, Leah, a lieutenant in the police force of a small town, who is secretly charged with taking down the twelve hardened criminals responsible for the break out from a federal prison and then destroying the adjacent town. With great detail, Perry creates a heroine to rival Jack Reacher. Although this reader would have liked more character development this is a highly entertaining read!

A Small Town is a fascinating read that will leave you contemplating the idea of a prison break with inmates overtaking your town. Thomas Perry realistically captures the feelings of a situation like this happening.

Published by Grove Atlantic/Mysterious Press on December 17, 2019

A Small Town is a vigilante story. To make vigilantism seem justified, thriller writers concoct dastardly crimes committed by evil villains so that readers will root for the vigilantes. In the logic of thrillerworld, if bad guys are bad enough, it’s okay for good guys to murder them. It isn’t surprising that Thomas Perry made one of the killers a psychotic racist cult leader because even liberals would agree that it is morally correct to murder a racist, right? Wrong. The protagonist’s stunning hypocrisy might make her an interesting character if her character flaws were recognized and explored, but Perry wants the reader to cheer on a serial killer who never pauses to consider whether being a serial killer might be morally blameworthy. I just can't root for shallow protagonists.

The bad guys in this story are federal prisoners who commit an improbable escape, killing a bunch of corrections officers and arming themselves in the process. Mind you, this is a minimum-to-medium security prison, the kind that houses tax evaders and people who commit credit card fraud, but we’re told that hardcore criminals were transferred there because more secure prisons were overcrowded. It isn’t clear that the hardcore criminals even committed federal crimes (murder is usually a state crime), but put that aside. Violent criminals with years left to serve don’t get sent to a federal prison with a low security level, even at the request of a blackmailed Bureau of Prisons bureaucrat, making the premise hard to swallow. But the setup isn’t nearly as difficult to buy into as the plot that follows.

In the two years since the prison break, the FBI hasn’t managed to find any of the twelve worst bad guys (perhaps not surprising since that duty would primarily fall upon the U.S. Marshals). Our hero, a detective named Kate, decides to resign from her small-town cop job so she can track down the twelve escapees and go full vigilante on them. Can this plucky small-town cop succeed where federal agents cannot? You know that answer to that question. In fact, she manages to find them rather easily and dispatches them without working up a sweat. The feds were apparently too dim to consider some of the obvious steps she takes to find the killers.

Kate takes the crime spree personally because her lover (married to a woman with MS so we’re supposed to forgive him for having an affair) was a casualty of the bad guys. That’s one of many contrivances designed to manipulate the reader into cheering for Kate despite her decision to betray everything a law enforcement officer should believe in by becoming a serial killer. I didn’t find either her cause or her character to be noble.

Apart from being a serial killer, Kate carries an illegal “numberless Glock” with an illegal “silencer screwed on.” Where does she get her illegal weaponry? More importantly, why does a police officer who should be dedicated to arresting people who violate firearms laws feel no qualms about violating them herself? The moral seems to be that if you think you have a good justification to break the law, it’s just fine to do so. The prisoners probably felt justified in escaping, but Kate believes her justification is superior to theirs. The prisoners and Kate are both wrong. We are a country of laws precisely to prevent people like Kate from becoming their own law.

Even less believable is that Kate’s quest is funded by the mayor and city council members who redirect a crime fighting grant to her personal use. I found it hard to swallow that so many people, even in a small town where leaders tend to be like-minded, would willingly conspire to commit federal and state felonies by misusing a federal grant to fund a contract killer. The mind simply boggles.

A vigilante novel needs to do something special to earn my recommendation. Perry has never been a gifted wordsmith, although he sometimes tells a good story. A Small Town does nothing to overcome its shallow premise. The narrative suffers from redundancy, as the reader is frequently reminded just how awful the criminals are, how much they deserve to die, and how the small town suffered in the aftermath of the violent prison break. The sentences devoted to those topics are an exercise in tedium. A good bit of the novel reads like padding, as Perry supplies mundane details that do nothing to create atmosphere or advance the plot.

I was amused by some of the novel’s observations, including a character’s realization after dedicating eight years to a religious cult that all he had to show for it was “a marginal life in the woods.” But the novel’s few moments of entertainment fail to offset a dull and predictable story about a remarkably hypocritical character.

NOT RECOMMENDED

A simply fantastic story. A town raided by criminals tries to find a way to make them pay. They choose an unusual step and this that story. Leah is unapologetic about the life she has lived and the things she has set out to do. She had an unusual and loving relationship that was snatched from her. Her knowledge of police procedural and ability to stay on task makes this story hard to put down. As she goes through and acquits herself you will not help but fall in love with her character.

I enjoyed this well-written, fast-paced book. Leah Hawkins is a local cop who lost a loved one in a prison break two years before. The twelve inmates who organized it have never been found. Leah takes a sabbatical, supposedly to learn about advanced police procedures, but her true intention is to track down the 12 inmates and kill them. This was an entertaining book and I look forward to reading more books by this author.

Thomas Perry writes complex characters with gripping storylines. You know that when you pick up one of his books you need to allot time to read it cover to cover and A Small Town fits that bill.

Theres a prison break and it causes havoc for the small town near to the prison. There is still twelve prisoners to be found. But the people of the town fight back.

This is one of those books that you do t want to say to such about as it would spoil it for potential readers. The plotline is believable and the characters were realistic, even though a couple of them are a little bit over the top. It was a nice change to have a bad ass cop that was a woman. I loved this book.

I would like to thank NetGalley, Grove Atlantic and the author Thomas Perry for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed Small Town. The author did an excellent job if introducing the town, and then very quickly escalating the vibe from peace to chaos. The pace was great almost all the way through. A couple flashbacks were placed perfectly to add color to the motivation of our main character.
There are several bad guys, and just enough detail to keep you invested and intrigued.
The only negative I can think of is that I got bored with the last 20%. It was worth it, but everything after the City Council dragged a bit too much.
Overall, this is very good! A unique plot, intelligent police work, and lots of justice.