Pigeon-Blood Red

by Ed Duncan

Publisher: Next Chapter

Ginasbookreport Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre: Suspense / Thriller

Read This If You Love: Nelson DeMille

Rico is part of the Chicago underworld and is set on a path to enforce payment to his boss. Through a series of events, he ends up chasing a mark to Hawaii. When two people not involved in nefarious activity find themselves in the line of fire, it’s a full on race to see how the tale will end.

Personally, from the cover, I was hoping for more of a spy mystery, but this is a short novel (203 pages) and fits into the gritty suspense space. The first half of the book sets the stage for the second half by establishing contained vignette stories. All of these individual character stories hit on a collision course in the second half. 

This was a book that was outside of my normal reading comfort zone. I’m not big on testosterone heavy plots, so to speak. If the book had started with establishing Evelyn and Robert’s story first, it would have improved the overall flow of the story and investment in the characters. The writing is strong, but the characters were pretty disdainful and establishing Evelyn earlier would have created a reader connection. I found the second half of the novel to be more engaging and interesting.