Good solid book, interesting, full of action, and keeps you in suspense until the end. Recommended.

Synopsis/blurb…

One man can’t start a war. But he can end it.

Laying low in Mexico, Tom meets Carmen who is searching for her little sister Rosa, recently abducted and trafficked by a vicious gang. Tom sees that Carmen is likely to get herself killed and decides he is duty bound to help her.

The hunt for Rosa pits them against a terrifying Mexican cartel and ultimately leads them back to the US and a criminal conspiracy to open a vast stretch of the border for the trafficking of guns, drugs and women.

The cartel leaders stand to make billions, but Tom’s relentless one-man campaign is making them nervous, so they bring in some elite talent to solve the problem. Meanwhile, Tom’s old enemies in law enforcement realise he’s back in the US and send a hit team to finish him off.

Caught between cartel sicarios and ex-military assassins, Tom will need every one of his formidable skills if he is to survive his deadliest adventure...

Hard to Kill – book 3 of the superb Tom Rollins action thriller series. Perfect for fans of Lee Child, Jason Kasper & David Archer.
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My take...

Another enjoyable Tom Rollins thriller from Paul Heatley with the third in his series of six (so far).

Here Rollins takes on a Mexican drug cartel and their US partners on both sides of the border while trying to rescue a trafficked girl from their clutches. Events are complicated by his former Military unit colleagues - still pissed off at Tom for bailing on them overseas - taking up a contract hit on him. Hell, they’d happily do him for free.

Character, pace, action, story line, a little bit of romance, some back story, and a decent outcome. It did everything I needed it to.

I liked it, though as with every bit of fiction I’ve ever encountered, you need to set aside a bit of disbelief at the door and just go with the flow. Three down, three to go, though undoubtedly Paul Heatley will have # 7, 8 and 9 penned and on the book store shelves before I get back to the fourth!

Blood Line and Wrong Turn have been enjoyed before. Snow Burn is next.

4 stars from 5.

Read – August, 2022
Published – 2021
Page count – 338
Source – review copy from Net Galley
Format - Kindle

http://col2910.blogspot.com/2022/08/paul-heatley-hard-to-kill-2021.html

I received this book for an honest review:

This is book number three in the series I missed book number two. Here Tom is in Mexico thinking everything will be quiet when he comes across a woman named Carmen who is looking for her sister. You find out that she was taken by a cartel and Carmen decides to go after them to get her sister back. Knowing she won’t make it Tom decides to help her. The Cartel at first thinks they are being attacked by another Cartel when they discover it is only one man. Tom is also still being hunted by the government. Carmen is a little upset with Tom for all of the killings he does so he does hold back a little. This is another good back in the series and is fast-paced and full of action.

Laying low in Mexico, Tom meets Carmen who is searching for her little sister, Rosa, recently abducted and trafficked by a vicious gang. Tom sees that Carmen is likely to get herself killed and decides he is duty bound to help her.

Very exciting and full of action. Paul Heatley is a great writer in this genre. His characters always have depth to them beyond the ability to wreak mayhem as needed. Tom Rollins is one of those guys capable of incredible violence, but only towards those he views as a threat. He can't help but get involved due to his personal convictions. Great character! Great story!

This genre of books is one of my favourite.
Admittedly it's a format that has been visited before but one I never tire off if it is done well and this is definitely up there with the best..
Very likeable main character and a strong plot made for a great weekend escapism read and I will certainly look out for more by this author.

This story is well written and entertaining, easy to read and has a very good pace. The plot, however, is depending on the main character making some stupid mistakes in order to get all the action.

My thanks to NetGalley and publisher Inkubator Books for the ARC.

