Title: The Terror of Living
Author: Urban Waite
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Publication Date: February 7, 2011
Hardcover: 320 pages
ISBN: 978-0316097895
Genre: Fiction, Mystery

From the Publisher:

Phil Hunt is in deep trouble.

Hunt is on the run from two men: Drake, the deputy sheriff who intends to catch him, and Grady, the vicious hitman who means to kill him.

For twenty years Hunt has lived in Washington State, raising horses with his wife on his small farm. He’s tried to stay out of trouble, wanting only to make a living and taking the occasional illicit job in order to do so.

Then his last delivery goes horribly wrong, and the chase is on from the mountains down into the Puget lowlands. To have any chance of rescuing his quiet life, Hunt will have to deal with deputy sheriff Bobby Drake, a good man determined to make up for his father’s tainted legacy and Grady Fisher, a very bad man intent on making a name for himself in the most violent ways. With a fondness for blood, Grady takes pleasure in the use of knives, taking Hunt’s life apart piece by piece, all the while leaving a trail of victims across the state.

Relentless and gorgeously written, with original characters and a vividly powerful sense of place, The Terror of Living heralds the arrival of a writer who will be compared with the great suspense novelists.

My Review:

Set in the mountains of Washington and crossing over into Canada, The Terror of Living by Urban Waite takes the reader on a thrill ride, a feat made even more impressive by the fact that this is his debut book. Bobby Drake is a deputy marshal assigned to work the aforementioned mountainous region keeping drug traffickers under check. Drake’s story is made more complicated by the fact that his father, a former sheriff, is incarcerated for drug smuggling and Drake has recently tied the knot with Sheri. Drake’s counterpart, ex-con Phil Hunt, owns a horse farm that is in financial straits and has turned to drug smuggling to make up for what his farm is incapable of providing. When Drake stumbles upon Hunt’s efforts to move marijuana, he devotes himself to tracking down the smuggler, all the while a pursuit of these adversaries begins when hitman-for-hire, Grady, is sent out by one of Hunt’s drug bosses to hunt down both of them. What ensues in this high-powered thriller is a storyline that delves deeper into relationships than one would ordinarily expect in tale of cat-and-mouse under the umbrella of drug smuggling. The Terror of Living is an exceptional debut novel and Urban Waite is an author to keep an eye on, but I must warn that there are scenes of fairly disquieting violence, so it is not a book for everyone, but for those who enjoy an excellent suspenseful thriller I highly recommend The Terror of Living.

I received a complimentary ARC of The Terror of Living by Urban Waite from Hachette Book Groups to offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.