This is Book#3 in the Tom Rollins action thriller series, and I've read the previous two as well. It's well-written (all in the present tense, which adds to the nail-biting tension inherent in Tom's ingenious escapades), and the dialogue believable in this fast-paced thriller. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Tom - ex-army and ex-CIA black ops. is a wanted man. He walked away from his old unit and sadistic commander and is presently lying low in Mexico after foiling a bomb threat in Dallas. Special Agent Eric Thompson is still on the lookout for him; Tom knows too much and Eric wants him dead, at any cost.
At his Mexican motel he intervenes in a human trafficking operation run by a notorious cartel. In the process he rescues Carmen who is on the trail of her sister Rosa. He agrees to help and the body count builds up as he starts investigating.

We intermittently have narrative from Rosa's point of view telling the reader what has and what is happening to her, as Tom and Carmen gradually close in on their final destination. Not only is the cartel tracking them, so too is Tom's old unit - has Tom enough tricks up his sleeve to keep one step ahead of them and rescue Rosa?

Brilliant read!

Wow wow wow!! Great book! This book had my heart pounding out of my chest! Lol definitely a nail biter! Right till the end! Such a great book! This book had suspense, action, intrigue, bloodshed , murder and mayhem !! I highly recommend reading this book!! I enjoyed reading this book immensely! Its well worth reading! Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for sharing this book with me! A big Thank you to Paul Heatley for your amazing words! Loved it!! I found myself a new author! Lol

If you are in the mood for a hard-edged, action-packed thriller, you might want to take a look at Heatley’s latest Tom Rollins thriller, third in the series, and which works just fine as a standalone. Take an ex-black ops asset, plant him Mexico where he can’t help but stumble across a cartel human trafficking operation where young girls are kidnapped and sold into cross-border brothels. Though Rollins is apparently on the run himself from matters that played out in the earlier books in the series, he can’t just sit on his hands when he could be a one-man wrecking crew to such an operation. It’s a fairly short, quick read with nearly no let up in the action and there’s no question about who the good guys and the bad guys are.

Another edge of the seat action thriller from an author at the top of his game.

Tom Rollins has just finished laying his beloved's ashes to rest in her home town when trouble finds him again. Rescuing a room full of victims of sex slavery puts him back into action and from there he has to rely on his wits to survive.

Having read the previous Paul Heatley novel, I was expecting great things, and he delivered very well.

Most enjoyable.

Tom Rollins is a drifter, formerly CIA black ops, now living off the grid, somewhere in Mexico for the time being.

I'm immediately reminded of Jack Reacher (the drifter part), but also of the cleaner, John Milton (especially hiding in Mexico, which is what John does as soon as he's going off grid). That was my immediate characterization - and I think it is spot on. Only with a little more chivalry knight going on (well, obvious chivalry, that is).

So we get a story with a strong hero, fighting on behalf of the weak (this time, against a Mexican drug cartel). It's not new, but a formula that's proven to work time and time again. The plot is missing some of the twists you would expect from Jack Reacher, but it's solid plot with a protagonist that's immediately likeable.

There's a saying: No good deed goes unpunished. Tom learns that firsthand when he rescues a group of women from some sex trafficker, only to discover that one of them had let herself be captured - in search of her little sister. Well, desperate times call for desperate measures, so Tom employs his skill set. And when he does, the fun is really starting.

Although the good Samaritan act is slightly unnerving to me. Yes, he's a hero, he really is the good one, but I think he's overdoing it a little. It's not a big deal, but it's something that's souring my reading fun a little bit.

There's also the fact that this story is told mostly in simple present, and I have to admit that I don't like this particular tense for stories. It kind of feels awkward.

On the plus side is the fast paced action. The bad guys get hit really hard, and as you would expect, Tom's past comes back to bite him in his rear so he soon has hands full hitting the bad guys, dodging his former colleagues and keeping the girl safe. I'm fairly certain this could be drafted into a movie script without much ado, and if you're a visual reader, you'll probably already have the movie rolling in your head. And it might look like one of those 80's action movies, the Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Lundgren kind. You know, great movies if you just want to have a good time watching the hero fighting everyone between him and the girl.

*****

This is part three of a series - I haven't read the first two parts, but after this book, I'm really inclined to catch up.

It's an enjoyable read, fast paced action with a likeable hero. Fans of Reacher, Milton and others like them will probably like it.